Ask the Experts / Invisible River Rafts Track

Background: I'm running Windows 7, 8-cars 1.302 (mostly), in an NCSO park.

I'm having trouble with a hack. I'd like to put some river rafts in a small park I'm making, but I want them to go faster than 2mph. So I put the vehicles on coaster track with a chain, which brings it up to 5pmh (much better). I can get the vehicles going on this track to complete the circuit, but I can't get the track invisible. I've tried several different kinds of coaster track and three different methods for getting the rafts onto the track. I'll discuss them in the order I tried them.

First, I tried the dummy station trick. At first, I was using mini coaster track, but I've also tried water coaster and looping coaster track with exactly the same issue. The rafts load onto the coaster track fine and complete the full circuit. I wait for them all to stop. Then I go into 8 cars and make the raft (donor) track invisible by switching it to crooked house. It works fine. Then I make the coaster track invisible the same way. I get an error trap.

Thing is, I tried this exact same method in a different park using Jungle Boats and Junior Coaster track (neither are available on this bench, and ParkDat is disallowed) and it worked beautifully.

Plan B was to do a simple track merge like you would to, say, get an immelman onto a dive machine. I did it with MOM (because windows 7) if that makes a difference. I tested it and it worked fine. Made the raft track invisible as a crooked house, fine. Made the roller coaster track invisible, and another error trap.

I anticipated an error, so I reloaded both plan A and plan B in compatibility mode, and this time opened 8-cars 1.32 instead. Typically, the "make track invisible" button has been non-functional for me, but I thought it might work this time. It just did nothing.

Plan C is to just change the vehicle type on a coaster to be the rafts. But that causes a bunch of reliability issues that I'd rather not deal with.

Any ideas, guys?

I'm not that much of a hacker, but if you have time and patience, then geewhzz invisible hut hack is also an option, since you can make nearly everything invisible with that.

It's only an option if checking "make invisible" in 8-cars 1.32 works on your machine. It doesn't work on mine.

I'm running XP, maybe someone with win 7 can help you though, i thought geewhzz inv. hut hack also worked with win 7, but maybe i'm mistaking.

The geewhzz invisible hack works on my PC and I run windows 7. Make sure you run 8cars with the same compatibility mode as you run with RCT.

That being said.. surely there is an easier way to make track invisible in windows 7, right..?

The geewhzz invisible hack works on my PC and I run windows 7. Make sure you run 8cars with the same compatibility mode as you run with RCT.

No luck, unfortunately.

That being said.. surely there is an easier way to make track invisible in windows 7, right..?

Usually my first plan works. For some reason, it's not working with rafts.

I just use the old "Crooked House" hack (change track type to crooked house) with a river rapids merged on to it but sometimes this doesn't like more complicated tracks or track pieces, especially large turns, banks, or helixes (sometimes s bends) but applying chain lift everywhere may have screwed with that. Again, I run Windows 7 with RCT2 & 8cars in XP mode (SP3) so some of these may be your problem. I've achieved it before using a looping coaster track, that one seems to work well

Give it a go, and hopefully it works for you

Well I don't have any banks or helices and I am using looping track currently, and it still doesn't like it. I do have large turns and diagonal pieces though. I'll try a few other things tonight, but if all else fails, I'm just going to use water coaster boats instead. It's a shame the rafts aren't more versatile.