Park / Virginia Key Resort & Casino

38 Comments

  • geewhzz%s's Photo
    What can be said about Kumba that already hasn't been said? NE's resident ex-dictator and spelling master has been a constant fixture at the site ever since he first arrived in 2003. Since then, he's had two spotlights with Dimensions: Realms of Creation and Bayfront Park, numerous runners-up, two back-to-back H2H wins, the title in Micro Madness, two Road Rally championships, and more miscellaneous releases than anyone else could count. This past year, he was nominated for best RCT2 player and almost won H2H MVP. Although he swore that DRC was his last solo release, he suddenly announced a continuation of his PT3 entry, Virginia Key. Now, around three years after the due date for the PT3, NE would like to present its latest gold park, Virginia Key Resort and Casino, by the colorful Kumba.
  • RamSam12%s's Photo
    That was incredible. The hotel and casino structure were amazingly well done for their size. I was most impressed with the functionality of everything including the waterpark attractions. Great work man.
  • Roomie%s's Photo
    Congrats Kumba

    The first truely great park of the year i reckon.
  • posix%s's Photo
    i thought this park was incredible. when i found it in our inbox i didn't know what to expect and having opened it i kept having moments of surprise and amazement. although it's so gigantic and busy, it all still seems to fit together well to create a whole. all the amazing details really impressed me and i closed the park unsure what i'd vote it. then later when the spotlight vote went up i had a really hard time to decide for "no" because i thought this was actually pretty close.

    great stuff kumba.
  • Cena%s's Photo
    Congrats Kumba! Too bad you didn't got spotlight but that is somehow logic :p 

    *more to be added later*
  • Levis%s's Photo
    imo it would have been somewhere around the 3th place in the PT ;) .

    good job kumba, brainwash was a nice thing to get my teeth in :p was long since I had such a challenge to get it working.
  • robbie92%s's Photo
    I thought this was incredible. The write-up contains most of my thoughts, but I absolutely loved this. So, so good.
  • RCTNW%s's Photo
    Congrats on the Gold Darren. I loved all the little details with the bungie drop bing my favorite along with the mini golf.

    Liked
    + The bungie drop was fun to watch
    + Loved how each hole was themed on the mini golf
    + Working waterslides
    + Loved how each car stopped at the entrance gate to the parking structure before proceeding in.

    Disliked
    - The coaster ruined the map for me. It seemed forced and out of place. You had all this great micro detials and to have this coaster with it's massive supports was a total miss for me
    - Resort scale was off. Not so much that it was soo big but rather that height of each floor was too much compared to the peeps.
    - The actual resort looked like a big block and for a casino, It should have had more style to it
    - Not sure if this was due to the hack but all the slides/water rides took to long between rides.
    - I was not a member of the staff!!!!!!!!

    All that said though, I really enjoyed the map and was a blast to view. Well done!

    James
  • Liampie%s's Photo
    + Great details of course! There's was so much to discover, I spent quite a lot of time on exploring the park and finding new little things.
    + Nice creative ideas! When you think everything has been done before, Kumba comes up with new ideas or executes them better than most other attempts. You destroyed Dolphin Bay Resort!
    + The jetskis were great fun to watch
    + Bungee jump
    + Mini golf
    + Atmosphere; the park was very alive.
    + Area round the lazy river
    + Functional slides and pools
    + Outdoor disco
    + Logo. I predict it will be nominated in the 2010 awards.


    +- I didn't mind the coaster being so big, but the inversions after the first drop looked silly, I was disappointed with that... I can't say I like the supports but they are good for what they are.
    +- The details inside the hotel were great, but it still felt bare or even boring because of the size.
    +- The rooftop was quite boring compared to the rest of the park. Nice glass roof, though!
    +- As RCTNW said, the scaling was a bit off. (not the size)


    - The contrast between dense/busy areas and more spaceous/cleaner areas... (minigolf-area vs go karts)
    - The pool seats were way too big.
    - I didn't like the go karts, that part was just too plain and the high empty walls didn't help either.
    - Entrance area was really boring and unrefined compared to the rest of the park.
    - Some trackitecture looked stupid. The benches made of waterslide for example...


    All in all a fantastic park, there are some pretty big flaws but the fun factor prevails in the end. Congratulations.


    If only you finished this earlier...

    Pro Tour 3
    1. Canthose Valley Theme Park
    2. Busch Gardens North America
    3. Virginia Key Resort & Casino
    4. Pangaea
    5. Evil WME's Mount Doom
    6. Terra Antico
    7. NeMica - Forgotten Land
    8. Metal Masters
    9. New Sun Park
  • JoeZia%s's Photo
    What about the custom water ride boogy board i made that is in the park? didn't notice my name in the readme (besides the music). Its cool man, cuz you definatlely just made the biggest building i have ever seen in rct2. Dude your freaking amazing! :mantis: I seriously can't wait to see your awkward evolution in the game as well! never thought to download it until i noticed how awsome v key is. cause i just now realized, damn im slow. I can't even imagine how much blood, sweat, n' tear you shed making this truely exelant part. Keep it up Kumba, what a great parkmaker you are :)
  • prodigy%s's Photo
    I don't like it at all, would have voted max with an 8 maybe... Not the stuff I like, definitely.

