General Scenario Guide

This article lists many tips to keep a park running smoothly while dealing with common problems associated with operating an amusement park.

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 * Whenever you start a new park or scenario, the first thing you should do is pause the game. Besides being able to scroll around and get a general overview of the map, you can also set up your research & development, make changes to your finances and open/close/demolish rides while the game is paused.
 * Some parks already have a developed path network at the start; quite often, such parks have no rides, resulting in overdeveloped path networks that do not lead guests to rides, causing guests to often wander around aimlessly and get lost, while causing any staff you hire to potentially wander a great distance away from any paths or rides that they should be moving around. Pathways that lead to nowhere should be "disconnected" from the paths that you are using by removing one connecting path tile between them and the paths you are using; any guests or staff already in the disconnected paths should be picked up and placed onto the paths you are using. As you expand your park by building more rides, these disconnected paths can be reconnected if you need to use them, saving you the necessity of building new paths around your park.
 * Benches and litter bins are more heavily used around food/drink stalls; placing lots of these path items around these stalls will reduce the amount of litter seen elsewhere in your park. In addition, guests who feel sick after exiting a ride are more likely to sit on the nearest available bench upon exiting the ride; giving such guests enough benches to sit at the exit of a nauseating ride will allow their nausea ratings to drop a little, extending the amount of time they are able to get to the nearest Bathroom or drink stall before they throw up.
 * You need enough Staff to keep a park in good condition.
 * Handymen should be assigned patrol areas if your path has a large and/or complicated path network. Each handyman is capable of keeping a 30-40-tile pathway clean, depending on the nausea rating of rides, presence of food/drink stalls and number of junctions on the path.
 * Mechanics do not need to be assigned patrol areas as the nearest mechanic to a broken down ride will usually be assigned to it. However, if your park's path network is large and/or complex, or if a short stretch of pathway has several rides along it, consider assigning patrol areas to some of your mechanics. One mechanic can manage 3-4 rides, inspecting them and fixing them as they break down.
 * Security guards are only required along stretches of path that constantly experience vandalism; their patrol areas should be set accordingly.
 * Entertainers help to increase and maintain the happiness of guests who see them, but are also useful in extending queue length times. Setting an Entertainer to patrol along a queue line path will lengthen the tolerance for guests to wait by about 2 minutes.
 * If a pathway is untidy, guests will start to vandalize the path items along it. If your park is kept clean, you do not need to hire any security guards at all.
 * Bathrooms and drink stalls help to reduce the nausea rating of guests feeling sick; consider placing some of them near your most nauseating rides.
 * Place food stalls near less nauseating rides to prevent your guests from vomiting all over the area. Stalls with souvenirs should go to your most exciting rides, since happy guests are more inclined to buy balloons etc.
 * A higher Park Rating attracts more guests, so keep your park's Park Rating high by building and maintaining a variety of rides that are crash-free, ensuring its paths are clean and free of vandalized path items and keeping the number of guests who are lost to a minimum.

RCT2 and Later

 * When starting a new scenario, check your park entrance fee and any rides already existing in the park to determine if the scenario is a "free park entry" or "free rides" scenario. The general strategy to play a "free park entry" scenario differs noticeably from the general strategy to play a "free rides" scenario.
 * Place First Aid Rooms near the exits of rides with high nausea ratings to encourage guests who feel sick after leaving the ride to enter the room and deplete their nausea rating before they throw up on the path. First Aid Rooms serve no purpose in other parts of your park.

RCT3 and Later

 * In addition to what you can do in RCT1 and RCT2, you can now also perform construction works and purchase land while the game is paused.

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 * You can set up your research & development options even when the game is paused.
 * Increasing research funding speeds up the rate which you get new rides. If you are given a small variety of rides at the start of a scenario, considering increasing research funding to get new rides; you can reduce funding at a later time when you feel that you have enough park elements to work with.

RCT1

 * Some saved track designs use special track pieces or cars that may not be available at the same time the ride type is researched or for that particular scenario. These track designs will remain unavailable unless the track pieces or cars they use are available through researching Ride Improvements.

RCT1 and RCT2

 * You can choose which research categories to focus on in the Research Funding window by ticking the categories you want to research. Research & devlopment will then prioritise the categories you choose over the other categories until all items in your chosen categories have been researched. Unless research is set to No Funding, unticking every category is the same as ticking every category.
 * A greyed out, unclickable research category means that everything in that category has been researched, or there is nothing in that category to research. Once all research categories are greyed out, set research funding to No Funding as you will no longer receive anything from sinking funds into research & development.

RCT3

 * If you have the Soaked! or Wild! expansion packs installed, the 18 scenarios included with the base RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 game will have their research trees updated to incorporate elements from both expansion packs.

