*waves*

Hello!

In Bon Voyage, we only got three kinds of destinations. A tropical island, a mountain retreat, and an Asian-inspired location. Obviously, in real life, there's so many more places to visit and explore than just those three locales! And, considering there have really not been very many custom vacation 'hoods created, I was wondering what other people would want in one. I'd be interested in building a new vacation 'hood, but I've no idea what kind of place to take my inspiration from.

Do you want your Sims to visit Africa? Or the moon? Where do you want to send your Sims on vacation?

Taking a riff off of Winter Wonderland - a ski resort. They could have skiing and ski boards, as well as the ice skating that's already in the game.

I've often thought an African inspired holiday hood or a theme park type hood would be great. I've used my own water park and some other lots in a put together custom hood, but it pretty much just a toss in of a few lots. Skiing is another one I've thought of but of course sims can't ski, it would take a modder with some skill to achieve something close to it.

SOUTH Africa. (Since I live here) - with a game reserve and game drives for visitors AND the big five. And a beach where the summer lasts until the end of the vacation.

Skiing would be fun, if a modder ever decided to make it happen... Though, perhaps just a bunch of resorts in a mountain region with long winters could be almost the same. Something along the lines of if Aspen and Napa Valley had a baby together could be nice.
A theme park would be fun, too. Ah, darn, now I'm thinking of Jurassic Park... ahahah. That would be fun until people started getting nommed, lol. I have thought of creating Isla Nublar as a TS2 'hood, though. I'm a total nerd for that franchise, so... hm. Maybe someday.

Oh, Petro, that sounds nice! I'm not a fan of game hunting, but obviously that's a big thing over there. May I ask what's the "big five" is? I haven't heard of that before.

All these ideas are really great so far. Keep 'em coming! c: I'm already feeling my creative juices flowing more after reading these posts.

Game drives are very popular and hunting is not essential You can just go and look at the animals, not all game farms are hunting farms and you will not be allowed to hunt in the game reserves.
The big five : the African lion, the African elephant, the Cape buffalo, the African leopard and the rhino (black and white species).

I believe skiing could be done along the same lines as the surfing mod, but it would require an NPC. Also someone to take it on.

Yes by African I meant more drive out to see animals not hunt them. I think it's really wrong to hunt animals purely for sport.

Some other place that would be lovely are London with Big Ben, Paris with the Eiffel Tower or Rome.

You could do that with the mountain retreat area easily if you have seasons - just set it to permawinter.

Ooh, I see. I'm used to the term "game" meaning... well, animals that get hunted, really. That's generally how it's used here in the U.S., at least from what I've heard. So it's kinda like a safari, in a sense? Go out and look at the beauty of nature? That sounds awesome, honestly. If I wasn't a wimp, I'd go on one of those!

Jo, I completely agree. I get upset having to cook meat (I'm not vegetarian, I realize as a species we need meat in our diets since we're omnivores, but I still feel bad about it), because I mean... It sucks. No living thing should be forced to a life in confinement.

Going off of this, perhaps you could go all "Nightmare Before Christmas" and have a vacation hood that is all Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa all the time. You could do one for Halloween, or Easter, or any other Holiday as well.

I'd like a deep jungle vacation - like visiting the rainforest. Heavily forested lots and neighborhood decorations, vine-crept walls.. Old, abandoned jungle shacks for vacation accommodations. Ahh, how pleasant! For lack of a better example, the cast away stories have good lots.

I'd also love a desert kind of destination. We have mountain, Asian and tropical. But what about the desert? Or somewhere like Mesa verde, in Colorado?

The skiing thing could be made out like the tour option - where you can go on the glass bottom boat, you know?

I want to see sims put on skis and actually ski. Tobogganing as well, especially for kids.

Deep jungle could be combined with African and survival.

Urban.

No, seriously, we're really rural. For a good vacation, we get a hotel in the city, park the car in the parking garage, take the bus everywhere. We go to ALL the museums, the zoo, the Churches, all the cool little restaurants that we can find. When we did New York and DC we took the subways, which was really fun.

