Yet another paid entry topic

[Anerkas]

Hello everyone, this is my first post as i just purchased the game and in need of some advices, as a veteran of RCT 1 and 2 with almost 2000 hours between the two i know how theme park simulators works, but i noticed several difference (obviously) with PC than with previous RCT made by Frontier, so far i like the game very much especially how many customisation options we currently have.

One thing i have noticed thought is that unlike RCT 2 where you had to decide if your park had paid rides or paid entries, here you can have both which is great, but i'm having a harder time than in RCT 2 to set up a park (i play mainly challenge mode) with the paid entry / free rides scheme which is the one i prefer and used the most in RCT2 and make a profit, i looked up online and i saw that this is a common problem because of how the game is designed, i also saw several people saying they were abel to make paid entry parks profitable but nobody explained in a detailed way how they managed to succeed at that.

My biggest problem is that when i build a new attraction people swarm my park entrance and i get a ton of money but after a while and for a considerable amount of time almost nobody leaves and almost no new visitors arrive, so i go bankrupt.
I ask to the more experienced players here, how can i pull this off, what are the tricks? What tips can you give me on this subject, i heard that Scenary in general has a lot to do on your park rating and that's important in attracting new guests, if that is true how does it work?
Thanks a lot in advance.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

I start a park with just paid rides. Add ride/change sequences to increase the rides prestige, which will attract more peeps, and let you charge more.
After I have about 5 flat rides, and 1-2 coasters, I will switch to paid entry/free rides. This is the point where you should have enough peeps that you can live off paid entry and shop income.

If you continue a larger park with high priced paid rides, you quickly take all the peep's money, and they can't use your shops. Then they complain.
They also will wander around for a specific amount of time (a peep trait) even with no money until they leave. So, free rides at least lets them enjoy their time. Free rides also gives you a longer steady stream of income from shops, because you are taking their money slowly.

Free rides also prevents money loss from refunds when a ride breaks down.

Look at like real life...a small carnival has you pay per ride, and a large amusement part has free rides.

 

[breezerHOG1]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1266068618 [up]

 

[cerealfruitcakes]

To keep a steady flow of guests arriving/leaving with little amount of dead space, keep your park open for a long time and don't close it down. It will balance out over time, it just takes a while (and if it doesn't balance out you need more guests and your park is too small to pull it off). You rarely ever want to close your park down but if you do, use the guest limit to stagger them in slowly over time instead of all at once.

Some tips/tricks to use,
- don't use security cameras they add up quickly. be more strategic with guard routes.
- don't train all your staff fully. Save money by only maxing out training for security/high traffic stalls
- charge as much as you can for stalls. get rid of any that don't make any money
- charge as much as you can for park tickets and don't give children a discount. it's ok to miss a small # of sales, guests that can afford it will eventually spawn in after them
- use gold chests to boost your scenery score and more guests will show up (they're expensive but you could spam a ton of cheap scenery items)
- increase flat ride sequences so rides are 2-3 minutes long; this boosts park rating = more guests
- load up the park in scenario editor and give all guests the "day tripper" trait (no other traits). Then load the park back up in the mode you were using. Guests will now leave around an hour 45 minutes vs 2+ hours.

 

[Anerkas]

Thanks a lot for the useful tips, that's exactly what i was looking for, yes i'm aware of the gold chest spam trick, also i learned alredy at my expenses that security cameras are too costly to mantain.
Plus i like more catching some thieves myself, scouting for the lone wolves i once found a guy who stole over 1140$ and capturing him resolved like 11 crimes.
The biggest mistake i made i think is the flat ride/roller coasters ratio, i have 12 attractions in my park only 4 are flat rides 2 are water rides and 6 are coasters, they cost a lot to mantain and that's probabily what drained my income the most.

 

[WingardiumLevicoaster]

Moving to How Do I?

