Amusement Park Rides

Name of Model: Amusement parks and buildings

Created by: kwycstix

Found at: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=240036

Details: Amusement Park Rides present interesting building challenges. It can be very hard to build these large machines at minifig-scale. The few official models in this theme are all in microscale or done without rides. The parts demands are often too expensive for builders to finish a model - online searches turn up tons of plans for rides and buildings done in CAD software but never actually built. This particular set features a building and no less than four rides done in minifig scale - and as a bonus, one ride in microscale. The first stunner in this set is a minifig-scale Ferris Wheel that looks like it really works. X-pods are used as the cars - simplifying the design issue of holding the weight of more complicated chair mechanisms. The colors are nice too - normally a simple color scheme makes more sense, but the bright colors are visually attractive and also hide the problem of getting enough of certain parts in certain colors. A sturdy platform and other necessary ground-level details are well fleshed out as well, making this model detailed enough to add to any town layout around too. A small roller coaster is another standout in this layout - and this one did clearly take a very large amount of time and special parts. The one-seater cars aren't able to move on their own, but they look detailed enough sitting on the track - which is made of pneumatic tubing. The pneumatic tubing is cut into very small sections (I do NOT recommend trying this at home) and then held parallel between pneumatic-T-tubing-connector pieces. Those pieces used to be obscure, but they're increasingly used for details in a variety of LEGO® models. Combined with well-placed Technic axles, 2x2 round bricks and a variety of special parts for details, this makes for a very convincing roller-coaster track effect. Of course, the extra car and queue kiosk round things out brilliantly as well. There are two other exciting minifig-scale rides and a building (it looks to me like it houses a set of bumper cars) in the gallery above too.