User Guide

To determine where the Security Guard begins his rounds, use the Pincers button.
Move the mouse pointer over the landscape and position the guard (hanging from
the pincers) directly over one of the paths, then click to drop him there.
If you want to limit this guard to patrolling a certain area, you can do so using the
Patrol Area button. While this button is depressed, you can click on the landscape
to mark the area (in blocks of a predetermined size) the Security Guard should patrol.
As is true of Mechanics and Handymen, you must pay the Security Guards for their time. Each
one you employ takes a paycheque once a month. Employee pay-days are one of the standard,
ongoing operating costs of the park, and you are not notified when they occur. Keep an eye on
your treasury, and you’ll see it happen.
Undoing Vandalism
When vandalism does occur, the best course of action is simply to remove and replace the
damaged elements of the park. You should do this as soon as possible. That way, you keep
your guests’ visit as pleasant as it is in your power to make it.
Lost Guests
It is possible that none of your park guests will ever get lost. In fact, if you design your park well
and manage it carefully, you should never need to retrieve a visitor who has strayed away from the
music and fun of the attractions you’ve built. However, until you get to be that competent at park
management, your guests might wander off the beaten path from time to time. Here’s what you
can do about it:
• Find your lost guests. One of the best ways to do this is to scan the Summary display of the
Guest Info window. When you find the “I’m Lost” entry, click on it.
• Click on a specific lost guest to open his or her Guest window.
• Select the Pincers button.
• Move the mouse pointer across the landscape until the visitor you’ve retrieved is over a
central footpath (preferably near rides).
• Click to drop the guest (gently) on the path.
How often guests become lost depends entirely on the system of footpaths in your park. Try to
avoid dead ends, complex routes, and long trails to nowhere. Your footpaths should be designed
to lead the visitors past the entrances to as many rides as possible (though without making the
rides seem like they’re crowded together too closely). In a well-thought-out park, there are few
if any paths that do not lead to attractions.
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Park Maps
One of the benefits of the Information Kiosk is that it provides maps of
the park to your guests (at a price you control). If you can build these
stalls, do so. Having a map handy significantly reduces a guest’s chances of
getting lost.
PARK MANAGEMENT
By now you know that building the park is only the beginning. To be really successful in this sort
of endeavour, you must both maintain what you’ve built and manage the business of the park.
We’ve discussed maintenance already; this section is all about managing. Your responsibilities
and concerns as a park manager can be grouped into four broad categories: Finances, Handling
Guests, Marketing, and Trouble. Let’s take them one at a time.
Keeping Your Guests Happy
As we’ve said before, the satisfaction of your park guests is probably your most vital concern.
Happy visitors stay in the park, spend more of their money, and (through reputation and word of
mouth) draw other guests to your site. Unhappy guests leave.
How do you know what your visitors are thinking and feeling? As manager, you have access to
powerful polling and reporting tools that let you monitor the thoughts and actions of every guest
in your park. Here are a few of the most useful:
Guest Info The Guest Info window tracks the thoughts and actions of every visitor to your
park. (To open this window, click on the Toolbar button with the crowd of faces
on it.) There are two display tabs in this window. The first lists the current
thought and action of each guest in the park; this can be useful for getting an
intuitive “feel” for their attitudes. The second tab summarises for you the
actions and thoughts of every guest, and presents them in descending order
of frequency. This is perhaps the most useful report for finding incipient
problems; if there’s a negative comment near the top of this listing, it’s a call
to arms for you to do something about the situation.
Guest Windows For a more detailed (but less complete) survey of visitor opinions, you can click
on any guest to open a Guest window. In it, you can see what the guest is doing,
what he or she has spent since entering the park (and on what), and the items
that visitor is carrying. More important, this window shows you how the guest is
feeling and what he or she is thinking about your park and the attractions in it.
Ride Info If you open the Ride Info window (using the button on the Toolbar), the default
display is the current status of every ride. However, that’s not the only information
in this window. Using the Data Selector, you can see how your rides rate with your
guests for satisfaction, popularity, and other helpful measurements.
Park Rating Watch the Rating bar in the Status Box (in the
lower left-hand corner). Position the mouse
pointer over the bar to see the actual rating. This
number (between 0 and 1000) reflects your
guests’ overall impression–of ride design, park
layout, tidiness, value, efficiency, etc. This is a
great barometer of your park’s success or failure,
although the rating will never tell you what a
problem is, only that there is a problem.
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