I haven’t been playing Planet Coaster 2 for very long—just a couple of months—and it’s been a rather bumpy ride. This isn't because of the game itself. I know it wasn’t well-received at launch, but I believe Frontier has made a lot of improvements. No, the bumpy ride is entirely because of my tendency to rush!

As you know from my Planet Zoo posts, I’m not a huge fan of career scenarios. I find them constricting, so I tend to ignore them. Planet Coaster 2 is no exception.

But—and it’s a pretty big BUT—there’s a lot more engineering in Planet Coaster. Even though I know many of the game mechanics from Planet Zoo, my sandbox experiments haven’t gone well so far. That failure has driven me back to the career scenarios to learn a little more patience. My intention now is to finish each scenario to Gold level. Hopefully, I'll learn enough along the way to make my sandbox builds much more rewarding.

Back to Basics

I’m currently on the final stage of the second introductory scenario (yes, I really did mean I was starting over!). The park owners have rewarded me with an empty piece of land to build:

• Two flat rides
• One coaster
• One pool
• Two flumes

The plot of land isn’t huge, so I need to plan well. I also need to achieve an overall park rating of 2.50.

First things first: I need to place power distributors so that I can power everything I build. I’m probably going to need at least one power generator too, but I’ll hold off on that until it’s absolutely necessary.

The theme of the rest of the park looks to be aquatic, so I’ll stick with that. Different theming in different areas can look messy if it’s not handled well, and there isn’t enough room here for proper transitions.

So, I need two flat rides that I can theme to fit the area without taking up too much space—or money! I could use pre-themed flat rides from the Blueprints, but that’s not nearly as much fun for me.

Diving into the Scenery

I’ve gone with Buoyancy for my first ride since it already has a watery theme—clever, huh?

Initially, I’m focusing on the fencing to improve my scenery score. If I’ve learned anything from my failed experiments so far, it’s how much fencing (especially self-built fencing) improves your rating. The more pieces I use, the more that score rises!

I’ve also learned to check the prices and timing on my rides so guests don’t ignore them. If they are too expensive, guests walk away. If they are too cheap, the queues are too long.

To start, I usually use these management settings:

• Ticket Price: Bargain
• Minimum Load: Any Load
• Minimum Wait: 30 seconds
• Maximum Wait: 60 seconds

Then comes the fun part: scenery!

Just adding aquatic-themed fencing to the ride and the queue boosted my scenery rating to 62%. I then added coral, seaweed, and a few other pieces, which bumped the score up to 75%. I’m happy with that for now. The only other flat ride currently in the park has a score of just 17%, so I’ll probably need to give that a boost later to hit my overall 2.50 park goal.

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Over to you!

Do you prefer to use blueprints, or do you like to theme your own flat rides? Any handy hints on how to max out a scenery bonus? Let me know in the comments below!