Running a zoo isn’t easy, and many factors can conspire to reduce your zoo’s overall rating, the exhibits’ suitability scores and guests’ happiness. Since many scenarios require you to attain specific scores in certain areas, we thought we’d highlight some of the things you should pay attention to.
 Build the right exhibit — or get as close as you can — before you place animals in it. If you buy the animals first, they will immediately become unhappy because the exhibit won’t be suited to them. This will in turn make the guests unhappy because they don’t like to see sad animals. If the exhibit’s unsuitability continues too long, the National Organization of Zoos steps in and won’t allow you to adopt more animals until you fix the problem.
Every so often, the game looks at each exhibit to see if the conditions are right for breeding. If an exhibit meets the criteria, the game randomly decides if the animals will breed. To speed up this process, you can increase how often the game checks an exhibit’s conditions by taking the animals out and putting them back in or repeatedly saving and reloading your zoo. You can also increase your odds of successful breeding by having multiple exhibits with the same animals, instead of just one.
While the game is paused, you can still build exhibits, place amenities, hire staff, and adopt animals. Use the pause button to get your zoo up to speed before letting guests enter, or when you want to make major renovations.
Save money by not buying anything until you need it. For example, don’t put in food and drink stands (or restaurants) until you see complaints that your guests are hungry and thirsty. And don’t hire maintenance workers right away as they won’t have much to do at first but you’ll have to pay their salaries anyway.
Restaurants are more worthwhile to build than food stands because they contain bathrooms, seats and trash cans, three things you have to install separately after building stands. This will give you more room for other amenities.
If an animal is unhappy but its zookeeper advice box is empty, consider moving the exhibit if it’s the type that prefers solitude. As your zoo gets busier, those kinds of animals get agitated by all the passersby. If you move them to a remote corner of the zoo, however, not as many guests will walk by their exhibits.
You can join exhibit walls to the zoo’s outer walls and save on construction costs.
Make your pathways four squares wide between exhibits or you will experience bottlenecks in the foot traffic, which will not only make guests unhappy but also prevent zookeepers from reaching the exhibits.
If you assign a zookeeper to more than one exhibit, make sure they’re close to each other, or it will take her longer to complete her rounds, which will in turn allow the exhibits to stay dirtier longer. And dirty exhibits can make animals sick.
It’s nice to add little islands of land in exhibits that contain penguins, crocodiles and other land/water animals, but make sure the zookeepers aren’t cut off from them. The animals will probably go to the bathroom on the islands, and if the zookeepers can’t clean up the mess your animals will start to get sick.
Sometimes Santa Claus will fly over your zoo during December. In October, look for a witch on a broom. On January 1st, you may see some hung-over guests.
If an animal keeps escaping, try using the terrain tool to lower the ground a little bit. That will make the fence too high for the animal to jump over, and you won’t have to spend money on a new fence. It will also prevent the animals from running loose if the fence deteriorates on its own (which it will do over time).
Moats also help keep non-swimming animals from running free. Make sure, though, that you leave a grid square of ground in front of the exhibit entrance so that your staff can get in and out.
Guests consider an admission price of $19 to be cheap, which means you’ll attract more visitors to your park. Set your price at $19 at the beginning of the game (they don’t perceive anything less than $19 to be more attractive, so don’t go below that amount) and then raise it later, once your zoo is established.
Build a compost building in the furthest corner of the map when the game starts. Your zookeepers don’t need to walk to it to use it, and it will convert piles of animal waste into money.
Guests prefer exhibits with multiple animals in them, so pair up the large ones and group together 4-6 of the small ones, but make sure the enclosure is large enough. The only exception to this rule is some of the dinosaurs in Dino Digs.
Animals need a certain number of grid squares in their exhibits to be happy, but they don’t care about the overall shape. And keep in mind the fact that guests can only “see” 10 grid squares into an exhibit, so they don’t need to be any deeper than that.
Guests enter your zoo with a 75 happiness rating. In some scenarios you need to sustain a minimum happiness rating among the guests, so one trick to keep it high is to briefly increase the admission price to an outlandish amount, such as $100 or more. Less guests means less chances for unhappy ones who can pull down your overall score.
Certain buildings, such as Japanese gardens, will make your guests happy, but you should first focus on creating a large amount of varied animal exhibits as they are key to your guests’ satisfaction.
In Marine Mania, grandstands must be one grid square away from the show tanks or guests won’t enter them. You should also place the grandstands near high-traffic areas, such as food courts, to attract as many guests as possible to the shows and keep their ratings high.
You can save a little money in Marine Mania by having marine specialists clean the tanks instead of buying filters, but monitor the situation carefully so that the animals don’t get sick. You may need to fork over the dough for filters anyway.
Cheat If You Must
Stumped? Then you may need some help, thanks to the cheat codes that are commonly placed in most videogames. They allow you to, well, cheat and change the rules. This sometimes includes activating bonuses, unlocking secrets and new levels of gameplay.
To enable the cheats in Zoo Tycoon, follow the instructions below. To rename a guest, park employee, or animal, simply click on it to bring up an information window (if you have another function active at that moment, press the Escape key to clear it so that you can click on your target). Click and drag to highlight the generic name (Guest 471 or Zookeeper 5 or Grizzly Bear 2, for example) and then type in the new name, without the quotes. You should see the results instantly.
To rename an exhibit, click on its gate to bring up the information window.
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The Codes
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Rename a guest “Adam Levesque” — Research all animal care topics
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Rename a guest “Alfred H” — Make birds appear and terrorize the guests
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Rename a guest “Akiyama” — Unlock all scenarios
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Rename a guest “Andrew Binder” — Research all animal shelters and programs
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Rename a guest “John Wheeler” — Unlock all animal shelters
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Rename a guest “Lou Catanzaro” — Unlock all animal toys
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Rename a guest “Mr. X,” where “X” is the name of the color — Change the color scheme of the guests and buildings to blonde, blue, brown, orange, pink, or white
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Rename a guest “Russell C” — Break all the fences
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Rename a guest “Steve Serafino” — Unlock all endangered animals
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Rename a guest “Zeta Psi” — Make some of your guests turn green and throw up
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Rename an exhibit “Blue Fang” — Double the amount paid at attractions
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Rename an exhibit “Cretaceous Corral” — Access the triceratops
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Rename an exhibit “Microsoft” — Double exhibit donations
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Rename an exhibit “Xanadu” — Access the unicorn
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Create an exhibit with an African lion, a Bengal tiger, and a grizzly bear (in that order) — Access the yellow brick path
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Rename a male maintenance worker “Bob V” — Automatically repair all fences
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Rename a female tour guide “Rosalie” — Make all tour guides work for free
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Press the Shift and 4 keys at the same time — Get an extra $10,000 (but damage your fences in the process)
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Rename a guest “Charlie Peterson” — Unlock all foliage
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Rename it “Deer” — Turn a bear into an escape artist
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Look at the Pretty Colors.
Dress up your zoo any way you want.
Educational Value. Use exhibits to teach your guests about dinosaurs; just hope they can use that knowledge to good use if the beasts get loose.
That Koala’s a Cutie, Mate. Erect a variety of fun and interesting buildings.
All the Amenities. Provide your guests with everything you’d find in a real zoo, including pretty fountains and a food court.
Water Sports. Use the Marine Mania expansion pack to create aquatic exhibits.
How Much is That Stegosaurs in the Window? Breed your dinosaurs for fun and
profit.
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