Deep Dive: Mastering Management

Hayo Park Managers!

We’re delighted to be back and talking about Planet Coaster 2 once again!

After showing you an overview of the game in our first Deep Dive and exploring the enhanced creativity in the second, in today’s Deep Dive we’ll be taking a closer look at management within Planet Coaster 2.

We’re joined by Xander Paine, Senior Designer, and Rob James, UI Designer, as they walkthrough these new, expanded management features in a stunning canyon-spanning theme park.

Let’s not waste any time and take a look at our swim-pressive updates!

Masterful Management Menus

For Planet Coaster 2 we’ve made improvements to the process of managing your park, introducing new menus and tools.

In the top left corner of your screen, you will find handy menus to help you keep track:

Park Management – opens an expansive menu giving you everything you need to know about your park at a top level, including:
- Park Options – customise your park name, manage its status and set ticketing prices.
- Park Rating – breakdown of your overall park rating, looking at Attraction Prestige, Scenery Rating, Unique Attractions and Park Reputation. New to Planet Coaster 2 is a weighting system, where your Park Rating will be determined by your lowest performing area.
- Guests – handy information on the guests in your park, including demographics, their average needs and highlighted guest thoughts.
- Attractions & Shops – manage all your attractions and shops from one menu, accessing their status, rating, staff schedules and more.
- Staff – access an overview of all your staff members, tweak their salaries, view their morale and adjust their schedules.
- Research – use earned research points to unlock new attractions and buildings for your park.
- Finances – review your finances at a glance or take out a loan.
Objectives – Across your career campaign you’ll have various objectives you’ll need to meet to achieve Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum medals. This menu can also be pinned to the top of your screen so you can always see what you need to be working towards.
Notifications – All different types of alerts about what’s happening in your park. As your park progresses and more important notifications emerge, you will see variations of the notification button appear so you can instantly look at the most critical issues.
Park Expansion – Used to purchase and build on additional sections of lands, to make your park larger. Depending on the scenario, there may be limitations on these pieces of land which will give some additional challenge in how you design your park.

Data Driven Decisions

New to Planet Coaster 2, heatmaps provide you with invaluable data and information to help you create and maintain the perfect park.

They will allow you to very quickly identify areas of success and underperformance across your park, with heatmaps available for:

Guest Experience – quickly see all of your guests’ Mood, Entertainment, Hunger, Thirst and more. Great for identifying areas in your park that would benefit from new rides or shops.
Staff – review the morale, pay satisfaction and break satisfaction of your staff members.
Utilities – see the coverage of your power and water utilities, including the cleanliness of your water.
Finances – identify where you are making the most and the least money in your park.
Scenery – review the impact your scenery is having on your scenery score and quickly identify areas that need cleaning or beautifying.
Operations – see the condition of your rides and facilities around your park, and quickly review the safety of your pools.

Guest Experience & Satisfaction

Guests in Planet Coaster 2 each have their own individual needs and desires which will shape what they want to see and do within your theme parks. Ensuring you meet these needs, so your guests are having a blast, is key if you want them to spend more time – and money – in your parks.

In Planet Coaster 2, guests now have 8 needs that you have to consider:

Entertainment (formerly Happiness in the original Planet Coaster) – a reflection of the guest’s enjoyment factor in your park.
Food – how hungry the guest is.
Drink – how thirsty the guest is.
Energy – how tired and in need of a rest (on a bench for example) the guest is.
Toilet – how much the guest needs to visit a toilet.
Nausea – how sick the guest is feeling after high nausea rides.
Panic – how scared the guest is feeling after too many high intensity rides or if they’re struggling in a pool.
Luxury – the guest’s desire to spend money around your park.

Guests also have moods which reflect their overall experience in your theme park. Typically, guests will arrive at your theme park feeling content, but if they have enough positive or negative experiences their mood can change. The more positive their mood, the longer they’ll spend in your park, but if their mood is too negative, they’ll likely leave.

The experiences of your guests can be reviewed both at an individual level and park wide, so you can identify trends across your park and see exactly how each of your guests is feeling.

Weather

The weather also affects your guests in Planet Coaster 2, so you’ll need to make sure your park is equipped come rain or shine!

If your park is sunny then your guests will run the risk of getting sunburned if they spend too much time out of the shade. This can be avoided by creating more shaded areas and selling suncream in your shops.

