Help with Guests

[PixelFlorist]

I'm having my first go at a proper Franchise zoo today (I haven't actually tried building a fully fledged, decorated, carefully planned zoo), and am having trouble with guests. I'm trying to keep the exhibits close together so that the walking distance for guests isn't too far, and I feel like I'm doing ok with it. However, guests tend to stop at odd places around my exhibits, and are saying the view is really bad, even though I can clearly see the animals they can't. My restaurants and info booths hardly ever get used, and I'm starting to wonder why I keep staff employed if no one seems to want to eat or buy anything. So my questions are:

1) How do you keep guests happy with the view?

2) is there a way to coax guests to use food/ info/ souvenir stands? I don't have them decorated at all- I want to make sure they're in a good spot before I spend money to decorate them.

3) is there a way to get guests to go to a certain spot at your enclosures? I have wide patches of my barriers made of glass, and I keep getting reviews that the view is horrible. Is the trick to keep 1-2 small viewing spots in each enclosure?

Thank you for any help!

 

[Vayman]

What I noticed with the food stands is that if the zoo is still fairly new - and thus likely small - the guests aren't in the zoo long enough to get hungry. What I did different from beta this time around was to bring up the heat maps for hunger and thirst every now and again. Once I started seeing a good bulk of guests appearing as "orange" on the heat map, I dropped in a stand.

Going from there, I kept an eye on the demand of those stalls. I saw a souvenir shop with low demand so I just moved it to the other side of the park. For some reason, it did better there. Had it not, I likely would have dropped prices or cut it altogether. So I guess just experimenting around was key in this instance.

As far as guests and their views of the habitats, I haven't looked into that very much. I may have that problem as well. Next time I play, I'll see if I can get any intel on that. I normally open up as much of a habitat as the animals will tolerate. Aardvarks barely wanted to be looked at. My African wild dogs don't mind the wide open view. All things being equal, you can try closing off the barriers to drive traffic to where you prefer.

Let us know how you progress. I think we're all still learning the little details.

 

[PixelFlorist]

Thank you! I am thinking I might just go ahead and decorate, and see if the fancier view improves how guests feel about things. My zoo is still very small, I usually have 200 or so guests at a time, so definitely a long way to go. I do have 1 way glass on all my exhibits, just to be on the safe side and keep my animals as calm as possible.

Thank you for your excellent advice!

 

[aberdonian]

What I worked out was, for some reason until you have 3/4 Habitats guests won’t go near food or drink. But then as soon as you do, there is constant queues.

With the viewing issue, exact same happens with mine. I built a big viewing platform over my zebra and giraffe enclosure, and guests stopped half way up the ramp to it saying the view was ok. I made the barrier the brick wall so you could only see over the viewing platform and they all charged up and seemed to work. I guess the guests AI is just set to anywhere that they will get line of sight they will stop, even if it isn’t the best view possible