Guests don't care for animal privacy!

[brednbuttr]

I set up a Japanese Macaque Animal Encounter habitat and wanted the hard shelter to be off-limits to guests so the poor babies have somewhere to hide when they're stressed, but accessible to my keepers. 3 layers of kerb barriers, no entry signs (which I don't think do anything so what's the point?) and a staff path going through the hard shelter. The guests do. not. care. I thought the staff path would be the ultimate trump card, but nope. Guests ignore all of their normal pathing blockades just to see that baby Macaque who's mother might just rip them to shreds if they keep intruding. What's a zoo manager to do in a situation like this?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3389144904

[Varick]

I assume you either do not want to change Sandbox setting to disable stress or you are in Franchise where changing that is not allowed. There is a solution.
When animal encounters are enabled, the guests are given the ability to roam anywhere within the habitat that is not physically blocked. So, based on your setup you can not keep them out of the shelter. While you can not change the rules of the encounter setup, you can amend the affects of the shelter. This is where walk in exhibits (available even in the base game) come in and I use them in my Franchise zoos.
Animals within walk in exhibits do not feel any stress regardless of the number of guests.
An empty walk in exhibit can be placed within a habitat, made invisible including the path,
and animals and staff can transverse it. It automatically acts as a shelter so no construction is needed unless you want that. Walk in exhibits are adjustable as they can straddle habitat barriers. No walk in exhibit critters like bats, butterflies, etc. are needed; just place an empty walk in exhibit and your Japanese Macaques are now free from stress.
There are other uses for them including as an Invisible shelter to provide a natural look to a Franchise Savannah habitat. If you want to see some examples, take a look at workshop zoo Peaceful Illusions. It is Sandbox but animal stress was not disabled. Hope this helps.

[Tonks]

For monkeys, you can create elevated shelters - like a little tree-house, or crow's nest so your macaques can hide up there free from over-keen zoo goers :)

[grampers62]

Do note that we can make ramps from the nongrid wall parts that guest will not go up but staff and animals will. Not sure why it works but must be related to the special tag encounter habitats have on their respective terrain area.

[Varick]

So many ways to handle situations in this game; the depth makes this one of my favorite games. :)

[grampers62]

Indeed! the variations of even basic things can make it seem like unlimited options in building just about everything in the game. And then still have a functioning zoo to manage while creating wonders.

[brednbuttr]

Thanks so much for the help <3 Will definitely be trying these out!