Constantly losing money. What am I doing wrong?

[Unexpected]

I've played Rollercoaster Tycoon a lot, and I've just got this game and I've been trying to play it pretty much the same way, building those initial thrill and family rides and shops, trying to make my park slowly get bigger until I have enough money and feel confident enough to build coasters. But it just doesn't seem to be working.

No matter how much I increase ride prices, it seems they barely give any profit, as I check the lifetime profit window and things aren't very favorable there. And it's not long before I have to get loans to build more stuff for the guests, but the money ends very soon and then I'm stuck with huge debts, unable to build anything else. I've tried a marketing campaign, but that just makes me sink even deeper in debt.

What am I doing wrong? It just seems impossible to make a profit by doing everything I'm used to in the Rollercoaster Tycoon series. This is on medium difficulty on challenge mode, by the way. Tips would be appreciated.

[madcat_sean]

make sure to add a park entrance fee and you will be ok. Set them to like $3-5 and watch the money flow in. a lot of the time it's hard to get the flow of cash. I have seen that sometime it's better to not train people and let them quit when you start out. by doing so I have cut out the extra training cost and saved it for when I have a steady cash flow.

[Unexpected]

Thanks for the tip, I'll try that!

[Voice From Beyond]

I think some tuning has to be done. I have over 3k people in my park, but mostly they just seem to wander around not riding anything. You open a ride and see people don't really have thoughts about the ride. I think part of the problem is the "group" aspect. The peeps in a group do everything as a group and if they don't have enough money to do anything they just wander around.

[BLÀde]

double the prices

[Decoy Mkhai]

Doubling the prices has an effect of driving people off more than getting people to ride. Even putting prices up by a dollar or two on some rides will cause guests to opt out and the ride in question to accrue debt. You have to pay attention to which rides you can legitimately increase prices on and which ones you can't. Doubling them outright isn't the most beneficial advice at all.

[Dies Fourth]

I read somewhere to put gift shops at the exits of all rides if possible. They say the ppl are happiest right after a ride so ive been doing that. I also charge $2 per person and $3 per family at the front gate.

when i build any ride i always raise the ptice 1-2 dollars from standard b4 i even open it.

[Unexpected]

Oh, so they're more likely to buy gifts right after leaving rides? I wasn't aware of that, that's pretty good to know.
Also, having the park entrance cost a little something has helped greatly!