(Written by Geneva – gid617)
If you read my previous articles in this series, you know that I have been working on several LEGO amusement park mash-up projects by combining sets from different themes (see links at the end of this post). So far, we discussed mixing sets from LEGO Friends and LEGO Ninjago, LEGO Creator and LEGO City Space Exploration, and another LEGO Friends set with a LEGO Marvel Super Heroes set. Everything was going well, until we ran into some problems trying to combine the rollers coaster tracks from the #10771 LEGO Toy Story 4 Carnival Thrill Coaster and the #41456 LEGO Unikitty Unikingdom Fairground Fun, which we talked about in the last post. And now will be adding the #70830 LEGO Movie 2 Sweet Mayhem’s Systar Starship!
The first step was working all the kinks out of the track itself, which we covered last time. Simultaneously, I tweaked the starship to make sure it could handle the difficult track. Please note that, unlike with my previous mash-ups, this time I used a generous amount of pieces from my own collection. A few minifigures from #60234 LEGO City People Pack – Fun Fair were also added as well to enjoy the ride.
After I got the starship onto the tracks (more on that task in a minute), I started adding some details. The printed 2x1x5 bricks on the sides of the entryway are from the #10771 LEGO Toy Story 4 Carnival Thrill Coaster as they instantly grabbed my attention! And who can resist the cute little star and heart?
Inside the rails, there are a few little builds for the coaster passengers to interact with. Sweet Mayhem is looking ferociously ready to attack, and lavender and dark pink made for a fun and uniquely colored planet.
I struggled some with the boarding platform, and in the end I went with a pretty basic design. The control box is simple, but was an enjoyable detail to create.
When I first built the starship and compared it to the tracks, I wondered if it wouldn’t be too heavy to ride. So, I stripped it of non-essential pieces and later added four seats for passengers.
Because the starship is heavy, it tends to keep itself on track over the gap. But during the rest of the ride it wobbles a little. It’s better to guide rather than push the starship along the track.
I found that pushing the starship down the coast sometimes derailed it, but it stays on track if you just let it roll.
On the bottom of the original starship was a disc-shooter. I took that off so I would have space for a roller coaster car. At this point, I had to be careful that the starship was high enough compared to the car that it could still make the turns and inclines.
As I’ve already mentioned, I changed the inside considerably, mostly for weight reasons. The original starship had four compartments; driver’s seat in front, passenger seat on the right, a screen room on the left, and an area for the sticker roll at the back. By taking out the partitions, I created a nice open space that fits four seats easily.
One other idea I experimented with was keeping the starship stationary and having coaster cars roll through it. However, once I cleared the inside and attached a track, there was barely space for the cars themselves and no room for a sitting minifigure. So, I went back to my original idea and was able to keep the starship intact and recognizable – although it is a little oversized compared to the track.
And that’s all for now. Next time, we will combine all the rides built so far in this series, so stay tuned. What do you think? Does the starship go well with the purple rails in you opinion? Have you ever built a moving creation where you had to be careful about the weight you were adding? Do you like the oversized ride or would you have tried something different? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below!
And you might also like to check out the following related posts:
I’ amazed that it doesn’t fall off the track. How does that work? Like what are the dynamics of keeping something so oversized on the tracks?
Well, the pre-fabricated cars have a good grip on the rails. As I mentioned, this wobbles, but since the weight is top down it doesn’t fall off unless it gets pushed one way or the other fairly hard. Also, the center of gravity is fairly low. For a sturdier ride, having more weight directly above the car (unlike here, where the starship is a hollow shell) would probably keep the center of gravity even lower and make it more stable.
Are those decorated pieces printed or stickers? They look nice. I love all the bright colors and creativity. Keep them coming!
The pieces on the little arch are all printed, but the magenta lines on the starship’s fins are stickers. Those 2×1 pieces that are five bricks high are really nicely printed!
You should build a whole theme park with these crazy rides. I liked your idea of having the roller coaster go through the starship. Too bad it didn’t work out.
Actually, a theme park is where we’re going! 😉
This reminds me of the old monorail. If you would make the coaster tracks longer and build a space station inside the loop, the starship wouldn’t look oversized at all. Now I want you to do it! 😀
Yeah, it would be totally cool to build a little space colony around this! 😀
On the monorail topic, you should build the monorail that goes around Walt Disney World. Combine that with the Disney Castle and the Disney Train station and it could look epic!
All the colors work great together. This must be a very special and expensive ride if it can fit only one minifig! 😀 It would be cool to combine maybe 3 spaceships and put it on a longer track. 😀
That would be expensive! 😉 I did manage to get four seats in there though, and with some squeezing I think you could put in a few more. Three spaceships would be wild! Might have trouble taking the curves. 😆
I wonder if you could make the tracks vertical and have the starship installed as a drop. That might be another cool way to use it.
Hmm, that’s a really neat idea. It’d take a lot of stairs to get to the top of the ride though!
Hmmm, looks pretty sweet. On the minus side, you’d need to practice on spelling “simultaneously”, though…
hahahaha I would have to agree. 😛 LOL it actually wasn’t my fault and it cracked me up when I saw it. 😆
Okay, I see. I try not to be too nitpicky on spelling errors and typos, otherwise, but now there were three errors in a fourteen letter word, as well as it being in a featured article insted of a comment post, so it came across a little sloppy…
It was probably my fault not noticing that. Interestingly, the spell checker didn’t catch it. There is always more than one way to spell things! 😀
The possibilities are limitless!
Ha-ha! They has been studies done that our brain can still understand words and sentences even if some of the letters are missed up or even missing. Kids today only use abbreviations and smileys and they are totally fine understanding each other. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the future we will be back to how the Egyptians wrote using symbols and pictures. 😀
Apparently, there’s never been a functional writing system without any phonetic aspect to it. All of the known pictographic and symbolic writing systems have been rather basic and limited, from what I have read.
(There’s a phonetic aspect to Chinese characters, Japanese has a mixed system with purely phonetic characters used for words such as onomatopoeia and loanwords, and Egyptian hieroglyphics was a mixed system, as well.)
I was thinking the other day that it may be going back and forth. Phonetic turns hieroglyph, then when the meaning gets lost due to the rise and fall of civilizations, it becomes more phonetic again. Just a thought. 🙂
It’s fun to read some of the books written in English before dictionaries were a thing. Very crazy spelling sometimes but it usually makes sense!
I actually read digitized books sometimes too, and I’m surprised how after about five minutes it becomes really easy to skip over the very frequent and glaring errors that show up. At first it’s extremely annoying though and I always feel like it might have a bad impact on my editing skills. 😛
I was thinking of having the monsters from Monster Fighters co-exist with the city and not be hunted down by the monster fighters. The city people get used to having monsters around and become neighbors . I guess because I like the monsters, maybe they can help fight the possessed Goblin and ghouls from Hidden Side theme. Any thoughts? Admin it would be nice to hear your comments on the concept.
Hm… that’s an interesting idea. I like the Monster Fighters monsters too. The monsters may have special skills/technology to help the possessed characters from Hidden Side. It would be nice to combine all of them for Halloween! 😈
Ah, yeah, and then there would be monsters from the CMF series, as well. Possibly Scooby Doo and other themes in addition, at least if you’re flexible with your definition of “monster”.
Oh, yes, those would be a great addition too! 😀
It could be pretty funny if the people were in the minority. 😆
Yeah, you’d need to work on your backstory to have a functional lore, though. The monsters cannot be ‘too’ hostile, or else the people would soon be missing altogether…