 

[cerealfruitcakes]

I just started up a new challenge-harder park to see if I could pull off free rides/park entry from the beginning & so far so good,

It was pretty straight forward,
- Wild Blue + 1 extra ride sequence (improves park rating-could possibly add another sequence for a bigger boost but I wanted to keep it around 3 minutes)
- $10 entry ticket / $3 child ticket (most families turned around, some adult/teen groups did too but not many)
- Researched scizzer and added 2 extra ride sequences
- kept lines only as long as two cycles (not sure this is that big of a deal right now but it will help later having higher foot traffic for stalls)
- didn't hire any staff, only a mechanic when I needed him and then I fired him
- bought the carousel and added 3 more sequences to it but no one really likes it [tongue]
- increased ticket prices to $20/$10 child (park rating @322)

I don't have the income for a permanent mechanic/staff room yet, I'll probably need a few more flat rides. I haven't been closing/opening the park to inject cash, just letting it stay open all the time. I'm also wondering how much I'm going to tank when these start hitting old status. [where is it] That's probably around the time I really need to inject a lot of scenery into the park to help balance out the rating hit.

Thanks a lot for the useful tips, that's exactly what i was looking for, yes i'm aware of the gold chest spam trick, also i learned alredy at my expenses that security cameras are too costly to mantain.
Plus i like more catching some thieves myself, scouting for the lone wolves i once found a guy who stole over 1140$ and capturing him resolved like 11 crimes.
The biggest mistake i made i think is the flat ride/roller coasters ratio, i have 12 attractions in my park only 4 are flat rides 2 are water rides and 6 are coasters, they cost a lot to mantain and that's probabily what drained my income the most.

That's a good point about watching the ratio, coasters suck up so much money. It definitely feels like I have to build a lot more flat rides early on and wait until later for a coaster. I'm going to figure out which ones have the lowest opp costs. Junior coasters for everyone!

edit: I have noticed now that I have 4 flat rides, it's super important to get that queue scenery score to 100% ASAP so you get the maximum amount of guests spawning in as possible. I'm starting to dip into the red due to expanding too fast before improving those scores. I also think it's best to build up a decent profit with just a couple of flat rides so you have backup funds as you're expanding.

This is fun, feels like I'm playing classic RCT! [up]

I took out a $3,000 loan to pay for scenery/staff room/drinks...so far it's not making a big dent and I'm making around $400-$600 monthly. I got queue scores to 100% with a park rating of 582. I also increased tickets to $25/$20.

 

[Anerkas]

Interesting seeing that you made the various queue pretty short, i usually make queue lines much longer and try to keep 2-3 ride queue close so that i can put down less scenary to reach 100%, but i always leave enough space for the priority pass queue.
A couple more questions: i see you mostly used just trees, are they enough to reach 100% queue rating? Which are the most cost effective? Also in your food/drinks shops what extras do you usually use are the extras worth using in the first place?

 

[LN]

Interesting seeing that you made the various queue pretty short, i usually make queue lines much longer and try to keep 2-3 ride queue close so that i can put down less scenary to reach 100%, but i always leave enough space for the priority pass queue.
A couple more questions: i see you mostly used just trees, are they enough to reach 100% queue rating? Which are the most cost effective? Also in your food/drinks shops what extras do you usually use are the extras worth using in the first place?

Longer queue lines mean:

- people possibly won't enter the queue due to its lenght.
- People get hungry and thirsty when standing in line for to long.

For a starter park these queue lines are perfect.

 

[Anerkas]

Got it so shorter queue makes people less bored and drains less their energy, does the queue lenght affect how much scenary you need to reach 100%?

 

[LN]

Got it so shorter queue makes people less bored and drains less their energy, does the queue lenght affect how much scenary you need to reach 100%?

i'm not sure about that one. I think the % of queue scenery is more about the amount of coverage and not the amount of scenery.

So I would think this would take less scenery. Best is to play a little with it.

 

[Anerkas]

That's what i thought, if you have a short queue it takes less scenary to cover it all and so you can spend less to reach 100% which is useful at the start in harder modes.

 

[LN]

That's what i thought, if you have a short queue it takes less scenary to cover it all and so you can spend less to reach 100% which is useful at the start in harder modes.

