Mr Moon Luna Park Melbourne
It was the ultimate bribe. My three and five year olds were promised a trip to Melbourne’s iconic Luna Park if they managed to stay in their own beds for seven nights in total. Exhausted by 5 and a half years of interrupted sleep, and many attempts to rectify the situation I didn’t expect this bribe to work – but it did. Delivering on my promise last weekend we headed off to Luna Park together.
Luna Park has been entertaining visitors that enter through Mr Moon’s mouth with its amusements for a hundred and one years. Despite growing up in Melbourne I had never visited the amusement park as a child myself however. Luna Park functions as traditional amusement park, and is reminiscent of New York’s Coney Island. Entry is free however we found that visitors are slugged a fairly hefty fee to get on board the rides.
Single ride tickets are purchased by age. 0-3 year olds ride for $4.95, 4-12 year olds for $8.95 and over 13s for $10.95. Alternatively unlimited passes are $15.95, $37.97 or $47.95 respectively at peak times.
There are strict height restrictions in place, and my three year old was only tall enough to go on three rides as he is under 100cm tall (actually plenty of rides for him). The beautiful antique carousel, a mini train and a flying elephant ride were all accessible to tiny kids. He was allowed to be accompanied by a non-paying adult. Being pregnant I was not allowed to accompany him on the rides so it was fortunate my husband and sister had accompanied us. My five year old had many more ride options (as he is over 110cm tall) however he always had to be accompanied by a paying adult.
Thankfully my little guys were more than happy to soak up the ambience and were grateful for the two rides we allowed them (it would have cost over $100 for unlimited rides for my husband and boys, even with me out of action). Ultimately, Luna Park is an affordable outing for very little kids however, once kids are just a little older and bigger it becomes pricey. This is because four or five year olds really need to ride with their parents, but you then need to pay for both the child and supervising adult. A trip to Luna Park will become more economical with older children who are able to ride by themselves.
Given the success of the outing (and the bribe!) I suspect we will take the kids back to Luna Park, but once again with strict limits on the number of rides they are allowed. Our visit lasted about 1.5 hours – giving us plenty of time to also explore seaside St. Kilda.
Luna Park Melbourne is located at 18 Lower Esplanade St. Kilda. It is open weekends, school holidays and public holidays from 11am.
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Bub 2 very happy to be riding the carousel with his aunty Sisi.
But the burning question… did they continue to stay in their own beds afterwards??
So far so good Bronwyn. Glad we pulled out the big guns bribe wise as we have a new baby arriving in 2 weeks that will be sleeping in our room in a crib. Couldn’t bear the thought of having all three of them interrupt my sleep.
Thank you for the post. We took our kids (one 3 year old and 2 18 month olds) to Luna Park in Sydney and although there was plenty the 3 year could enjoy the girls missed out and were quite upset. I agree that it can get quite expensive.
I think I was very lucky that my kids were happy with just a couple of rides – the younger could easily have felt hard done by if they weren’t.
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