Zoo is suddenly losing money

[gfossenier]

Until recently I was running a very profitable Zoo. Suddenly I am bleeding money, and my guest count has dropped from over 10K to 6k. I have every species of animal in my zoo, minus the exhibit animals. It seems once i created a train ride across my whole park and added an 4x4 Ride things really started going south. Also because I have all the animals no NEW animals are coming into the zoo unless current ones die. I have 7.5 Million funds but i was up to 9 before i started losing money so its going down alot faster than it was going up. My biggest expenses are Staff wages $150K, and 4 habitats that cost about 10K to run, ticket refunds are down to about 2-5k they were well over 10k. Gate prices are set $48 for adults and $45 for kids have been forever. I just can't figure out why im suddenly losing $50-150K per month. if i start firing staff than shops are left vacant, i feel like my keepers already have a hard enough time keeping up. Vendor prices is there a guide or suggestion of what you can get away with charging? Any insight would be great. Do any of these numbers pop out at you. 13 Mechanics, 30 Caretakers, 37 Keepers to 47 Habitats, and 65 Vendors to 47 Shops

[Imposter]

If its suddenly losing cash without making changes then just try restarting the game a few times if need be, Ive had this happen numerous occasions, its strange.
But the new rides wont help your income, check your ride profits when you click on the station menu, i bet they are shocking. Turn them off till we learn more about them

[Kajsa_Kavat]

What are your top guest thoughts? Check the heat map for negative influences aside from staff facilities like trash or vandalised items and overlapping speakers.

[Imposter]

I have green guests
Those are good ideas for newer players though

[NomNomMaki]

I had this problem earlier tonight too - I was playing the Maple scenario when all of a sudden I was in the negative. After a lot of searching I checked the finances and somehow the cost of food for my timber wolves had shot right up. Tried restarting, tried playing through and getting it under control but couldn't manage to get back into the green. In the end I had to go back to an earlier save. (That save played fine and the problem didn't reoccur.)

So it might be the same for you, but just have a quick look at the habitat costs and see if there's something off going on with the food.

[XrystalBelle]

Apologies if you have already checked all of these points .. but just in case you didn't think of some of them ..

Assuming it isn't the glitch Imposter mentioned .. for your guest count to go down at the same time as a big drop in money, sounds like you had a big bunch of refunds. The question is to now identify why they received the refund.

Did you lower the number of guests ?
If so, was it to a lower number than what was in the zoo ?
If so then, you have in essence, booted them out which results in a refund ?

What animals have you added recently ? Maybe their food supply is where the cost is coming from.

Have you recently done a bunch of employee training ? That will automatically raise their wages and once you hit level 3 those wages can start getting hefty.

Are the guest recent thoughts show 25% or more wanting something specific ? You might have to add them to keep them happy in that area.

Most ongoing costs however, I find, are staff wages and animal food. If you have lots of babies ( they don't take up much space ) they could be eating more food than they are bringing in donations. Have you checked that the animals haven't expanded too far ? Maybe release some of them ? If you haven't got any babies, then the guest interest is lower than if there were. You might have to release some of the adults to make room for babies assuming you will still have at least the minimum required animals in the habitat.

Those are all that immediately spring to mind ...

[hanseok21]

if you have all species of animal raise the ticket price to 62$. seems a good price and you have to build a lot of trash bins and banks

[gfossenier]

Thanks guys i fired some 5 star staff members and replaced them with new hires especially for the smaller habitats and exhibits, I also fired some Caretakers as i recently discovered you can pick them up and move them to areas with garbage or full bins so ill just micro manage that. Im back in the green. I see my Choo Choo train is turning a modest profit almost breakeven really. But Safari Ride costs more than its bringing in. I raised tickets prices from $6 to $10 but I'll have to let it run for a bit to see if the increase helps or if it creates a bigger problem cause no one will ride it. Hate to close it with 18 Species in there and the time it took to design but better than losing money. Thanks for taking the time to reply.

[Dru]

I had the same with the Indian Zoo. I was making a lot of profit and without changing anything everythign starting loosing money. I went from 30K to -10K :s

[Imposter]

This is a problem dru... in my situation i had over 3 mill, i lost a mil with no changes, after a crash here and there and restarting the game a few times it came right.

With the rides, i had my train ticket at $30, sometimes they flock to it and other times they ignore it

[Dru]

I needed to restart the game because I was too bankrupt.