Gondola Ride Issues?

[Shelbee]

I have tried building several gondolas to overlook my African Safari exhibit. Every time, I set it up perfectly (entrance, exit, tested the gondola, etc.) but no guests come to it! It's like its not even there, even when place in a high traffic area. I even went so far as to make the ride $1 in my otherwise extremely successful zoo.
Is anyone else running into this, or know how to fix it? Have the developers mentioned a bug fix coming for this?

[fdemar]

Having the same issue.

[Splint]

try and set the price to 0 or $1. i set all my low visited rides to $1 last night..and people started quing up like crazy

[Splint]

One ride there was 1 station they didnt touch at all..remodeled a little..put up some exibits leading to the ride and a coffee shop..set the price to $1..and they started using it.

[XrystalBelle]

As Splint discovered they will not use the vehicles if there aren't anything near enough to it to make the ride worth it.

Something within a reasonable distance and easy access to the main pathway will mean most are willing to walk .. but once your zoo gets big enough the distance will start wearing thin. So when you expand, leave spaces for vehicles/stations.

What I find works best for me is to first create shuttle mode stations ( on the vehicle types that allow this ) for shorter hops. You can always add multiple ones in to slowly move them up and down the zoo. Or, at a later date convert it to a continuous loop allowing multiple cars. Just don't build it up too quickly as the vehicle network can eat a lot of money building the tracks if you don't watch out.

One good set up could be a continuous smallish loop with 4 stations ( entrance (south), east, west, north ). As long as they are spaced out to make them time saving to use with at least one item of interest within a short walk of the station they will use the vehicles to get there and exit. The secret is to get them to use the station to get off, so that new people can use it to get on at that station to move to the next area, but some will stay on to visit that habitat at the end of the track rofl.

I built a very basic test zoo to see what would encourage them to use the vehicle. I built single exhibits every 5 large path lengths and then a food/drink/toilet combination of buildings and then a habitat at the end of a long path... guests would gladly walk to the first exhibit, before considering if the next item of interest is too far away ( there is a limit to their time in the zoo and how far they are willing to go to see something of interest ). guests would walk quite a bit further to get to a food/drink stall, so if you wanted to keep the entrance clear for a fair distance.. place food and drink stores as the first item of interest ( or a habitat ). However, if the guests didn't want to walk all the way to the habitat ( as their first port of call ) they would use the vehicle set up at the entrance that went straight to the habitat.

Bear in mind that you may have to plan alternative transport to get to the same point as once the stations become popular they will start complaining that they queued too long or there wasn't space for them to queue. The first can only be helped by having more cars, higher speed and more reason for the passengers to get off at the stops to ensure an empty car for the new passengers. The second can be helped by making the queue weave in a snake like pattern before connecting with the path.