Early on, I watched all the Frontier and 3rd party videos saying you should build coasters with "all green" stats. And the Workshop is full of rides proudly proclaiming they have "all green" values for Excitement, Fear, and Nausea.
Slightly later on, during actual game play, I noticed that the stock "Genie" ride in the Family section always was amongst the biggest cash cows in any park I put it in. So I wondered, what was the appeal of the Genie? I looked at it closely. The Genie's values are E 3.17 (Orange), F 3.07 (Orange), and N 2.88 (Green). Hmmm, only 1 of the 3 stats is green, but it rakes in the money with both hands. Why is that? After much more careful analysis, I can confidently state that the reason is because the fear factor is low enough not to scare off children, but still high enough to attract teens and adults. Thus, the Genie is attractive to all demographics. And that was an epiphany.
See, there are 3 types of customers: adult, teen, and family. Adults and teens, who can drive their own cars, come individually or in small peer groups. Families are the biggest groups, making up about 1/3 of customers who come in groups, and include 2 adults, 1 or 2 teens, and 1 or 2 kids. Families don't split up so all go where the kids want to go. And the determinant of what kids want is the Fear Factor of a ride. Anything above 4,. which is Orange instead of green, scares off the kids and thus the families they're part of. High Excitement and low Nausea are attractive to all, except maybe teens. But the key point is, if the Fear Factor is too much for kids, then nobody in their family group of non-kids will go on that ride.
So, families are about 1/3 of your customer base. A family is a minimum of 4 customers, at least 3 of which are not kids but all are condemned to go only on rides attractive to kids. But all of them pay for everything in your park, even if they get a family discount on admission. If you build rides not attractive to kids, then you write off about 1/3 of your total customers. But if you only build child-friendly rides, then nobody except kids and their tending family members will use them. So what you want is something like the stock Genie, not too scary for kids but scary enough for unaccompanied teens and adults.
In support of this assertion, I offer the following. It was a head-to-head test of a family-friendly wooden coaster (my own Rattletrap) vs. a hybrid with loops and rolls (my own Jackolope) too scary for kids. The pic below shows their stats, with Jackolope benefiting from the scenery value of the shops. This didn't help its bottom line.
https://flic.kr/p/NH7GQL
As you can see, Rattletrap benefited from a higher customer through-put, 0.62 customers/second vs. 0.20 for Jackalope. But Jackalope only caters to teens and adults and scares kids away. So, Jackalope's customer through-put is based on only 2/3 of the total customer groups, so reducing Rattletrap's by 1/3 is 0.41 customers/second. Still, Rattletrap has 2x more through-put per second than Jackalope, despite having stats like the stock Genie with only Nausea in the green and the others in the orange. Jackalope has 2 stats in the green so according to dogma should be the better ride. But it only appeals to 2/3 of potential customers and on top of that its small customer/train ratio compared to Rattletrap, even with 3 trains vs. 2, puts it firmly behind in terms of money earned over a 7-year period. Over 7 years, Jackalope lost $26,000 while Rattletrap earned $64,000. And this isn't counting that Jackalope costs about twice as much as Rattletrap to buy.
This is outside the range of the jiggered customer through-put figures noted above. Therefore, family matters and trumps the "all green" notion, because fear in the green scares off kids, which scares off their entire families.
Slightly later on, during actual game play, I noticed that the stock "Genie" ride in the Family section always was amongst the biggest cash cows in any park I put it in. So I wondered, what was the appeal of the Genie? I looked at it closely. The Genie's values are E 3.17 (Orange), F 3.07 (Orange), and N 2.88 (Green). Hmmm, only 1 of the 3 stats is green, but it rakes in the money with both hands. Why is that? After much more careful analysis, I can confidently state that the reason is because the fear factor is low enough not to scare off children, but still high enough to attract teens and adults. Thus, the Genie is attractive to all demographics. And that was an epiphany.
See, there are 3 types of customers: adult, teen, and family. Adults and teens, who can drive their own cars, come individually or in small peer groups. Families are the biggest groups, making up about 1/3 of customers who come in groups, and include 2 adults, 1 or 2 teens, and 1 or 2 kids. Families don't split up so all go where the kids want to go. And the determinant of what kids want is the Fear Factor of a ride. Anything above 4,. which is Orange instead of green, scares off the kids and thus the families they're part of. High Excitement and low Nausea are attractive to all, except maybe teens. But the key point is, if the Fear Factor is too much for kids, then nobody in their family group of non-kids will go on that ride.
So, families are about 1/3 of your customer base. A family is a minimum of 4 customers, at least 3 of which are not kids but all are condemned to go only on rides attractive to kids. But all of them pay for everything in your park, even if they get a family discount on admission. If you build rides not attractive to kids, then you write off about 1/3 of your total customers. But if you only build child-friendly rides, then nobody except kids and their tending family members will use them. So what you want is something like the stock Genie, not too scary for kids but scary enough for unaccompanied teens and adults.
In support of this assertion, I offer the following. It was a head-to-head test of a family-friendly wooden coaster (my own Rattletrap) vs. a hybrid with loops and rolls (my own Jackolope) too scary for kids. The pic below shows their stats, with Jackolope benefiting from the scenery value of the shops. This didn't help its bottom line.
https://flic.kr/p/NH7GQL
As you can see, Rattletrap benefited from a higher customer through-put, 0.62 customers/second vs. 0.20 for Jackalope. But Jackalope only caters to teens and adults and scares kids away. So, Jackalope's customer through-put is based on only 2/3 of the total customer groups, so reducing Rattletrap's by 1/3 is 0.41 customers/second. Still, Rattletrap has 2x more through-put per second than Jackalope, despite having stats like the stock Genie with only Nausea in the green and the others in the orange. Jackalope has 2 stats in the green so according to dogma should be the better ride. But it only appeals to 2/3 of potential customers and on top of that its small customer/train ratio compared to Rattletrap, even with 3 trains vs. 2, puts it firmly behind in terms of money earned over a 7-year period. Over 7 years, Jackalope lost $26,000 while Rattletrap earned $64,000. And this isn't counting that Jackalope costs about twice as much as Rattletrap to buy.
This is outside the range of the jiggered customer through-put figures noted above. Therefore, family matters and trumps the "all green" notion, because fear in the green scares off kids, which scares off their entire families.
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