Yes indeed, I agree. Also when keeping the queues short whenever a ride breaks down you don't have to refund that much (except when playing on paid entry mode like in this case). .

 

[Anerkas]

The only problem with shorter queue is with priority pass, because if queue are short you will not sell that many and in a paid entry/free ride model they make up a lot of the profits in late game, of course this is not such a big deal in the early part of your park creation.

 

[cerealfruitcakes]

Update,

Insanity costs around $800 a month which did not help, I regretted researching that. It put me in the red until my other rides started turning classic. I wanted to close it so bad but I didn't want to lose valuable time on aging. I just spent that time buying cheap plants and flowers.

The coaster is costing $1100 a month which again started putting me in the red. I definitely closed that down until I buy a few more flat rides. Everything else is working out fine. I have 2 mechanics, a janitor and 3 vendors between two stalls. Profiting around $800 with some red months every now and then (dead space).

Interesting seeing that you made the various queue pretty short, i usually make queue lines much longer and try to keep 2-3 ride queue close so that i can put down less scenary to reach 100%, but i always leave enough space for the priority pass queue.
A couple more questions: i see you mostly used just trees, are they enough to reach 100% queue rating? Which are the most cost effective? Also in your food/drinks shops what extras do you usually use are the extras worth using in the first place?

I have them short so there's more foot traffic on paths for stalls instead of having a lot of dead space waiting for them to exit rides (+ the other reasons people listed). I'll increase their size as the park gets larger. I'm also pretty sure the size of the queue has no effect on the scenery score. But early on, I make sure that the queue only holds up to 2 cycles at most. Low capacity rides will have shorter queues than larger capacity.

For queue scenery, I threw up a lot of trees, shrubs, flowers, rocks...I made lamp posts (a wood beam+4 wall lights on each side) that run along the paths since that gives out a higher score than just using the pre-made ones (if those even give a score?). I also placed canopy's at the queue entrance. If you made your own entrance gates that would be even better. If I didn't get it to 100% I just spammed some cheap rocks under the queue until it got there.

Shop breakdown:
Milkshakes,
"S'mores shake" $9 - Some Marshmallows, chocolate pieces & toffee sauce
"Chocolate Lovers Shake" $8.75 - Some fudge, a lot of chocolate pieces
"Classic Vanilla" $8.5 - A lot of vanilla ice cream

Hotdog Squad,
"Chili Dog" $14 - A lot of chili sauce, some onion
"Deluxe Dog" $11 - some ketchup, some mustard, some gherkins

I'm sure there are way better optimized prices for stalls than what I do, I just like making up a menu [tongue]

The only problem with shorter queue is with priority pass, because if queue are short you will not sell that many and in a paid entry/free ride model they make up a lot of the profits in late game, of course this is not such a big deal in the early part of your park creation.

I don't bother with priority passes anymore, once the park gets on the larger side barely anyone buys them from my experience. I have two large parks with all the major rides having priority pass lines. Even with 6,000+ guests and full queues only a dozen or so will buy them a month. I'll try them out in this park once I get 3 major rides down.

 

[Anerkas]

Weird, in my personal experience they always sold well, in your case they lose money or they simply make a very modest profit?
Because my philosophy is: if a shop its in the red i close it, if its in the green of a dollar i will keep it.

 

[cerealfruitcakes]

So I may be coming across a bug? Within my park rating, "Scenery Rating" and "Park Balance Bonus" dropped to 0. I have no idea what triggered this or how to fix it. It tanked my score which tanked my guest spawn rate which then tanked my budget. [tongue][wacky]

Tried reloading the game and park but it's still at 0. Any ideas?

edit: out of no where the score popped back in. This is a strange thing...

also the coaster is proving to be too expensive, I only profit when it's closed. [ugh]

Weird, in my personal experience they always sold well, in your case they lose money or they simply make a very modest profit?
Because my philosophy is: if a shop its in the red i close it, if its in the green of a dollar i will keep it.