So the exact opposite of Three Lakes. Because, you know, the difference between Three Lakes and home is pretty much that sims don't ring up their neighbor "Hey, your livestock's in my yard," and that's only because the cc livestock stays on its own lot! (Is very amused at the talk about confining livestock. The big problem is keeping them confined so the wildlife doesn't eat them! Because cougars look at my chickens and the neighbor's goats and think, mmm, appetizer and main course, and I'll have a dog or housecat for desert! And there are wolves within a hundred miles of us, now, confirmed, which is a nice stroll for a wolf, so we're going to have to up our precautions. Then there are the hawks and the skunks. Over, under, through.) Totally different worlds, urban and rural.


Theme park vacation destination would be cool. So would a cruise ship. Use the lot adjuster and half a dozen lots against each other so the whole thing looks like a ship from the neighborhood.

I actually have been building both a winter wonderland and a moon-base vacation hood. I had a few lots done but haven't had the time or interest to get back to it. Perhaps when I'm less busy with work but I've been focused on making over Academie Le Tour lately!

Holiday-themed 'hoods and a Castaways-esque one would be very interesting to see, indeed. A cruise ship sounds really cool, too!

Sunbee, I'm actually working on a NYC-ish urban city right now. Well, not right now. Brilliant me forgot to copy over my neighborhood files before going on vacation, so it'll be another 2 weeks before I get to touch that 'hood again. Though, I might just build a couple lots anyways and transfer them when I get back. Anyways, point is, once it's finished, I wouldn't mind making a vacation version of it.

Conversesneaker, let me know when your moon-base 'hood is done. I'm too nerdy to pass that up. Are you going to be uploading your Academie le Tour makeover anywhere? I love university makeovers, but I haven't seen any of them up for download before.

I think a vacation destination based on one of the poles (North Pole or South Pole) would be cool...

(I was working on a Castaway-themed vacation subhood but I lost it because of a mistake... It was also a recreation of Felicity Island from The Sims Castaway Stories.)

Seconding the need for arctic vacations! I have a sim that has a grandma that lives in rural Norway, I can just pass it off as that, lol. It could also double as a skiing resort.

Not a hunter myself, it is one of the biggest industries where I live, and leads to job creation and revenue that can only be compared to mining (tourism industry) - and hunting does not destroy the environment, and hunting farms still have clean water here which you can drink out of the river. So I think a hunting farm could also be somewhere in a vacation destination. Sims can hunt, with middle ages, can't they?

The animals are not confined - the hunting farms and the game farms (and of course there are breeding farms which breed game and sell to the hunting farms too) are enormous. Everything is left natural.

Some pics for you of game farms close to where I live :
a waterfall

leopards coming to drink water at the river

overview of the lodge and part of the grounds

and on your birthday, you can dance with the Venda women dancers too

Those leopards look like they're cheet(ah)ing.

There is permawinter and skiing already made. The only problem is that to get it you have to download Chris Hatch's 'EP'.

True - they are cheetahs

A leopard for Charity :

I'm wondering if there's any way to adapt one of the existing vacation themes into something like an African safari. Either Tropical or Far East might be a good fit for that idea, but Mountain's probably not the best choice.

There's surely plenty which you can do with each of the three, though. Hoar Mountain (my custom Mountain subhood) is based on the various base camps, sherpa villages and shantytowns found around the foot of Mount Everest, all those little Everest-based communities (along with their local microeconomy) where mountain climbers can train, acclimate, gather supplies and prepare themselves to tackle the summit. After building Hoar Mountain, I also thought of building a Mountain subhood based on Antarctica...not so much the real Antarctica (which, as is, is still the most mysterious of the seven continents) as the Antarctica depicted in various works of fictional film and literature, the super-mysterious Antarctica where all the crashed alien artifacts, hidden supervillain bases, Hollow Earth civilizations nestled under miles of solid ice and all sorts of other paranormal weirdness can be found. So I reckon that a subhood like that would be something like "Antarctica meets Strangetown". I might get around to playing with that idea sooner or later.