Scenery ratings for both the queue, and track, does seem to effect popularity, and it definitely allows you to charge more for the ride.
I have seen guest thoughts relating to the "looks" of things, including "That's ugly" regarding an undecorated ATM. They generally are not what pop up in a coasters info panel though. You need to look at Peep thoughts in their info panel.
Yeah, I do a LOT of "opinion polls" and also check what rides they've been on already and where they're spending their money. When a ride is very new, I watch the exiting customers mostly to see what they thought about it. Once it's been running a month or 2, I pay more attention to those in the queue. I'm especially curious about those who walk up to the entrance then walk away without riding. I want to know what changed their minds. It's always "the queue is too long", never "this ride is so ugly I can't bear to ride it". And different customers have different tolerances for line length. Some will bail with hardly anybody in line, others only if the queue is totally full back to the main path. The moral of the story is, you can't please everybody.
But back to scenery in general. I've been doing a lot of sandbox lately with zero decorations at all. Just using stock rides and shops plus a few bare naked coasters I make myself. From this it appears that a good mix of rides appealing to all audiences, good housekeeping, and plenty of benches trumps everything else. In the park overview, overall guest happiness is always 80-90% and the top comments are complimentary, mostly saying how great the park or certain rides are. Also mixed in with the top comments are that the park could use more decoration but this doesn't seem to have any significant impact on overall reception of the park. Such parks still rake in the money with all prices left at default, including free park entry, toilets, and ATMs.
In other experiments, I've added just a few trees and rocks around rides, getting scenery values up to 20-30%. Just that little bit virtually eliminates complaints about lack of scenery and also starts getting some comments about how nice the park looks. So to me, going fairly minimalist on decorations seems to be all you need at most, and arguably you don't even need that. Which is a good thing IMHO because I'm not an artist or architect and have very little interest in spending a lot of time pimping out my rides. Besides, decoration carries high computing overhead, what with collision-checking, dynamic lights and shadows, etc., on every little piece. I've got a reasonably top-end gaming rig but some of the real masterpieces of ride construction I've gotten from the Workshop (with several thousand parts each) really chug my system, especially putting 2 of them in the same park, or try to make the rest of the park match the fancy ride.
When a customer waits in line, their "needs" fall, and they often head to need fulfillment as soon as they get off the ride.
I witnessed this last night, as I watch a guy get off a coaster, and was "looking around" for something.
Turns out he was thirsty, hungry, had low energy, and needed to pee.
I followed him, and he met all those needs. He bought a drink, then a hamburger, walking around with both in hand, then went to the toilets, then sat on a bench.
Needs met.
He then went to ride my $25 very well themed coaster for the third time.
So your customer just walking around might not be more likely to buy at your shops until their need levels fall to a certain point anyway. Waiting in line, lets them fall.
It seems to me that customers hardly ever just "wander" aimlessly. Usually it's only for a couple seconds immediately after completing some action, while they're deciding what do to next. Then they come to a decision and head to that location. As they head that way, their needs fall. If they come across a shop that fills a need, even if it's not yet totally urgent, they'll often divert there before continuing. After all, they usually have to walk a couple hundred meters to get to the next ride and there's usually room to fit a drink shop in there.
Customers seem to be on bell curves as far as how much money they have to start with and how easy they are to please. I think it best to try to satisfy the average customer but NOT everybody because at any given time, a park has an optimal customer capacity. If everybody loves you, you get more customers than you can handle without major increases in overhead and/or major expenses to build more rides (which also increase overhead). But if you accept that you're not going to please everybody, then growth is more controllable. So I just try to take most of the money from the average person, take some ATM money from the real fanboys, and ignoring the small fraction of sourpusses. And I believe using the minimal amount of decorations is a way to achieve this goal.
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