Paying to Enter Park vs. Paying for Individual Rides

[chapsticky]

Which is better, having guests pay to enter the park or to ride individual rides?

[Dandello]

I prefer to make them pay for rides as once they pay an entrance fee they can spend years in there without paying another cent.

[RCTXtream]

It depends on how much money you want. Park entrance price will be higher price and will stay that. But priced ride will have a low entrance fee. But since you will have more rides you will get money quicker.

So if you want money quick, do ride fees. But later on you will have to reduce to price or guests will not ride it any more.

Park fees will get you a lot of money but slowly. This fee you will not have to reduce unless it is so high that guests cant afford to enter.

Does this help you?

[spunknit]

I prefer the pay per ride parks. You can charge $1 per excitement point, so if the coaster is 7.53 excitement, you can charge $7.50 for the ride, or even a dollar or two more, if you like. You can rake in tons of cash with pay per ride.

Pay for admission parks are definately more difficult. As someone else mentioned, after they come in the door, the only other thing they will pay for is souvenirs or food. It is more challenging, though.

[RCTXtream]

I like a good challenge that why most of my parks are park entrance fee. But my favorite mode is, of course, is the no money mode.

[Neeltje]

I think it also depends on the objective of the scenario. When you want to have lots of guests, I think it's great that as many as possible stay in my park for years. I don't care if they don't spend as much money because the rides are free. They will buy food and drinks, use the toilets and almost everyone will buy some non food item. I always charge more than default for these items in paid admission parks. And of course built as much photo's on the ride as possible for 3,90 each. I've seen guests carrying 3 photo's, a map, an umbrella, T-shirt, hat and a balloon!
Balloon's are great, I sell them for 1,80 and when they lose it, they usually buy another one some time:D

[Anon]

rides,
take this park for example, in blackpool pleasure beach, it's a pound per ticket, and it costs 7 tickets to get on a big ride.
so if i wanted to go on 3 big rides, it's £22.00 and that's 3 rides, if i spent all day there it would be like £100.00, and the wristbands are 26 for all day, so if they did not have the wristbands, they would atleast spend £70 a day on rides and plus food making more money.

[chapsticky]

Thanks! How to I put in ride photos? I can't seem to find them. (Yes, I know, I'm an idiot. :p)

[tycoonfreak]

to put in an on-ride photo section, click the "Special" button and then choose "On-Ride Photo Section". You can only build them where the track is flat, and you can only have one per ride.

[pnkfloyd12]

Anon, that actually sounds like the best way to do it, giving the people a choice to pay-per-ride or pay one price for a wristband. If, for some reason, someone wanted to go there just to ride the latest coaster, than they only have to pay for the one ride instead of them feeling like they have to stay and ride everything just to get their money's worth.

[Coaster'Coon]

In America, people will jack you in the park for your wristband.

[TokerB]

Kennywood did that years ago when they were making the transition from tickets for rides to pay-per-entry.

I don't think the park can make as much money that way. Think about all the parents that take their kids to ride on stuff while they sit at the exit and wait for them. Might as well make them pay full price too.

With tickets (pay-per-ride) the park has a limit on how much any given coaster can earn based on the number of riders per hour. When you charge at the gate, the park earns based not on what each ride can hold, but the total number of people the park can hold.

Call it the greed factor.... a park will only operate in a way that is most condusive to maximizing earnings....