Related Games / Oakride Amusement Park (RCT3) Nighttime Visit!

Well after a visit to Thorpe Park with my girlfriend a while back I was once more inspired to play RCT3 and try and get a park running where I get further than year 5 (my record so far). However no matter what I tried I couldn’t find something that I liked the look of when I built. About to give up I decided to try a method seen rarely (Fatha’ did one for RCT2 being the only one I can think of) if not at all and one I’ve tried once before but failed.

I decided to actually play the game.

Now don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that you guys are wrong in using it as a design tool because your not and it’s probably a far more successful and enjoyable way of doing so but I wanted to try something different. Deciding to play it as the designers meant (only exception being with the inclusion of some of the cheats) I deleted all my custom scenery and filled a map with trees planning on using it to build a small family park and expand with money it makes as I actually play the game.
Now for those of you who have seen my last attempt at this I will be using the same rules:

*3 years in game = 1 year for update purposes so year 4 in game will be year 2, year 7 in game will be year 3 and so on confusing I know but you’ll get it eventually.

*£1,000 in game = £250,000 for real life money purpose so if your really interested in making it real times all the numbers shown by 250 to find out their costs. This may also help if I want to interact with other parks. NOTE: This idea doesn’t work well for the tickets prices as there coming out at like £500 so beware of that.

These are for any in character updates I do that are related to attempting to make out the park in a real situation. These will also help people just interested in the actual game mechanics to relate to what’s going on. Of course being that I’m just playing the game and am using money any mistakes I make are permanent and will take time to correct. As such any criticism I decide to act upon will also take time to do so, so please bear that in mind when commenting.


So anyway here is the start of Oakridge Amusement Park. A park ran by the Hawthorn family through their newly formed Hawthorn Parks Ltd. Also please note although not a timeline park its supposed to start some time like the sixties.


Pre-opening.

Well it’s been several weeks since we’ve finally come up with the decision to turn this large area of forest in the south west of England into a family park on a budget. 10k to be precise.



Well with so many trees around it turns out clearing a dirt and sand carpark, which isn’t even a large size isn’t exactly cheap coming in at £1,520 but never fear because for all the wood we provided the local lord with he gifted us these lovely scenic gates. He could have paid us for it instead. Stupid gates.
Anyway, enough complaining, we choose to build in a forest after all. To have a park that peeps would want to visit we had to have rides which would cost us. Dreading the actual cost after seeing how much clearing trees cost we bought some cheap fairground rides of a few local companies which came in at around £2000. Hmm not bad so we bought a Vintage car ride to allow our peeps a scenic tour of a small part of the forest. For a fee of course.
This left with £5720 left in the bank. Looks like a rollercoaster will have to wait. We haven’t even put any paths in yet which were also pretty darn expensive considering the fact that they were just pathways cleared though the trees without any concrete or anything leading to the rides. The basic idea is to have a circular pathing structure with so to guide the guests to each ride rather than many branches. This should hopefully mean each ride is visited more as people circle the park. Basic idea worked until we screwed up a bit with the Ferris Wheel but oh well that’ll be looked at later when we have more money as that lot took us down to £2,392 and that’s without any buildings or services in the park.
We then decided to start with the buildings beginning with the stations and control huts as well as theming for the rides starting with the car ride. A station several bridges and some landscaping later and were in trouble again with only £800 left. Unless we want to take a loan out finishing off the ride is going to have to wait and so we decided to actually start with the infrastructure of the park. Ride control huts done for the ones that needed them and were feeling happy with the outlook and then half way through the ticket building we run out of money.
Now where we can probably be ok without any food outlets for a bit of the season were probably going to need some toilets and somebody to actually sell tickets so we took out a £2000 loan from a rather greedy looking bank manager.
One new toilet block and several ticket counters and were back at £304. Oh well seeing as it’s a third of the way through the year anyway time to hire a mechanic and cleaner and try and get some of the money back by opening this place I suppose.

Park Overview



Opening day.

