Alpine Village - Mountains & Castles

One of the most popular lands at Wonder World was Alpine Village. This colorful land featured quaint shops and eateries, and was the home to three major attractions...The Rumbling Ridge Bobsleds, The Wizard's Castle, and the Seven Seas Boat Cruise. Whereas I has created one custom scenery set each for Circus Center and Expo 3000, it took three large scenery sets to re-create Alpine Village to be as true to the model as possible.

The Park Inspector welcomes guests to the newly refurbished Alpine Village.

Professor Fate's House of Fun

What is the "history" of Circus Center, you might ask? Well, it's only rumor, but from what I've heard, it all goes back to a strange and mysterious character named Professor Fate. Who was Prof. Fate? Well, supposedly, he was a showman, a world traveler, and most notoriously, a compulsive gambler. And as luck would have it, a very good gambler, who won a fortune over his lifetime. With his winnings, he built Circus Center, and also, a large manor in which to live. He flippantly called it his House of Fun. But it soon would become anything but "fun".

Well, as the story goes, shortly after returning from a trip to Egypt to visit the pyramids and the tombs of the pharoahs, he was found dead. Whether by natural causes or foul play, no one ever knew. Soon, more rumors spread about a fortune in treasure, hidden deep within the walls of his manor. Other, more sinister rumors spread about secret dungeons and strange noises coming from within Fate's "House of Fun". And so, the residents of Circus Center decided what better than to open up Fate's manor to the public, as another attraction for guests to explore...and hopefully, survive.

A view of Circus Center, with Fate's House of Fun looming in the background.

Circus Center at Wonder World

The original Circus Center suffered greatly from the lack of custom scenery. There was no way to create circus tents with the scenery that came with the game. So once I learned how to create and import my own custom scenery, it became quite clear that I would have to re-build the land from the ground up, unlike Expo 3000, which was only augmented with custom scenery. You can see the huge improvements made by checking out how Circus Center originally looked in the article, "Wonder World...The Story Begins." Circus Center would eventually double in size, but in this article, we'll take a tour of the Circus Center before the expansion.

The Circus Center entrance. To the left is a small snack stand.

 

War of the Worlds comes to Expo 3000

The War of the Worlds (WotW) attraction was the most ambitious project to date to be built for Wonder World. It was located in the new expansion to Expo 3000 which I showcased in the previous article. This attraction was never actually a part of the original scale model of Wonder World, built many years before. In the model, this massive indoor dark ride was originally called World of the Future. I never really had any master plan for what specifically the ride would be, other than slow-moving vehicles that would take guests through futuristic environments. This would have been very difficult to create in RCT3 at the time, especially since I had used most of the futuristic game scenery for the Expo 3000 Space Port. And my skills at creating custom scenery were not quite up to the task at that time.

The War of the Worlds building with the Super-Sounds Bandstand in the foreground.

Expo 3000 - The Expansion

One of the biggest additions to Wonder World was the expansion of Expo 3000. The star attraction to this new area was the War of the Worlds, a multimillion dollar dark ride taking guests on a harrowing journey through a devastating invasion by aliens from another world. This new area was nicknamed War of the Worlds (WotW) Plaza, although none of the other attractions had any relation to that theme. But because the massive WotW show building dominated the area, the name seemed appropriate. This article will take you on a tour of the new area, but I'll be saving the WotW ride for its own exclusive article.

When designing the new area, (and this goes back to the original model) a large, elevated walkway needed to be built to "attach" the new area to the existing land. This was because the entire right side of Expo 3000 was "boxed in" by the Auto Raceway and the Loop Coaster from Circus Center. The walkway created better traffic flow, as well as uniting the two areas. Without it, the WotW Plaza would have been to isolated and would seem to be a separate land instead of an expansion of the existing land.

To the left, you can see the elevated (and not very attractive) walkway which takes guests over the Auto Raceway and Loop Coaster into the new expanded area of Expo 3000. While far from an ideal solution, my goal was to re-create my Wonder World model as closely as possible...warts and all.