Mouthful of Fun

Another iconic Melbourne location: Luna Park. I've only ever been inside once.

Despite the fact that it's a fun park with rides and cotton candy, which you would think would be something really appealing to a kid, the face freaked me out, and I remember being really reluctant to go inside the one time I did actually go.

I mean, look at what it looks like at night! I'm surprised I managed to go inside at all! I wasn't really a fan of thrill rides at the time either, so it was just cotton candy that appealed to me. Not worth it!

I never realised this, but Melbourne's Luna Park isn't the only one, and it's actually based on another park on the famous Coney Island.

Just in case you can't read that, the first part says:

The first Luna Park was built at Coney Island New York in 1903. Melbourne's Luna Park was designed and built in 1912 by T.H. Eslick and 20 builders from Coney Island for North American Entrepreneurs.

The Great Scenic Railway is the world's oldest continually operating roller coaster, which I think is pretty amazing considering the fact that I never considered Australia to be particularly famous for its amusement parks.

I always like to see how prices for things change over time, so I took a photo of the price list. If I remember, I'll come back to this blog post in 10 years' time to see how things are different.

I don't know how much entry was at the time, but I vaguely remember it being $4 per ride when I was a kid, and that was over 20 years ago. Gosh, I feel really old now!

Since it was closed when I took this photo (we were in the area for the Openair Cinema. And before you cry foul that I took two photos in one day, the rule was that I could use any picture that was up to a week old. It's just the blog posts that have to be daily - and I've been pre-writing some, so they're just being published daily), I couldn't go inside, and I don't have that much else to write about the exterior.

So instead I'll write about one of the greatest games ever published: Rollercoaster Tycoon. That game, and Theme Hospital, were the games that made me fall in love with management sims. I loved playing those games on high speed and trying to deal with the frantic changes and various demands that would pop up. In some ways, it was my gateway drug into RTS games, since they're essentially management sims with combat.

I joke about liking to building rides that send people to their death, but the part of the game I loved the most was following certain people around and making sure all their needs are met. Every time I saw an unhappy visitor, I'd take it as a personal affront. Everyone must be happy! (This speaks volumes about my personality now, doesn't it?)

I always struggled with money in that game, because even though I would always get to the point where the satisfaction level justified raising prices, I would think about how $2 was a lot of money to me, and it was probably a lot of money to those virtual children, too. I didn't want them to have to spend all of their birthday money just so they could go to my park and ride a few rides. Yep, look at me shedding tears for virtual children. Is it any surprised that I decided to go into software engineering? I get enjoyment out of pleasing virtual people.

I downloaded the phone version of the game a few years ago, and for some reason, it didn't feel nearly as fun as I remembered as a kid. It was a cutdown version of the game, and you couldn't build your own custom rollercoasters. Oh, and you couldn't follow people around. Maybe that's why...