Well having missed most of the year spending all my money on the damn park we decided it was probably time to open up and get some money back for it. So after hiring a mechanic in case of the inevitable breakdowns and a cleaner due to the fact that we cant afford bins yet we were set.
This was the site we were greeted by when the gates opened. Pretty hefty crowds considering what we were expecting. Still with rides tickets at £2.50 a go we were hoping for some of the money we’d spent to come back into the coffers. It did as well and over the next few weeks we slowly built our bank balance back up to £671. Not amazing but over double what we opened the park on.



Now here’s some pictures to look at while we try and figure out how were going to use this money to make a food outlet. Where’d that bank manager go again?











Final Money Total = £671 (-£2000 loan)

£671. = 167750


EDIT: No idea why the middel picture is small out of the three in a row but I cant seem to change it so it'll have to do. ALso I know the park may seem really empty but I'm showing you this so you know what it looks like at the start and so I have a complete account of the park.

Cheers

89James89

Im looking forward to seeing more.

One thing I always like about your parks were how quaint they were, and this is no difference. Good luck, Helix.

I hope this becomes the next Charelston Gardens. Good luck Twisted Helix.

^since you failed to do so ^^ just kidding...

Looks great helix but there isn't really that much to see atm, also maybe try adding fences and stuuf like that, some lower foliage perhaps to make it feel more complete, good start though you have a good basis to start from so now deliver the potential it has

Replies:

Lowenaldo: Im gald to hear it.

MF72: Well thats good as its the kind of atmosphere that this is meant to give off.

fraroc: Cheers

BelgianGuy: Yer I agree witht e lower foliage part after looking roudn the park more, we'll have to see what our landscapers coem up with. The fences issue is due to us not knowing where we wnat the rides to be permanently at the moment yet plus as its pay per ride and there all fenced off its not goign to matter too much if the guests stray off the park for any reason.


Blog Entry 2 (Mid Season 2)


This years been pretty good really so far. Firstly we tried to remedy the whole no food outlets in the park situation by constructing this small sandwich and soft drink bar across from the carrousel in the hope that it’ll increase the visitor flow around the area.




It did kind of work but as this interview with a guest shows is still far from perfect.

Douglas S, 34, Brockley, Avon, UK



‘I’ve come here today with my family who seem to have disappeared on me. We live in nearby Brockley, less than 5 minutes drive from the park and this is the third time we’ve visited since its opening. We feel that although the park has a nice atmosphere and the setting in the wood is nice and scenic there isn’t much here for us adults to do and the same rides are getting a bit stale for the kids.
We appreciate the new sandwich bar here in the park as well but it’s still not big enough for the amount of people that seem to visit. I reckon the park would benefit from more thrilling and new rides and bigger food outlets. Also useful would be lighting for the evenings and maybe think about replacing the muddy paths that can make quite a mess when wet.’

Other than that we added some more themeing to Vintage Cars making the ride more enjoyable for the guests and different visually from last year as this photo shows.



I’ve also realised I haven’t told you where the park is in case your thinking of visiting. It’s actually located a little outside of Bristol by a village called Brockley and is built along the roads that runs through it. This means that we have both of Bristol and Baths customer base without any other real competition around. Below is a modified google map to better show you where I mean.





Other than that not much has happened this year really as were saving to try and remedy some of the earlier mentioned problems. Still, visitor number have increased this year over the last one as I assume the word has got around about our little park but still we have one issue to deal with in the form of paying back the loan. That may have to wait however till we’ve made some improvements that were hopefully planning to implement.

Right it’s the start of season 3 and last year showed us a few things that the park was missing and as such we acted on them at the end of season 2. Firstly we had the food problem where although we’d added a sandwich bar it didn’t have a large enough capacity to cope with the large amount of guests the small park was experiencing. As such we decided to add a more permanent and larger eatery to the park and so we have had another larger food outlet built right at the front of the park effectively making the small park look like it has a very basic entry square with the small buildings we have in place. This place will sell chips and burgers and even has a couple of tables inside to sit and eat at if your quick and several more toilets. It seems this has met with good reports as visitors tend to now spend longer in the park which is good news for us.

