Guidance on transportation rides needed

[marcnesiumHH]

Hey guys,
has anyone of you managed to establish a economically successful transportation ride like the boat tour or steam train?
I have tried it myself, I have watched several streamers building a ride and talked to other people in the stream chats.
No one has been able to build a ride, which is also profitable. Even if the guests line up for 15-20 meters and/ or by raising ticket prices.

The career episodes I played haven't also been of any help. The rides in the career episodes also have a large annual deficit.
I really would love to have a boat ride in my park, but I cannot afford a loss.

Any successful stories and design guidance?

 

[EvolGrinZ]

I build one and was running at a loss and never been able to figure out where to change the ticket prices for the ride.
My zoo is making plenty profit though, so I just keep it as a service for my guests.

 

[marcnesiumHH]

I build one and was running at a loss and never been able to figure out where to change the ticket prices for the ride.
My zoo is making plenty profit though, so I just keep it as a service for my guests.

What type of transportation ride is it? Is its route going through several habitats?

 

[Bobble2017]

You change the ticket price for the rides at each station , you have to click on station 1.2.3 etc and change it at the menu for each one , and you can also change how long the trains stays at each station as well and how full they have to be before they leave

 

[Jileha]

I had the gondola across several larger savannah habitats. Losses for a long time, but I could afford them. Until I noticed with surprise that I actually was making a profit. I didn’t change anything in between, it just took a fair amount of time.

Maybe only a certain percentage of guests will use a specific ride and you need a certain number of guests in your zoo before you get enough passengers to break even or make a profit.

 

[marcnesiumHH]

I had the gondola across several larger savannah habitats. Losses for a long time, but I could afford them. Until I noticed with surprise that I actually was making a profit. I didn’t change anything in between, it just took a fair amount of time.

Maybe only a certain percentage of guests will use a specific ride and you need a certain number of guests in your zoo before you get enough passengers to break even or make a profit.

Can you guess or remember how many total visitors you had at the time when it reached the profit zone?

 

[Jileha]

Can you guess or remember how many total visitors you had at the time when it reached the profit zone?

I’m afraid not. Maybe above 3000.

 

[EvolGrinZ]

What type of transportation ride is it? Is its route going through several habitats?

It's a Gondola ride and I have it run over all my exhibits.

You change the ticket price for the rides at each station , you have to click on station 1.2.3 etc and change it at the menu for each one , and you can also change how long the trains stays at each station as well and how full they have to be before they leave

I clicked the station and checked every tab, all I can change is the color, the amount of gondola's, max speed and loop type.
When I click the ticket booth, there are no tabs or options whatsoever.

 

[Cocolori]

My gondola ride for scenario 8 or 9 (the one that you have to build) started making a profit. I had 3 stations and about 10 cars and my ticket price was about £4. It took a little while and I noticed it only worked if they wanted to use it for transport (initially I had nothing interesting on the other side). It was back in the red by the end because it wasn't really useful to get to my panda. Also, ignore the projected profit for a bit, that is based on how many guests are getting on so it's not useful as long term forecast as the guest numbers expand. More cars mean much higher running costs so efficiency also seems to be important.

 

[EvolGrinZ]

Oh I just watched a tour ride guide from PaulsLey and learned you need to click on the station name in the 1st tab to open the actual station.
I now found the settings I was looking for.

 

[marcnesiumHH]

Many thanks for your feedback so far! My initial post already reflected the possibility to adjust prices (for each station). Last time I tried the Safari tour, waiting lines were full, and visitors could travel from the entrance to the middle of the map ("end" of my zoo at this point"). I had 6k visitors in total but an annual loss of 10k.
It's still hard to figure out the sucess parameters and ingame parameters like total visitors, habitats passed during the ride etc.

 

[Arletario]

I haven't tried the gondola ride yet, but I built a monorail ride in my biggest franchise zoo.
The track was diamond-shaped with 4 stations: center bottom - zoo entrance, right side - enclosures with "water-based" animals such as hippos, center top - huge area with shops, left side - large African habitats. I built the ride when my zoo had about 2500-3000 guests. I ran it with 15 cars - it made a profit of $ 1500, though the monorail crossed only 2 or 3 habitats in the middle. It was just a way to get around the zoo faster. Before this savegame got corrupted I had 25 cars on it with over 8,000 total guests in the zoo and it made about $ 5,000 profit because I also increased the ticket prices.

 

[Tim bo]

My simple track ride with one station through one habitat in a small zoo is making a tidy profit. I kept getting visitor thoughts about how cheap they thought the ride prices were. I kept on bumping up the prices till their thoughts started saying they thought the prices were fair.

It makes lots of money.

A larger ride would make more.

 

[marcnesiumHH]

I ran it with 15 cars - it made a profit of $ 1500, though the monorail crossed only 2 or 3 habitats in the middle.

This sounds awesome - my best guess is that the amount of different habitats to see triggered the surplus. I feel sorry that you lost ur save

 

[Arletario]

I'm not sure if it works that way - at least for the monorail. I have checked many of the guests' thoughts about the ride and no one had mentioned a good visibility or a specific animal species, something like that.

The thoughts of the guests in a nutshell:
Queueing for: monorail to Elephant habitat, to Hippo habitat, to Giraffe habitat, to Chief Beef, to Toilet Block, to go home

It was just a quick link between points of high interest. So my advice would be: check where most of the guests are in your zoo and connect those points with a transport ride.

 

[marcnesiumHH]

I'm not sure if it works that way - at least for the monorail. I have checked many of the guests' thoughts about the ride and no one had mentioned a good visibility or a specific animal species, something like that.

The thoughts of the guests in a nutshell:
Queueing for: monorail to Elephant habitat, to Hippo habitat, to Giraffe habitat, to Chief Beef, to Toilet Block, to go home

It was just a quick link between points of high interest. So my advice would be: check where most of the guests are in your zoo and connect those points with a transport ride.

that's interesting. maybe not only the visuals differ between the different rides but also their function. Because, regarding the Jeep Tour, the thoughts were like "nothing interesting to see" (just passing three habitats und going through one". Maybe the monorail has the main funtion just to connect like in IRL not the main function to have an enjoyable ride. But it's just a guess. That's why more ingame guidance would be helpful.

 

[Arletario]

Generally there are two types of guests. You can check the Guest Status in their information screen. I built a quick and dirty adventure tour in a sandbox zoo with one habitat.


The first group of guests in the queue even uses the AT ride as a transport system to the second station of the ride to visit the habitat.



The second group of guests is queueing up for the Adventure Tour itself through that habitat. These people are looking for a good view at the animals. It would be interesting to know how these groups are split up on the different rides, but I haven't done that indepth research yet. In my experience with Franchise Zoos, way more people are using the monorail as a transportation system, but there are also a few queueing for the ride itself. The adventure tour is rather the opposite - many people for the ride itself, yet a few for transportation.

Anyways - to build a successful ride, it is always helpful to place at least a 2nd station next to a point of interest. I see a lot of rides with only one station on Youtube videos, but this excludes all transport guests, which means less profit. Some of the guests are using the rides pretty intensively. They leave the ride, visit 1 Habitat, get back on the ride to get to the food court - and they pay for it every single time.

 

[marcnesiumHH]

Thanks for the insights!
I will experiment a bit for myself. But I am playing franchise and I am afraid that a ride makes my save even more laggy. But if you find out more yourself please let us/ me know.