Hey everyone!

I'm looking to create a real "shore" experience for my sims. I wanted them to own shore homes that they can visit during the summer.

My debate is if I should use a shopping district or a vacation neighborhood to create my town.

In the shopping district I would use community lots for the homes and I would also have the option of having residents. However, I could use the vacation neighborhoods and build actual vacation homes. I wasn't sure which one would be more realistic.

You're advice/ideas are GREATLY appreciated

If anyone knows how to put a vacation home in a regular neighborhood, please let me know. That would solve my problem

Vacation homes are simply houses bought from via phone or computer for your Sims to live in when they go on a vacation. However, Sims cannot live in a vacation 'hood, young Sims won't go to school, old Sims won't go to work, you can't have babies, it costs money, and you have to constantly go back and forth. Sims can, however, live in a shopping district, so I would go with a shopping district. If you want it too really have an island-y feel to it, when picking terrain, pick the Twikki Island terrain (it will have Twikki Island in the title).

If you want your Sims to go to the place for a vacation, then choose a vacation 'hood, so you can go on a vacation, tourist attractions, you don't permanently live there... Just depends on your Sims living arrangements.

So pick Shopping District if you want your Sims to live there year round.

Pick Vacation 'Hood if you want your Sims to live there only temporarily.

yes, yes
I was just trying to see what everyone thought as being more realistic or preferable to use

I would use Vacation because I don't use shopping district or Downtown in my hood. My hood is big enough to fit all that there, so no extra loading screens! I like Vacation and would remodel all and add more if I had the time and commitment.

If you want them to own shore homes, vacation homes will do the job.

Depends on what you want.

I mean, I myself, like lazzybum, use a custom mega big neighborhood, so i rarely use downtown or the shopping districts. They are still there, but I use them more of like the "suburbs" or something else. After all, everything that can be put in Downtown and the Shopping District can be put in your city. In fact I once made the shopping district a country town and the downtown a VIP district.

But, since you said you wanted shore homes for your sims to "visit", the realistic way of doing it is using the vacaction neighborhood. I mean, you don't want to go on summer to a beach house only to wake up at 7 am and get the "The carpool will arrive in 1 hour" pop up

I'm creating a shore town too (well so far it's only in my mind :D) and finally decided to make it a downtown and a vacation hood both because I couldn't decide. I grew up 45 minutes from the shore so the boardwalk/strip was always a favorite place to go hangout and we vacationed there as a family too so I want my sims to be able to do the same. I haven't even created my neighborhood template yet but I plan on having them be almost exact duplicates of each other except for little differences like the secret lot and the hotels and motels in my vacation hood will be zoned as apartments in the downtown hood.