The Circus (referred to as "Circus Show" in RCT1) is a Gentle Ride added with RCT1's Corkscrew Follies DLC and is available in all future installments.

(Alligatoren-Show in Heide-Park)

“Circus animal show inside a big top tent.” - In-game description.

Technical Information

Stats

• Base Excitement Rating: 2.10
• Base Intensity Rating: 0.30
• Base Nausea Rating: 0.05

Stat Contribution Values

• Excitement Rating Value Multiplier: 20
• Intensity Rating Value Multiplier: 10
• Nausea Rating Value Multiplier: 9
• Soft Guest Cap Contribution: 39

Building Information

• Size: 3x3
• Base Cost: $500.00
• Cost of Supports (per unit per tile): $1.00
• Support Height Limit (ft/m/height units): 20ft/6m/+4

Other Information

• Guest Capacity: 30
• Sheltered?: Yes

Building a Circus

The Circus is a 3x3 flat ride, which is the typical flat ride size. It cost of $500.00 is the second-highest of all Gentle flat rides, though this is obviously still very cheap.

The Circus has a support limit of only 4 units off the ground, which ties it with the Monorail Cycles, Magic Carpet, 3D Cinema, and Swinging Inverter Ship, for having the lowest support limit of any ride in the game. This won't usually come into play since flat rides tend to be built on flat ground, but it can sometimes be a problem in parks with deep bodies of water. In Iceberg Islands for example, the entirety of the water is deep enough to where building the Circus over it is impossible if you don't do some terraforming first. It also means that if you need to build rides on top of other rides to conserve space (as is the case in parks like Micro Park), you'll need to keep the support limit differences in account when determining where to build the rides.

Below is a demonstration of the Circus's low support limit in relation to other Gentle flat rides.

One other disadvantage of the Circus its building clearance is much higher than you might expect. Even though the ride's sprite is only slightly taller than the Merry-Go-Round, the path needs to be built twice as tall to build over it. If the park is cluttered and you don't have much space to build your rides around your other rides, the Circus will very likely get in the way. This also means that the Circus is not ideal for the "ride-stacking" strategy since building over it would require a flat ride with a support limit of at least 8 height units. The only Gentle flat rides with a support limit high enough for that are the Merry-Go-Round, Crooked House, and Space Rings... and two of those are two of the worst flat rides in the game.

While the rides runs, you can hear the sound of seals, a lion, an elephant, and a variety of songs. The songs that play in the Circus come from the "Series 4000 Hollywood Sounds Effects Library", which is album with over 2000 royalty-free sound effects released in 1989 by Sound Ideas. There is no way to turn them off.

Although the ride does not appear to have any mechanical nature, it can still break down.

Stats

The Circus has an above-average (for Gentle Ride standards) base Excitement Rating of 2.10, a very low Intensity Rating of 0.30 and a non-existent Nausea Rating of 0.00. It is one of very few rides in the game with no stat modifier values at all, meaning that it will always have these exact same stats every single time you build it. The game's coding even describes this as "NoModifier".

This makes is a very easy ride to mindlessly build wherever you want, but it also means that more advanced players can't take advantage of the ride stat mechanics to increase its ticket price. The ride lives or dies by how strong it is with this configuration.

Its BonusValue (which plays a role in determining the ride's ticket price, and determines how much it contributes to your park's Soft Guest Cap) is 39, which is above average for a Gentle Ride. It also makes it one of only three rides in the entire game (along with the Crooked House and Haunted House) with a BonusValue that isn't divisible by 5.

Throughput and Profit

This is an area where the Circus is mostly quite bad. It has a very low Excitement multiplier value of 20, which in turn means that its maximum ticket price is lower than most other Gentle Rides.

In spite of having several downsides, the Circus does have two big upsides. The first is the fact that, being that it's inside a tent, the ride is sheltered meaning that guests will ride it in the rain. Its other big upside is its huge capacity of 30 guests. This will be especially useful for parks with the Cool and Wet climate since overcrowding can become a problem if it rains, and the Circus's ability to keep a lot of guests in a compact space will combat this.

Each circus show lasts about 2 minutes. Because of its long ride time with no one boarding it in-between, getting an exact number of guests per hour is difficult since the "Customers" statistic on the ride window will fluctuate quite drastically. If I let the ride for a full in-game year, the ride accumulated about 600 to 650 guests in one year (the extra 10 guests comes from using the Hyper Speed setting making it impossible to be precise with time).

If we assume it takes 650 guests in one year running with the ride's 5-13 month old price of $0.80, it would make a total of $470 that year. This is quite low, and it will get even lower over time, so you can't rely on the Circus to help for the park.

Verdict

In spite of its high guest capacity, the Circus is a below-average gentle ride due to its low maximum ticket price and slow throughput. In parks where guests pay for the rides, the Circus is quite weak.

In parks where guests pay for the entrance though, it becomes a lot better as its rain protection and high guest capacity will shine a lot more. In rainy parks, having a sheltered ride with a high guest capacity is also very useful.

Other Gentle Rides

[to come soon]