    Edited by prodigy, 11 May 2010 - 02:10 PM.

  • Jazz%s's Photo
    The sheer scale and detail of the hotel is worthy of much praise, although nothing else really interested me much. One of the best structures I've seen in a long time, though.
  • Phatage%s's Photo
    I'd love to see how that transfer track system works ;) congrats, will keep looking at this for a long while.
  • zburns999%s's Photo
    Let's see...

    Well, I'll start off by saying that your work, Kumba, is usually completely hit or miss for me. While parks like Gaelic Meadows and Roman Vice kind of fell flat, stuff like Bayfront and Dimensions: Realms of Creations were total home-runs, with the latter being one of my favorite parks ever. Fortunately, I'll place V-Key in the second group, cause, well, this was pretty damn awesome.

    I don't really know what to say about this, as it's all pretty jaw-dropping. To put it in perspective, my brother was actually looking over my shoulder as I looked through it, and he was so blown away, he asked if I would lend him my lap top so he could look through it himself. And to be honest, he usually hates all my stuff. But anyway, I guess I should start off by saying that gold was probably the best rating for this (however it is scary to think that this triumph of parkmaking is one the same release page as my paramount park haha). Usually I expect spotlights to have a lot of diversity in both rides and atmosphere. This was a bit of a one-trick pony, I guess, as it was really just the resort and the surroundings. All were done incredibly well, but I just didn't think there was enough content on enough map to be a spotlight.

    I guess I'll do Liampie's method of breaking things down here, as that seems to be the best...

    GOOD

    +Big Daddy 128. Damn, I guess I can see why some people might not like this, but woah. That's a nice design. I actually thought your Thresher coaster in RCTNW's Marine World was pretty off-the-mark, but your second attempt at a huge ass coaster really worked. For me, that entire post-drop structure really defined the park. It was really cool-looking, and in a strange way, felt realistic. I especially loved that dive off the edge of the bobsled netting into the pretzel element. Awesome. The only things I would have done differently would be to make the first ascent a lift rather than a launch, and to use premier trains rather than B&M. Oh, and as Phatage said, that transfer device had me scratching my head haha.

    +The water slides were incredible. I certainly don't know much of anything about how the game works or how to hack into it, but how you got those things to work will more than likely forever be beyond my comprehension. It was just so cool to watch the peeps slide down the Fallout and Drop-Out towers, and the Brainwash tornado slide was really something else.

    +The hotel was really incredible, from the parking garage, to the poker room, to the yoga class going on by the pool. I loved the football game on the tv, the moving cars in the garage, the sports bar with those awesome curved booths, and of course, the bungee jumping!

    +The mini golf was pretty incredible. I loved how the coaster thundered directly overhead. That would be sick to be playing mini golf with that monster flying overhead again and again.

    +The bouncing peeps in the water were classic. Such a neat idea.

    OKAY

    +- The over/under track coaster was kind of strange. It looked cool and worked perfectly, but just seemed to be missing some sort of concept. I don't know. It was such a cool idea that I felt could have been expanded upon.

    +- The go kart track was a little weird. It looked so nice, but why such an awkward layout? I'm probably missing something here.

    +- The roof of the hotel noticebly lacked the character of the rest of the park. Maybe you should have sacrificed some height so you could get the camera to allow you to see what you were building up there. The queue for Big Daddy was really lame, which is a shame because I think you could have made it awesome had you started it a few floors lower.

    MEH

    -The theater-looking thing you could see inside the hotel was pretty lackluster compared to the other things you could see inside the hotel.

    -The scale was a little bit off

    Yeah, that's about it. Really enjoyable work. Always love a release that I know I'll go back and look at more than one or two times. I got that with Robbie's Comet design, and I deffinitely will do that with this. Congrats man!

    EDIT: And I just realized that I began almost every point with saying, "[insert part of park] was incredible." Hmmmm, take it as a compliment I guess haha.

    Edited by zburns999, 11 May 2010 - 10:55 PM.

  • Kumba%s's Photo
    RamSam - Making most everything peepable was a pain, but I knew I had to do it to since I did not want to half-ass the park after all this time. Thanks! :mantis:

    Roomie - Thanks, oh and im sure there will be better parks this released this year ;)

    Posix - I still am surprised people considered this for spotlight. I though id get like a 14-15 and I would not even need to think about spotlight. It's not so much due to the size, but that this is a hotel and just has one coaster. So it is really nice to know it got a spotlight candidate score and even three yes votes! Thanks guys and thanks to you Posix for that feedback even if you did vote no, I agree, not quite there, but that was not my goal.