Finances
Money isn't usually that much of a problem in RCT, but still there are some common guidelines which help being successful on a scenario.
 * As soon as you have any park entrance fee, even $1, your guests will pay less for your rides. The higher the park entrance fee, the less you can charge for your rides. Be sure to adapt to that and lower the prices of rides which have empty queues.
 * Charging 10 cents for each bathroom in your park will help to reduce their monthly running cost.
 * A guest thinking "... is really good value" means you can increase the price of the ride if you want to, but can also help you getting the Best-Value-Award.
 * As a rule of thumb, you can raise the price for coasters up until their excitement rating, rounded down. For non-coaster tracked rides, the standard fee is usually okay.
 * Your rides will get stale over time; if you are running a pay-per-ride park, you will have to drop the ride fees continually to keep their popularity ratings high. You might even have to offer a ride for free after some time or have to replace it completely. Some rides get stale quicker than others, like the Twister or 3D Cinema.
 * This effect is much smaller in RCT3, and price adjustments are seldom needed if a reasonable cost is chosen initially, e.g. $0.40 multiplied by the sum of the intensity and excitement ratings.
 * A good way to judge the price of your rides is satisfaction, so regularly check your ride list. You should aim for about 75%.
 * The amount of money guests have can vary between scenarios, so keep an eye on that. In a scenario, this amount also varies by $30. Make sure that even the most poor guests can afford your park entrance fee and still ride some rides afterwards, otherwise they will leave very unhappy.
 * As soon as a guest is out of money, he will usually leave your park, unless you provide free rides, food, drinks and bathrooms for him. If you need a high number of guests, earning as much money as possible can contradict to the scenario goal.
 * Where applicable, note the loan interest rate for the scenario you are playing. Some scenarios have high loan interest rates to dissuade you from borrowing any money from the bank. It is possible to actually lose a huge chunk of your monthly earnings to loan interest if the interest rate is high enough. As a rule of thumb, you should exercise caution when borrowing money from the bank if the loan interest rate exceeds 10%.
 * If you are running a park where guests pay an entrance fee, but ride the rides for free, the most important thing to note is that guests will potentially pay the most at the park entrance; once they enter the park, the only way for you to get money from them is through food and drinks, merchandise and services, but not rides. The amount that they will usually pay during their time in your park is almost never higher than what they will potentially pay at the park entrance. This can present a cash flow problem as guests are unlikely to leave your park if you were to run it like a park where guests pay for each ride. To counter this, you need to ensure that there is always a steady flow of guests entering the park. As the number of guests in your park is largely determined by the number of rides you have in your park, this can be achieved by any of the following methods:
 * Continuously building new rides;
 * Closing the park for a brief period of time so that most of your older guests leave before re-opening the park to allow guests in again;
 * Not having any food and drink stalls, toilets or cash machines/A.T.Ms in your park, which will force guests to leave your park once they are hungry, thirsty, need to go to the toilet and/or run out of cash buying merchandise.
 * Before starting larger projects, you should provide a basic park with a few rides already running, this will help to defray the construction and/or landscaping costs for the project.

Creating good rides
Roller Coasters are the bread and butter of any park, so building good coasters and other custom rides is very important. The Ride Ratings show how well you designed a ride.
 * While most scenarios are about squeezing your rides in ungentle terrain, consider preparing some compact rides and save the track design to use in scenarios. You will usually find a spot for those rides and it gives you a head start in scenarios. Consider checking the Ride Exchange for track designs you can use.
 * Rely on Powered Launch to create cheap, compact coasters with a high capacity. The most efficient rides are steel roller coaster with a steel hill that leads to a loop. Power the coaster just right so the train goes halfway up the loop, then down again. Even though the excitement won't be too high (about 4) , the coasters extremely low ride time (< 10s) would allow the coaster to be vastly more profitable than normal continuous circuit coasters. The coasters are also very cheap,less than $1000, and it is possible to abuse this system to get a very high number of guests and earn a lot of money in a very short time.
 * Queue Lines shouldn't be too long or too short. Guests will start complaining after a while and will finally leave after about 11 minutes in a queue. Entertainers can help with that, but consider also that waiting guests don't spend money. On the other hand, the line should be long enough to fill at least a complete train/all seats on a flat ride, otherwise the boarding process might take too long.
 * Try to interlock your queue line with the ride to increase its excitement rating.
 * Scenery increases the excitement of your rides when placed 5 tiles around the "yellow arrow", this also counts for tracked rides (for multi-station rides, this works only on station 1).
 * Consider building underground when possible. Tunnels increase the excitement of any tracked ride, for some more than for others. Note that the number of tunnel entrances/exits counts for excitement and not the length of a tunnel. Any tracked ride which is more than 40% underground counts as indoor. Having some Indoor Rides is generally a good idea, so your guests can hide from the rain. Finally, you can conserve space by building underground.
 * Your guests have different needs you need to cater, so consider building rides with mixed intensity ratings.
 * If a ride offers more than one operation mode (like 3D Cinema, Whoa Belly or Gravitron), you can build multiple versions of this ride and have them operate differently. Your guests won't get bored of this.
 * To prevent a Crash from station brake failure, have the cars of a roller coaster enter the station at no more than 45 km/h (28 mp/h). Note that the brakes on track can also break down, so keeping a mechanic close every potentially dangerous roller coaster is advised.

Attracting and keeping more guests
If you are missing guests for the scenario objective, there are several measures you should consider using:
 * Marketing helps a lot and you should consider doing that from the 2nd to the last year. This will bring in more guests and depending on if they can afford being in your park that long, they will stay until the end of the scenario. Always select the "Coupons for free entry to the park" rather than "Advertising Campaign For the Park" which is hideously expensive and not worth it if money is an issue (at $1200, that can easily exceed your profit margins . per month)
 * Lowering admission and ride fees increases the time guests can spend in your park before running out of money. With enough free rides and free stalls, guests might even not leave at all if your park can keep them happy. Also lower ride fees increase the satisfaction with your rides. Altogether, pricing can have a drastic effect on your guest count.
 * Building new rides makes people curious to visit your park.
 * Having a high park rating raises mouth-to-mouth propaganda for your park, that is basically free marketing. The happier your guests leave your park, the better the word they will spread.
 * Getting awards also attracts new guests and some of them are quite easy to get. Consider putting additional effort in getting awards and prevent getting bad awards.
 * As a last measure you can block the exit with a sign or by removing a path tile. Note that your park rating will drop very fast if guests are trapped in your park! Still this can help if it gets tight at the end of a scenario.