Also added this year is new lighting for most for the paths for the nighttimes where visitors (such as the one above) were commenting on how dark and unlit and to help entice more visitors to the park a new Twirler ride situated behind the carrousel brings another much needed thrill ride to the rather tame line up the park had.

Perhaps the biggest news though this year is rumours that we have been in contact with a certain person to produce ride for the park. Whether this is true or not I’m not going to say at the moment but we do need a little something else at the park I will admit to help us stay ahead of competition from any other local parks. Still all this needs money of which we don’t seem to have a lot spare after last seasons upgrades so well have to see. Anyway to finish off below are some pictures of the new additions and another trying to cram as many rides into one picture as possible and failing.

looking goood.

Replies:

SSSammy: Cheers



Well it would appear that adding that second thrill ride and the burger bar was a smart move. In half a year we have taken nearly double what we took last year already. Obviously the new ride has given our older guests (probably parents of the families that frequent the park rather than the teens and young adults) a new reason to stay longer and spend more at the park and the fact you now don’t have to wait ages to buy a sandwich also helps this. As such we decided to continue with trying to exploit this shopping trend the guests seem to be experiencing and built a souvenir shop next door. Now although being a small un-establish and not even permanent park means we don’t have anything really to sell regarding he park the random stuff we do have still seems to be selling pretty well and helping add to our profit margins.

All this is brilliant news for several reasons. Firstly with a park increasing in size we have to be able to pay for maintenance for the rides and also an increase (In fact, by next month double) in park staff with a new mechanic, handyman and interviews currently underway for a security guard. Secondly and more excitingly though, the rumour that I mentioned last blog was indeed founded in fact and now with much larger funds it can become a reality rather than just talks. I’m not going to tell you what the new ride is going to be just yet but hopefully it should help truly establish the park for next season.

Now while you think about that bit of news here’s a few more pictures of both the new shop and the queues showing just how popular the two thrill rides are, especially Twister which has been here since the park opened and still has the longest lines and is by far the parks biggest earner.

I find this fun to follow. Actually playing the game can be a blast.

Too bad the vanilla RCT3 scenery is so ugly, but you're doing pretty good. To see this turn into a large bustling park more like a Six Flags or Hershey would be something to behold though. I wish you good luck.

Looking forward to the new attraction.

Replies:

FantastiCo: Thanks and yer it is really fun actually. A lot more than I had expected and is keeping my interest. Hmmm I dont think the default scenery is that bad but does tend to have a cartoonship look about it. Hmm althoguh that would be good for buisness I wouldn't hold your hopes up. We dont have the space or funds but hopefully it'll still remain a fun place to spend a day.




Here’s a tip to all you budding park managers out there. If your going to build a big ride take into account its cost then treble it at least before you start building. We made the mistake of not doing so and as such, when the big day came to open up for our fourth season with our brand new flagship ride the guests streamed in large numbers (ok so 500 odd guests aren’t exactly large numbers but they are for us) all excited and ready, only to be told that due to management stupidity the ride was not as ready as they were.

You see while we’d budgeted easily enough for the ride. We had forgotten to budget for the station and we found out that the surveyor wanted us to install extra supports that we’d have to pay for due to soft ground or something. Now the station was paid for out of the surplus we’d acquired in our third season but for the supports we had to open and pay for most of them out of our first third of the fourth season’s profits.

Still anyway with all that out of the way and the ride finally done we were able to reschedule our grand ride opening day (to which a lot less people turned out than the season opening day unfortunately) and the first riders were able to come in and enjoy themselves on our new ride. Speaking of which I haven’t actually told you what it is yet so without further ado I’d like to announce Wild Mouse, our brand new wooden coaster open for all to enjoy.

Anyway I’m now going to leave you with a few pictures we’ve taken on the rides opening day as apparently people are asking for me regarding a certain managerial screw up. Enjoy these and I’ll have the stats for it next time.

