Guest
They don't work for you — but your entire park lives or dies by their mood.
The Guest is the beating heart of every RollerCoaster Tycoon park — the small, colorful visitor who strolls the pathways, queues for rides, and decides whether your empire thrives or crumbles. Unlike staff, guests are not employees; they are customers with their own desires, moods, and budgets, and their collective satisfaction is the single most important metric in the game.
Every guest carries a suite of internal stats — happiness, energy, nausea, hunger, thirst, and money — that drive their AI decisions. A guest who is happy, well-fed, and not too nauseous will happily ride your coasters and spend their money. One who is sick, hungry, or bored will leave, drag down your park value, and potentially spread negative word-of-mouth through the in-game news.
- Role
- Park visitor / customer (primary revenue source)
- Affiliation
- The park (non-employee entity)
- First appears
- RollerCoaster Tycoon (1999)
- Key stats tracked
- Happiness, Energy, Nausea, Hunger, Thirst, Money
- Influences
- Park value, ride popularity, guest count, news headlines
- AI drivers
- Seeks rides, food, drinks, toilets; avoids nausea; leaves if bored or unhappy
Lore & Background
In the RollerCoaster Tycoon world, guests are the lifeblood of the amusement park industry. They arrive at the park entrance with a certain amount of money, a baseline energy level, and a set of preferences for the types of rides they enjoy. As they wander the park, their internal meters shift: a thrilling coaster might spike their happiness but also their nausea; a long queue might drain their energy; a scorching afternoon might make them desperately thirsty.
Guests are not a monolith. They have individual budgets, and their spending habits reflect how much they have on hand. A guest with a full wallet will happily buy a large meal and a premium drink, while a guest with a few coins left will settle for a small snack. Their happiness is a composite of many small experiences — the quality of the rides, the cleanliness of the park, the availability of restrooms, and whether they've been stuck in a queue for too long.
The most dramatic guest behavior is the 'sick' state. After riding several intense coasters in quick succession, a guest's nausea meter can max out, causing them to vomit on the pathway. This is not merely a visual gag; it lowers their happiness, can make other nearby guests uncomfortable, and generates a negative news headline that deters future visitors. Managing nausea through pacing, rest areas, and gentle rides between thrill coasters is a core strategic concern.
In Their Own Story
The afternoon sun hung low over the park, casting long shadows across the main promenade. A small guest in a bright red shirt shuffled forward, her smiley-face icon flickering between content and slightly annoyed. She'd just finished her third coaster of the day, and the world was tilting gently to the left. Her nausea meter crept upward like a slow tide. She spotted the ice-cream stand near the fountain and made a beeline for it, her tiny pixel legs pumping with determination. Behind her, a queue for the new 'Thunderbolt' coaster stretched like a snake, and she could feel the pull of it — the thrill calling. But her stomach said no. She settled for the ice cream, let the cold sweetness settle the churning in her gut, and only then, with a small happy bounce, joined the back of the line. The park hummed around her, a symphony of squeaking chains and distant screams, and for one more ride, she was perfectly, blissfully in the right place.
Reader's Guide
Guests are the core economic engine of your park. Every ride ticket, every snack, every drink sold is a guest transaction, and your park value is heavily weighted by guest count and average happiness. Keep an eye on the guest statistics panel to see how many visitors are in the park and what their overall mood is.
The most common guest complaints revolve around three things: long queues, nausea from intense rides, and lack of amenities (toilets, food, drinks). If your guests are spending more time in queues than on rides, their happiness will plummet. If your thrill coasters are too close together with no gentle rides in between, nausea will build and you'll start seeing splatters on your pathways.
Practical tips: Space your thrill rides with milder attractions to let nausea reset. Place food, drink, and toilet facilities near high-traffic areas. Keep pathways clean — a sick guest vomiting nearby will lower the mood of everyone in the area. Monitor your guest count after major news events; a negative headline can cause a sudden drop in visitors. And remember: guests with more money spend more, so keeping their overall experience positive encourages them to stay longer and spend more per visit.
Did You Know?
- A guest's nausea meter is shared across all rides — riding three intense coasters back-to-back can push even the most thrill-seeking visitor to the point of vomiting on the pathway.
- Guests have individual money values, meaning not every visitor will spend the same amount on food, drinks, or ride tickets. A well-funded guest and a nearly-broke guest will make very different purchasing decisions.
- The guest count displayed in the park statistics directly influences your park's overall value rating, which is what the in-game investors and news reporters use to judge your success.
- In the game's AI, guests make route-finding decisions to seek out rides, food, drinks, and toilets — and if they can't find what they need within a reasonable distance, their happiness drops and they may leave the park e
More in Guests & Staff
Elsewhere in the RollerCoaster Tycoon universe
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