On the flip side, when it rains, your guests will need to find shelter or use umbrellas (which can also be sold in your shops) if they don’t want to get wet!
Exposure to weather can impact your guests’ experiences in your park and at the extreme end can also result in various ailments. For example, it will be harder to keep a guest suffering from sunburn happy and entertained.

Staff

Helping to make your park as welcoming as possible is your team of staff. Staff members perform numerous roles around your park, including:

Janitors – keep your park clean.
Ride Attendants (new to Planet Coaster 2) – operate your rides.
Vendors – run your shops.
Lifeguards (new to Planet Coaster 2) – supervise your pools and keep them safe.
Mechanics – complete research and keep your park running.
Entertainers – wander your park and delight your guests.

You have control over managing when and where your staff work around the park, customising their schedules and defining park zones. These tools help you to manage your staff’s workload, keeping them happy and making sure your park guests are served efficiently!

Staff schedules can be individually customised to make sure you’re spending your money efficiently, while also keeping your team happy. For example, you could experiment with hiring staff to work a short shift to cover for other staff members taking their breaks.

Park zones are a powerful new tool in Planet Coaster, allowing you to easily define different areas of your park, assign staff to work and collecting stats on performance. This tool is great at helping your staff to work efficiently, limiting them to the zones where they can do the most good.

Attractions

Each of your guests will also be looking for something different in the rides and attractions within your park. They’ll have their own tolerances for Fear, Excitement and Nausea, so one ride is unlikely to make all your guests happy. Building a variety of attractions and fulfilling a broad range of guest desires is key if you want to keep your park busy in the long run.

When building your attractions you can see the ride stats, so you know exactly what your guests can expect. Testing your custom rides will also provide you with information on how they’re meeting guest tolerances.

Shops

Building and maintaining shops around your park isn’t just about creating great source of income; Shops will also help you to meet the needs of your guests. Shops stock items that help to satisfy your guests hunger, thirst and desire for souvenirs.

Just like with your attractions, not all guests have the same wants, and they’ll each have their own dietary requirements and desires. Stocking your shops with a variety of products, including vegan options, will help meet these diverse needs and keep everyone happy.

In Planet Coaster 2 you also have detailed control over exactly what your shops are selling – and for how much. Adjustments on pricing can be made to bring in more profit and you can even change the ingredients of your food to make them more attractive and adapted to a variety of guests.

Operational Efficiency

Simply building the park of your dreams isn’t enough – you’ll also have to keep it running!

Planet Coaster 2 introduces a number of new mechanics that directly impact the daily running of your park, creating new requirements for you to manage.

Power Management

In order for your rides to function, you will now need to make sure there is power set up for your ride.

All rides and some facilities will now require power in order to run. To supply them with power you’ll need to build and maintain a connected network of generators and distributors around your park, feeding power to the areas that need it.

Power can be generated using either a standard generator or using solar power, which is preferred by guests but more expensive.

Water Filtration

To make sure the water in your pools and flumes are clean, you’ll also need to set up water filtration network, much like with power.

Wells and pumps are used to draw water, which is then passed to pools and water attractions* using a distributor. The more guests you have, the quicker the pool risks getting dirty, so you’ll need to make sure your system is able to handle increased pool traffic.

*Powered track rides, such as log flumes, do not need to be attached to the water filtration system.

Repairs & Maintenance

Over time, rides and facilities will degrade as they are used and require maintenance and repairs from a mechanic. While under maintenance, attractions cannot be used by your guests or perform its function, so it’s important that you time your repairs and maintenance to minimise disruption and keep your park busy.

Financial Management

Running a successful theme park comes with its own challenges and you’ll need to become proficient at managing your park’s finances to ensure you have enough money to operate.

Throughout your park you have various sources of income and costs to consider.

Income

Shops
Tickets
Loans

Costs

Staff pay
Running costs
Loan repayments
Construction costs

Balancing your incoming and outgoing expenses will be key if you want to keep your park running in the long term. To make it easier for you to understand your finances, we‘ve included graphs and menus to make things more visually understandable. These can be used to see a granular breakdown in factors like your Park Value, Park Cash and Construction Costs, enabling you to quickly see where you park is and isn’t making money.

In a pinch you can also take out a loan to help keep a struggling park afloat. Loan repayments will then be taken over time via a cut of your sales. You’ll also have to pay interest on your loan, so only borrow what you can repay!