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Proper Queue Design
Author/Contributors:
Steve Franks
Now that happy peeps have queued up
for one of your rides, the very last thing you will want is to have
that happiness level drop while they are waiting in line. Bearing
this in mind, your first consideration when building a ride and
positioning the station platform is how long should a queue be?
Basically, this will be determined by the type of ride to be placed.
Flat Rides
 Most
Flat Rides (known as "spin and pukes" in Carnival lingo) work well
with a queue of 5 or more tiles. The two strategy guides suggest 5
to 10 tiles, but 7 tiles feels just right for most ride/station arrangements.
With this in mind, proper placement of a Flat Ride is important as
you will need to consider where to place the ride's entrance/exit
booths. It is recommended to place a Flat Ride at least 1 tile away
from the park pathway, and to locate the entrance on the back corner
of the ride. The exit booth should be placed at the front of the ride
and adjacent to the entrance queue. Having adjacent entrance/exit
paths encourages repeat ridership, allowing them to immediately re-enter
a ride for a second go round. This is very profitable planning!
 Illustration
1 shows the Carousel with both booths on the same side. This is
a good average queue. Illustration 2 is an example of a long queue.
The Dodge 'em car's entrance and exit booths are not on the same
side, but the exit is still placed adjacent to the entrance queue.
Peeps won't have to worry about finding the entrance if they want
a second go round.
The Ferris Wheel
 The
one notable exception to this 5 to 10 rule is the Ferris Wheel. This
Flat Ride is peculiar in the way it loads and unloads passengers.
Two peeps will enter and sit in the first gondola. The Wheel will
then spin twice (the default ride length) and stop to load the next
gondola. It will continue this cycle until all the gondolas are full.
The unloading procedure has the same 2 turns/1 gondola cycle. This
creates very long waiting times in even the shortest of queues. Try
to position the Ferris Wheel so as to keep queues limited to just
4 or 5 tiles. A long queue will quickly kill off your Ferris Wheel's
popularity and profitability.
 Illustrations
3 and 4 show two methods of setting the entrance booth and forming
the queue. Keep the Ferris Wheel queue very short.
Thrill Rides
This same entrance/exit booth placement
can be employed with most Thrill Rides as well. Again, it is best
to build the ride at least 1 blank tile away from the park pathway.
The recommended queue length is between 5 to 15 tiles. Personally,
I find 7 to 10 tiles works best in an average park. Occasionally
monitoring a queue's waiting time will help you in determining the
optimum length. You can do this by selecting the "people" tab on
the ride window. A good rule of thumb is to never allow more than
a 9 minute wait in the queue, otherwise peep happiness levels will
begin to suffer.
 Illustrations
5 & 6 show examples of short & long queues. This efficient handling
of queues will allow you to really pack in a lot of rides in a small
area.
Now that happy peeps have queued up
for one of your rides, the very last thing you will want is to have
that happiness level drop while they are waiting in line. Bearing
this in mind, your first consideration when building a ride and
positioning the station platform is how long should a queue be?
Basically, this will be determined by the type of ride to be placed.
High Capacity
Rides
 High
capacity rides, like Transport Rides, can swallow up a lot of peeps
per train load, so 10 to 20 tiles is best depending upon the type
of transport. For example, a long monorail can accept up to 60 peeps
at a crack! On the other hand, the Chair Lift handles only 24 passengers,
so a queue closer to 10 rather than 20 may be advisable. It will also
depend upon the length of the ride and speed of the chairs. Periodically
monitoring each ride's queue time will allow you to optimize the queue's
length. Always design your Transport Ride station placement so that
you can extend or trim your queue as the ride demand changes over
time.
 Illustrations
7 & 8 show methods of handling long queues for high capacity transport
rides like the steam train and monorail. Notice that the entrance
booths are midway between the passenger cars of both trains for
quick, efficient loading.
Roller Coasters
Roller coasters are
another ride that is high capacity in that the trains are long or
many, and the ride time is rather short. A queue of 12 to 20 tiles
is recommended. It is especially important to place the exit path
as near to the entrance queue as possible. Roller coasters are your
park's biggest and best money makers. Repeat ridership should be
encouraged with proper entrance queue and exit path placement. Personally,
nothing makes me happier than to see a peep get off my latest and
greatest coaster, jump for joy, and then immediately queue up for
a second and third go round.
 Illustration
9 of a Roller Coaster shows a 20 tile queue. One must became very
creative to pack in a such a long queue. Try to keep the queues
compact but "airy". Notice the different levels of the parallel
sections. Empty spaces in between also allow for trees to bump up
happiness levels. It is especially important with Roller Coasters
to try to keep the exit and entrance queue adjacent.
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