The update this time will be a small but still important one. Basically I have the new ride data that I said I’d get for you last time I updated the blog and also a special give away tickets for next season. Basically were looking for 3 people to come to the preview of next season as were planning on revamping the park at the end of this season. Apply here and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Please however be aware that you need to be able to try and provide a trip report for us. Anyway until then here are the stats and a few more random photos.

Roller Coaster: Wild Mouse
Amusement Park: Oakridge Family Park (Brockley, Avon, UK)
Classification: Roller Coaster
Type: Wood - Sit Down
Status: Operating, opened season 4
Make / Model: Wooden Wild Mouse
Categories: Family
Length: 1378’67
Height: 43’47
Inversions: 0
Speed: 28.2 mph
Duration: 1:15
Trains: 4 trains with 1 car. Riders are arranged 2 across in 2 row’s for a total of 4 riders.

but not a lot of us have rct3 ):

I'll provide a review.

Replies:

Dotrobot: Thats very true and I do appreciate it here but I'm also showing this on several other sites so was just leaving it open to everyone. Not that it matters much now due to the fact that I stopped playing for a while meanign the download will be on hold for a bit.

Bollinger & Mallibard: Cheers but its on hold for a while (see above for reasons)



OOC: Well I know its been ages since I updated this but I was inspired to play the game and decided this park as it was the one I had had most fun with. Anyway heres goes welcome to a not so successful season 5 start.

Well basically this year’s additions didn’t go to plan at all. Basically a big piece of advice I’d give to any budding park manager is hire someone to budget your plans so that you don’t run out of money half way through. Actually I’m pretty sure that sort of person is vital in any sort of business so I’ve got no idea why we haven’t got one but oh well.

Anyway back to what actually happened. You see this year we had big plans to completely revamp the park with new paving throughout and a more functional entrance to rid us of the fair look we have at the moment. As well as this we had plans for a small kid’s area and train ride and a staff area.

What actually happened were the train ride and the staff area. Yup that’s it, just two out of five things. You see the train ride took all but a small part of the 10,000 we had saved and with the small staff area added that was the lot. It looks like the paving will have to wait a couple of years (maybe even till season 10).

Still the train seems to be a hit with the guests and with one station on each side of the park it should help spread guests out a bit more. Anyway here’s a couple pictures of the nice main street station and the budget other one near the wild mouse (we tried to make the station fit in with the wild mouse one as it was pretty cheap).






Apart from that we have this small staff room and sheds for storage and the extra trains (it runs four with space for two in the stations) and that’s your lot for the time being. Now let’s hope we can make some money in this season before we run into debt. Will be back later in the season with news on how it goes.




OOC: Also as a bonus for you guys here at NE heres a picture of the new station in rct/rct2 isometric view.

I think the isometric view is pretty neat and it makes the whole 3d aspect of this game more tolerable to say the least. For a vanilla rct park, I like it.

Hmm.. I don't know something doesn't settle with me and that path. Station is very very nice.

Replies:

djbrace1234: Thanks and I kidna liek that view as well. Anyway due to the nature of the forums being mroe used to that view I've decided to do at least one bonus photo in that view for each update here.

Dotrobot: Glad you like the station and yes, the paths not the nicest looking and we hope to do soemthing about it in the coming seasons.


Update 8 Season 5 mid season. Train Special.

This update is all about the new train as we have taken some of the money we’ve been making since opening this season (thankfully we didn’t go into debt) and spruced up the rather boring train ride. Costing us around £2,000 this landscaping project has been a large success with the new ride being much more enjoyable and hiding many of the structures and bits of the park you could see from the train which ruined the tranquil feel of it.

Below are a few on ride pictures of the new train ride with a before one first so you can tell the difference. Hope you think they’ve made a big difference like us.

Old photo for comparison


Same photo after improvements


Nearing the train sheds not nearly as ugly as it used to be and you can see Wild Mouse poking in at the corner


And finally the smaller more basic station not looking as bad as it used to


In other news the park has seemed to benefit largely form the new train with money continuing to flow into the park meaning we should hopefully be able to move on with the kid’s area improvements towards the end of the season. These photos however will have to tie you over until then.