    Cena - lol, thanks Cena. Looking forward to anymore feedback you might have.

    Levis - Na, would have been second to 5Dave by less than a point since his was the only one with a higher score. I really did not expect Brainwash to be that complex, but in the end I was sure you would get it and was right! :nod:

    Robbie - Amazing review Robbie, you have some real writing skill! Oh and... *Comments using the word incridible count = 3* :lol:

    RCTNW - Knew people might dislike the park due to the coaster, I find it a little funny that the guy I made Thresher for is one of them, heh. IMO it is realistic. Why? Well no im not insane again, but if someone told you about Kingda Ka or X 15 years ago you might have called them crazy and said they would be unrealistic. What is realistic about BD128 is that it is a record chaser. Is the type or layout realistic? I have no idea, but it did not seem to unrealistic to me for what I considered to be a realistic park. Thanks a lot for your comments. Also idk how I forgot you on the staff list, im sure you know it was nothing personal. I'll make sure you play a key staff roll :)

    Liampie - I love how you make these +/- lists! Just on the -'s those are tables in the pool, not seats, the slide on the sports exchange is a booth and im not sure what entrance you mean, too the hotel? If so I agree, tho the only really entrance to this is off the road in front. Thanks a lot for such detailed feedback. Dolphin resort was a real inspiration for me to finish this :kumbasgreen:

    Oh and might I add that I LOVE the logo! 5Dave did it and it fitted my vision perfectly, thanks again Dave! :D

    JoeZia - Thanks Joe. Between the slide mat and custom music you were a really big help on this park. Glad to know you enjoy my work too!

    prodigy - Really? Would this have anything to do with the 11 I gave your park? Grow up.

    Jazz - Thanks Jazz. Been building anything lately? Was looking at Quest for the lost Mountain the other day and it made me wish we get to see stuff from you more often.

    Phatage - lol, I would too. I really have no idea who transfers work and really have no business making them in RCT :p

    zburns - One heck of a post, I really enjoyed reading it. Great to know someone other than myself enjoyed the coaster! I agree with most everything you said, tho want to clear a couple of things up. Yeah the layout on the karts is weird, all that is thanks to my dad's obsession with the number 28, which is a really fucked up shape for a realistic go-karts track, but I knew he'd love it. Oh and he loved seeing Alvin Dodgson Jr, the only race-car driver to ever knock him out (a.k.a. the P.I.T. maneuver) of a race without him getting him back knocked out on his track. He swears to this day if he ever sees him on the highway he'll knock him off the road, lmao! Anyways... yeah the roof being so high did lead too me being a little lazy. I almost left out the bungee jump since it took me a while to come up with a good hack for it, but lucky I did it so at least there is something sweet up there. Also my bad for making a TV with football players, but not adding them to the Jai Alai court which I guess could look like a theater. Oh and the mini golf... honestly while I see that you all seem to really like it I think I could have done better if it was not all off in a corner and I used a little more height variation. BTW since you mentioned in the AD that you have experience I made sure you had a job at Miami Mini Golf too ;)


    Thanks for all the comments guys. This park set on the back burner for a while and I might have never finished it if it was not something my dad requested I make.

    If all goes well you should be seeing quite a few more release from me in this, my "finish shit!" year :peace:
  • Ozone%s's Photo
    This was intense and I really enjoyed it. Really just a lot of fun to look over and admire. I play rct on an old laptop and it could barely handle all the scenery and peeps everywhere.
    I like how you weren't trying to be conservative at all and just went all out on this. I think Gold was the right award for this, mostly because of my preconceived notion of what "spotlight" is - a full theme park done well.

    Well done Kumba, thanks for the show.
  • zburns999%s's Photo

    BTW since you mentioned in the AD that you have experience I made sure you had a job at Miami Mini Golf too


    Oh wow, didn't even notice that until now! Haha awesome. Thanks man.
  • prodigy%s's Photo

    prodigy - Really? Would this have anything to do with the 11 I gave your park? Grow up.


    Not in the way you mean. I just think we both have a total different flavor in RCT2.
  • Luketh%s's Photo
    Just got to check out this park, and WOW, I love it.

    The way that every ride was peepable was just AWESOME, I'm glad you spent the extra time to do that, because it adds so much to the atmosphere. I also love the way you put pretty much everybody on the forums into the park, I like that little touch, it gives everybody that lil' smile. (I'm a panda..?)

    Great job, really fun to watch, but the red and yellow coaster with the suspended train and the side-friction train (forgot the name) blew up pretty shortly after I opened the park... Did this happen to anybody else, or just me?
  • hulkpower25%s's Photo
    hey Kumba, The work on all the rides is more than amazing, there is no word for all the detail on the park. you deserve the the spotlight.