I went into the scenario editor and I experimented with the initial happiness of the peeps.  I discovered that the park rating was higher when the initial happiness was set higher.  This means that the overall happiness of the guests in your parks affects what the park rating is. If most of your guests are grinning, you will get the coveted 999 rating.

The easiest way to know what you need to do to keep the park rating high is to check what the peeps are thinking.  Click on the "All Guests (summarized)" and check their thoughts to get an overall look at what problems are plaguing your park the most.

Sick peeps can lead to a lot of trouble.  First off, they aren't too happy themselves.  Second, they can throw up and if you don't clean it up quickly, the other peeps in your park aren't going to be too happy.  Make sure to take care of the sick guys by placing tons of benches and by placing First Aid stations near the exits of rides.

If you already have reports of vomit on the paths, pause the game and hit the 3,4,5, and 6 keys to get the best view of your paths.  These keys are toggles. Check for vomit and place benches and handymen in the area to clean it up.  Set a patrol area for them so that the handy men stay in the trouble areas.  Also check for vandalism and get that fixed up so you don't have any guests complaining about that too.  Dirty paths are one of the most common causes of low park ratings.

Another huge park rating killer is having people wanting to leave but can't find the exit.  Check the "All Guests (summarized)" again and click on the group of peeps that want out.  Check where all of them are and if many of them are in the same general area, you have a problem with you paths.  You need a more direct route to the exit so that the peeps' AI will let them find their way out.  If you need more information on the path layout, go to my Path Layout Tutorial.

If the guests complain about crowding, build more paths and spread out the park with some additional rides in remote places. These paths can be "dead ends", as long as they don't trap the guests. An easy rule to follow to avoid trapping guests on "dead end" paths is to start the new path at your main path and build it away from the park exit. Never make any turns in the direction of the park exit. You only need one ride on each dead-end path. Add a shop or two and some benches to each path and you will spread out the crowd.

Your guests also complain about crowding if they can't find a place to sit. Make sure you have lots of benches, especially around shops that sell food.

Another way to fight the crowds: If you have rides that always have full queue lines, consider making the queue longer, and add TV's to these longer queue lines. Peeps won't feel crowded while waiting in a queue but they will get tired of waiting. If they complain about waiting and TV's aren't helping, you need to shorten the queue line.

The guests' attitude won't be greatly affected if only one or two things are hurting him, such as hunger, thirst, energy, etc. but if they get multiple problems they'll start getting a little cranky.  Then if you mix in outside encounters such as bad rides, dirty paths and the such, they are gonna show some rage.

The great upward attitude adjuster is, of course, great rides. Match the intensity that your guests prefer and before you know it, they will be smiling. For most parks this means building a mix of gentle and more intense rides, and distributing them more-or-less evenly in your park. Also, music, scenery and entertainers keep the guests happy and send you well on your way to the 999 rating!

Thank you for reading this article and make sure to give me feedback about any articles you would like me to include and rate the articles I currently have on the Tutorials Main page.