The Observation Tower is a Gentle Ride featured in RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 and all future installments.

(Cloud Nine in Dinky Park)

“Passengers travel in a rotating observation cabin which travels up a tall tower.” - In-game description.

Technical Information

Stats

• Base Excitement Rating: 1.50
• Base Intensity Rating: 0.00
• Base Nausea Rating: 0.10

Stat Contribution Values

• Excitement Rating Value Multiplier: 80
• Intensity Rating Value Multiplier: 10
• Nausea Rating Value Multiplier: 0
• Soft Guest Cap Contribution: 45

Building Information

• Cost of Station Piece on Fully Flat Ground: $148.00
• Cost of Straight Track Piece on Fully Flat Ground: $18.00 (Vanilla RCT2)/$18.50 (OpenRCT2)
• Cost of Supports (per unit per tile): $0.00
• Support Height Limit: None*

*The ride itself has no support height limit, but the game has a hard cap on how tall anything can be built above standard ground level, which everything in the game is bound by. This limit is 600ft/182m/+120.

Other Information

• Guest Capacity: 20 (Base Variant)/32 (Double Deck Variant/Blob From Outer Space)
• Sheltered?: Yes

Building an Observation Tower

The Observation Tower is just like all of the other "tower" rides in the game (Elevator, Launched Freefall, and Roto-Drop) in that in consists of a 3x3 station, and a 1x1 track in the center of the station that travels upwards, meaning that it doesn't take up much space in the park and can easily be built around. Additionally, like the aforementioned other tower rides, it has no support limit and no support cost, so you can build it as high as you want.

The Observation Tower has three different vehicle types:

1. Single-Deck Cabin
2. Double-Deck Cabin
3. Blob From Outer Space

The Single-Deck Cabin comes from RCT1's base game, whereas the Double-Deck Cabin comes from RCT2's base game, and the Blob From Outer Space comes from RCT2's Time Twister expansion pack.

All cabins move at the same exact speed of 4mph (6km/h) when empty and about 0.5mph slower when full. The Single-Deck Cabin and Blob From Outer Space can both hold 20 guests, whereas the Double-Deck Cabin can hold 32. The Double-Deck Cabin does not move any slower than the other two when full despite the 60% increase in guest capacity.

The Double-Deck Cabin and Blob From Outer Space vehicles also have a +2% Excitement bonus, but there is absolutely no reason to use any of the other cabin types over the Double-Deck one if it's available.

The Observation Tower has no support limit, so you can build it all the way to the height limit of the game. This will give it extra stats, allowing you to charge more for it, however this also gives the ride a lower throughput. It has no length requirement, meaning that, despite its purpose, building a short Observation Tower does carry as large of a penalty as you might expect. The smallest Observation Tower has the best ratio of income to ride time, so it’s probably the best way to build them. Guests cannot use Observation Towers to help with pathfinding.

You do need at least one straight track piece on the tower though as building one with no straight track pieces results in some odd behavior where the tower piece will reach the top, start vibrating, and never travel back down.

Stats

The Observation Tower has some very interesting stat properties and some of the highest stat bonuses in the game.

It gains a very solid Excitement from being near other rides, but the Observation Tower notably has the highest BonusScenery Excitement value of any ride in the game at 83,662.

To demonstrate the practical effect of this, here are two identical Observation Towers. Both of them are built 400ft upwards. The white one has no scenery around it, whereas the red one has maxed out the scenery bonus.

As a result of the scenery bonus, the red Observation Tower is able to jump up almost 3 entire points of Excitement exclusively due to its high SceneryBonus value. By taking advantage of these stat bonuses, you can easily make an Observation Tower with more Excitement than a standard roller coaster (although due to its low throughput, it will never have the profit of one).

The ride appears to be coded to have a penalty to its Excitement rating if too much of the track is underground. However, for some reason, this doesn't work. Even if the entire tower is built underground, the ride will never get an Excitement penalty.

Throughput and Profit

As mentioned previously, the most optimal way of building an Observation Tower is counter-intuitively and ironically, to build it short as possible. This however, is not a requirement for it to be a good moneymaker.

Here, we have an observation tower that is built 350ft up. This gives it a base Excitement, Intensity, and Nausea of 3.47, 0.00, and 0.99 respectively.

This results in a 5-13 month old price of $6.40 in OpenRCT2, or $7.40 in all of the vanilla games. Its customers per hour will tend to fluctuate between 480 and 720 guests per hour, which averages to 600 guests per hour. If I let the ride run for an in-game year, it will average to about 720 guests though.

With 720 guests riding the ride with the game's 5-13 month old price for one in-game year, this equates to a little over $4,500.00 of maximum profit from this normal Observation Tower. By taking advantage of the scenery bonus, you can charge even more and get back the money spent on the scenery in little time.

Additionally, since it is a sheltered ride, a rainstorm will not hamper its profits.

Verdict

The Observation Tower is a strong Gentle Ride due to its high scenery bonus, compact tower shape, and rainstorm protection. It's a good ride to build, and it becomes even better with the aforementioned scenery bonus.

Other Gentle Rides

[to come soon]