I don't know why really but you can check out my two parks in my sig, open the info stalls up, flood in 6,000+ guests and watch a dozen or two buy them a month no matter the queue length. You could charge $5 for them and you'll still get a decent % saying they're for suckers even when queues are 30+ minutes long. I just don't know really. With that experience I just don't find them worth doing. With my parks, demand for them is stuck at a low % vs scaling based on queue times.

I'll throw one down in this park once I get enough major rides. Are you putting fast pass on all your rides? Maybe that's why my guests don't think its worth it, I only put them on the major ones.

 

[Anerkas]

[]
I don't know why really but you can check out my two parks in my sig, open the info stalls up, flood in 6,000+ guests and watch a dozen or two buy them a month no matter the queue length. You could charge $5 for them and you'll still get a decent % saying they're for suckers even when queues are 30+ minutes long. I just don't know really. With that experience I just don't find them worth doing. With my parks, demand for them is stuck at a low % vs scaling based on queue times.

I'll throw one down in this park once I get enough major rides. Are you putting fast pass on all your rides? Maybe that's why my guests don't think its worth it, I only put them on the major ones.

Yes that's exactly your problem i think, i make sure to use priority queue on ALL my rides and my rides usually have far longer queue than the ones in your picture, it's probabily why your guests think they are not worth it.
Keep in mind that you will always have a % of people thinking "priority pass are for suckers", but they shouldn't be very much i have them around 8% and it's not a problem, priority pass are élite only a fraction of your visitors will buy them (like IRL i guess), but by doing longer queue and enable them on every ride they will be profitable, i was selling them in a info point close to the entrance at 12$ and nobody was complaining, i raised the price to 15$ and i started getting a few missed sales but it was still worth it, charge more and you will miss too many sales, but at 15$ my info point was alredy my most profitable shop, it's income after covering it's own expenses, made me a profit of 2500$ in the first 2 months since i opened it.
EDIT: also make sure to put priority pass entrance right off the normal queue path start and the exit one step from the ride entrance, it has to make the priority pass users skip like, the whole line and jump ahead of every guest in the standard queue line, that way they feel it's "worth it", otherwise you risk lowering pass sales if priority queue aren't "enough shortcut".

 

[Kickflip]

I am almost positive that it takes the same number of scenery points to get a queue to 100% regardless of length.

In a paid entry park, longer queues are fine and you will want to design them so that the priority pass system can cut out a significant distance from the queue length. The priority pass’s value to guests is based on the number of rides that use it and the amount of time it saves so having long queues means the pass can save lots of time. Technically, guests in a queue can’t buy anything but if they can’t queue for any rides they usually end up unhappy and not buying anything anyway.

Put your exits away from your ride entrances, preferably into a shared vendor area. This way guests that are happy about the ride are immediately dumped next to a place to spend more money.

Spend lots of money on scenery because your guest count (and consequently your arrivals per month) is based on your park score and scenery points have a lower upkeep than ride points. If you build up your park score only with ride points, your upkeep will be too high to survive just on entry fees (which is the goal).

I try to keep my ride upkeep costs (and first aid, restrooms, atm costs) below my monthly income from entry fees, personally.

Personal opinion, but I hope they eventually tweak the guest brain to cap out the money guests will spend on rides total to almost force the transition to entry fees after a player reaches a certain park size. It feels more like a real tycoon game when I go with entry fees. Ride ticket fees always feels too straight forward and easy.

 

[Anerkas]

In my experience queue lenght DO affect the amount of scenary you need to get to 100% rating, i made a short queue and covered it with trees and rocks on the borders until i got 100%, with a longer queue i needed more, then to be sure i extended the lenght of the previous short queue by just a few blocks without adding any scenary and the rating immediately dropped from 100% to 87%.

On another topic i agree with you AI visitors should be made smarter about money spending, if i charge 75$ for entry and make rides free people turn away from entrance, but then i have people who went 5 times on the same ride at 30$ a pop spending 150$ total yet thinking "that ride is really good value", it makes really no sense.