User Guide

The guiding principles to guest happiness are twofold, and both can be traced back at least as far
as the legendary Mr. Barnum. First, give the customers what they want. If they’re hungry, supply
food; if they’re tired, give them a place to rest. Second, always leave them wanting more. Every
guest should stay until he or she has no money left, and then leave happy. More to the point, here
are some specific ways you can keep the general level of guest happiness high.
Keep the park tidy. No one enjoys walking in rubbish. Keep your park from becoming messy,
and you prevent your guests from being disgusted by it. (This is covered in more detail earlier,
under Cleanliness.)
Foresee and fill visitor’s needs. A little preparation goes a long way toward preventing
unhappiness. For example: If you serve food, your visitors will need toilets and litterbins; provide
them before there’s a problem. Salty foods make guests thirsty, so build drink stalls. Think about
causes and their effects, and you’ll be ahead of the game.
Don’t let guests stay lost. A visitor who wanders away from the main attractions is not having
fun. Maps of the park can prevent this, and a sharp-eyed park manager (you) can spot and
retrieve lost guests. (This is covered in more detail earlier, under Lost Guests.)
Provide something for everyone. Yes, roller coasters are the focus of the park, but not everyone
enjoys riding them–and even those who do want to ride something else now and again. Maintain
a balance of rides running the gamut from mild to intense, and you will maximise the number
of people you satisfy. Variety is the key if you want to appeal to a wide spectrum of
customers–and you do.
Keep the rides running. An attraction that is idle brings in no income and satisfies no guests.
Try to minimise the amount of time each ride sits waiting for repair–down time. (This is covered
in more detail earlier, under Safety and Repairs.)
Novelty is king. A ride that is newly built and opened attracts more custom than one that has
been running and available for a couple of years. Old rides just don’t excite your guests as much
as something fresh. Keep this in mind, and use human nature to your advantage. As time goes
on, you can generate business by opening a new ride every now and then. Pace yourself well,
and your park will never seem “stale” to your visitors. Be aware that you might be forced to
dismantle an ageing attraction that no one visits any longer.
Charge reasonable prices. There is no strict rule for pricing your rides and the park entrance fee,
but you should take into account that your guests have limited resources. They will not pay
insane amounts to enter the park, nor will they patronise over-priced attractions. In the long run,
a moderately priced ride that gets twice the business makes more profit than a premium
attraction that gets fewer riders. Here are a couple of general rules that should guide you in the
right direction: If the entrance fee is high, guests decide whether to enter based on the park
rating. Once in, they expect low or nonexistent fees for the individual rides. Conversely, if there
is no entrance fee, they’re willing to pay premium prices for each attraction. Also, everyone is
willing to pay more to experience a newly-built ride than they are for an ageing, “stale”
attraction. As a ride ages, you might be forced to lower the price of admission to maintain the
same level of popularity.
Avoid excess nausea. Everyone comes to your park hoping to
enjoy themselves. If they’re feeling sick, they are not having fun.
Though most guests will avoid rides that exceed their personal
capacity for motion sickness, some overestimate themselves. Try to
keep the nausea factor of your rides to reasonable levels. Provide
plenty of benches, on which disoriented visitors can sit and regain
their equilibrium. Consider placing food stalls far from the more
intense attractions.
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Prevent crowding. When the paths and other public areas of your park become overcrowded, your
guests cannot avoid jostling each other, and they can become annoyed. It’s your duty to prevent
the situation from degrading into fisticuffs. Try to alleviate congestion by providing alternate
routes for greater freedom of movement throughout the park.
Be prepared for bad weather. No matter what climate your park seems to have, remember that
it’s strictly part of the atmosphere–the scenery. Every park is near a residential area ( handy
source of guests), and the weather in the area is moderate. Your park might look like it’s in a
desert, for example, but in reality, it was established in a sandy, dry area with dunes that
resembles a desert–which you can take advantage of by building a park with a desert theme. The
point of this discussion is that no matter where your park is, it occasionally rains there. Most of
your visitors do not like to get wet, and they will not ride intense or even mildly dangerous
attractions in the rain. To prepare for this, you should make sure to provide rides that are popular
in the rain–covered rides and ones that are viewed as being perfectly safe.
Profit Tip
When it rains, all your guests want umbrellas, and the only place they can get them is at your
Information Kiosks.
Finances
Managing the park’s funds is much simpler than you’re likely to suspect. Most of the detail work
is done by reliable lower-level managers in your park and by an entirely trustworthy accounting
firm–none of whom take salaries or fees from your working capital. Having all that expertise at
your disposal does not, however, mean that you can just sit back and let the money take care of
itself. If you’re not watching the store, no one else will do it for you.
Here’s the set-up. In each scenario, the park comes “as is”–you need not purchase the existing
land and attractions, but you must pay upkeep where appropriate. You have borrowed a certain
amount from the bank to make improvements to the park under your management. This loan
constitutes your working capital, also called cash-on-hand (COH). That and whatever income you
derive from guest spending in the park are your only sources of funding. What you spend on
improvements, plus salaries and upkeep, are your expenditures.
Fiscal Reports
Park finances are not tricky–as long as you pay attention to where your money is going. Luckily
for you, there are a number of reports to help you do so. Let’s start with the most
informative–those in the Finances window.
Click this button (on the Toolbar) to open the Finances window. There are
five tabs in this window, each of which calls up a different display. All but
the rightmost (the Marketing tab, discussed later) provide financial reports.
• The first report is a detailed listing of your expenditure and income on a month by month
basis. This is the most in-depth of these reports; use it to track exactly where your money has
come from and where it has gone. Near the bottom, this report also lists:
1) The amount of your loan, over which you have limited control.
2) Your Cash-On-Hand (COH).
3) The value of your park (which is explained shortly).
4) Your Company Value–the Park Value, plus your COH, minus
the amount of your loan.
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