BONUS PIC: Top down night view of trian and part of Wild Mouse

That last screen is classy.Good job with the other screens,you make RCT3 look decent,aswell.

Replies:

Live on earth ass: Thanks

(OOC: Sorry guys I kind of abandoned the park for a while but have recently been looking at the parks on the forums again and have decided to start it up again.)

Right guys well this year we’ve managed too implement stage one of our children’s area expansion. Situated along a path extension past the widely disused Ferris Wheel this new area will hopefully serve several purposes.

Firstly it’s been placed so as to draw traffic past the Ferris Wheel hopefully improving its ridership as along with the small playpark this new area contains a small eatery (still the largest in the park and only one with proper sit down facilities) and a ice cream stand. This means that most families will head there to eat rather than the sandwich bar as there they can eat and watch their children playing in safety across the path
Anyway enough talking here’s a couple of photos for you all.

Entertainer entertaining the first guests to enjoy the new area.



New Icecream stand and playpark



As for this year we hope the new area to bring in more money as we have further plans for it for next season.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Firstly I made a mistake saying that the new eatery was the only sit down place to eat in the park as there is one right inside the entrance to the park. This however seems to have not put a dampener on the plan for the new eatery as that and the ice-cream stalls have indeed pulled guests past he Ferris Wheel and into the new area. Obviously the combination of food and being able to see your children playing safely is a big draw.

As such we’ve decided to go ahead with our expansion of the area and although were keeping it under wraps as to what it is I have this photo to show you.



In other news the summer was extremely good for us and our busiest yet as this next photo of the path next to the vintage cars shows.



Also a first is this chart which shows our finances and expenditure over the last few months. Nothing very interesting just gives you a brief idea of how we spend money and what were making. (OOC: yes I know this is done yearly in the game and a month in game is 3 in my park log terms but oh well I though it’d still be interesting to a few to include it.)



So that’s all for now. I’ll be back with one more update before next season which will show the other big change this year to the park. Till then.


~~~~~~~~~~~

Tiger is the new ride. A very small rollercoaster built with the little ones (and credit whores) in mind this Alan Herschell little dipper themed to the feline friend of its namesake will hopefully boost our crowds in preparation for the parks biggest spending spree yet. However if not then we’ve also added another new ride and game stall in preparation just in case. Below are several pictures from the opening weekend of the park’s new kiddie additions which I got for you.

The new flat ride Magic Carpet and also the new eatery from last season that I forgot to show you.



A picture of the new rollercoaster Tiger (or rather and attempt at it).



A overall attempt at the whole new area form the last two seasons.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Well I spent another day in the park today taking photos for you all. Nothing new to report as of yet this season as were saving money for a big project at the moment so spending is tight. We did however spend £2,100 on a newspaper advertisement to help draw in people with the plan of raising more money for the project. What happened however was that it was a compete flop with the campaign in the local paper not brining in near enough people to make a return on the money invested in it. Still with numbers reaching 700 a day at the weekends and a nice income during the weeks it shouldn’t be a big problem.

Money wise so far we have £4,000 plus saved up but were budgeting much more for the project so were hoping the rest of the year is going to continue this way. Anyway, enough of my talking and onto the photos.


Firstly the boring one of last years car park expansion. It used to be four times as small as this and hopefully this new size will work to accommodate the increased guest’s numbers that next year will hopefully bring. (OOC: I know its not got any cars or vehicles in it but that’s because they cost to much to add at the moment so just imagine their there or its early in the day)



This is a attempted overview of the new area from the Ferris Wheel. I did try and get one from Wild Mouse’s lift but it has too much vegetation in the way.



A small shot of the Vintage Cars at night from riding Wild Mouse. Despite the ride being 7 seasons old it still looks quite nice at night.



Finally a shot of the Train at night taken from the outside the train sheds.



That’s all for now. Maybe next time I’ll be able to divulge more about the project. Till then.