Why I was never cut out to run a good Theme Park
Theme Park (1994)
Theme Park (1994)
Ever the go-getter, my interest was piqued by a recent newspaper ad I saw, looking to hire a new manager for a theme park. I thought I’d apply - why not? I had nothing to lose, and nothing but time in my unemployment. In any case, I was still waiting to hear back on second interviews for several lion-taming roles – I had to do something with my college degree, after all.
And wouldn’t you know it, the Theme Park CEO, Mr. Wildthroat, got back to me almost straightaway with a call to interview. I thought I’d mosey on over, see what was occurring. I was determined to impress Mr. Wildthroat, because I thought running a theme park would be a great laugh. Also, I was on my final warning with the unemployment office.
“Here’s the suss, Burkey,” the heavy-set, leather-tanned man in the three-piece double-breasted ivory suit said, as he took me into his office and gave me a strong, two-armed handshake, his gold bullion dancing and jangling all about. “We need you to build us a theme park.”
“It sounds very good, Mr. Wildthroat sir. And I think I can do it. I’ve been on loads of roller coasters, and my favourite is the teacups. I can handle children too, give them a few slaps even,” I countered, ready to explain the finer details on my CV - especially my weaknesses. Employers loved asking about weaknesses, and I had lots of them that I was prepared to talk about for days on end.
“Not really an option I’m afraid, Burkey. too many sensitive parents about nowadays. In the old days, oh yes, you could smack the children around and make them buy the plasters from you. But it ain’t really the done thing anymore. And please, call me Archie. Shall we step outside?”
I was thrilled to be hired of course, though I began to smell a rat when Archie brought me out to a massive plot of land where there was a crumbling gate, a short concrete path, acres of grass and not much else.
“Do you… do you own all this land, Archie?” I quivered. His eyes narrowed.
“There’s nobody around to claim it. Do you understand me? There’s nobody around to claim it.”
“Yes Archie,” I lied, nodding sagely. I didn’t want to rock the boat, so I thought it best to keep quiet about the whole thing. It was this kind of sharp thinking that had gotten me to this stage in my career.
“Listen, I’m giving you two hundred grand to build a theme park for us. Get the punters in, a load of snotty kids really, but they’re loaded, some of ‘em. They need a friendly face waiting to fleece them. Overload the cheap, off-brand soda with ice. Make the burgers more fat than beef. Pump rainwater into the ice creams, that sort of thing. Can you do it?”
I sort of thought that this was an impossible task, since I remember reading that the best roller coasters in the world cost millions to create, a bit more than two-hundred thou. But that’s what I was hired to do. No way was I gonna let Archie down.
“Yeah Archie. I can do it. You leave it to me,” I said. Then I quickly whipped around behind me to see who said that, who could possibly have told such a brazen lie on my behalf. He fixed me a smile from ear to ear.
“Goody gumdrops. Look, you won’t be alone. I know you’re a bit of an amateur at this, so we’ll get an advisor in to help you. He’ll set you up on the Sega machine. He knows what it’s all about. Never stops reminding you actually, so maybe do yourself a favour and listen to him, because I certainly don’t. I’m just the guy with the dosh.”
“Well, take it easy Burkey, but remember – if you lose my money, the sea is no distance. Keep that in mind Burkey, the sea is no distance.” With that, Archie stepped into an armoured car and hunkered down in the back seat so that I couldn’t see him anymore.
I waved him off, then turned to our new kingdom, in the United Kingdom as it happened. Archie was keen for me to get the park gates open quick, but I always liked a bit of time to get myself settled in. So I arrived at my new ground floor office, stuck some circus music on, and had my usual mid-morning nap.
I needn’t have bothered getting comfy though, because this advisor guy was all over me, telling me about ticket prices and how we needed to build rides and shops and hire staff. Crikey, I thought, that all sounds a bit urgent. But there was a minivan full of kids out there, circling the park endlessly, so it was probably time I gave them something to shout about.
But wow, inflation or what? That 200k Archie gave me didn’t go far at all. I’m not much of an “ideas man”, so I didn’t have many ideas for theme park attractions beyond a bouncy castle, a treehouse, and a wooden outhouse that nobody used. After that, I needed to bring in some researchers to come up with ideas for exciting, innovative new things to build, like burger shops. But their big brains were costing us a fortune.
After a few months in, the math wasn’t mathing. That’s what I said to the lads when they came to me looking for a pay-rise. What? In this economy? That’s what Archie had told me to say, if the staff started acting up. Actually, he said he used to have them buried - I presume he meant “buried under a load of work.”
Well anyway, all my greedy workers went on strike, but no hassle. I thought me and the advisor could just run the place ourselves. But then, boy, things really started going wrong. We had no cleaners, and those feral children took full advantage of this; they started throwing their wrappers and cups everywhere. They even started vomiting all over the place, particularly in my designated rip-off zones, where we sold the highest amounts of sludgy coffee and balloons filled with carbon-dioxide.
God, the place stank, but that was OK - I thought smelliness and sliminess were always surefire winners with kids. But by now, all the smiles, even the malevolent ones, had disappeared from their faces. And there was no-one there to put the smiles back, my park’s entertainers having gone on strike. They even took their juggling balls and balloon animals with them.
It was the loss of the mechanics that was most keenly felt, in my opinion. Actually, that was moreso the opinion of the investigative team after the Ferris wheel blew up and the roller coaster sort of “unzipped itself”, to use a scientific expression. I did not tell them about the many, many go-karts I purposely shot into the wall by strategically deleting parts of the track.
Well, why complicate their investigation? Anyway, no harm in it. “Have a bit of fun while you’re there, old son, enjoy yourself,” Archie had told me. “But see if you can’t knock the place out for a bit of profit at the end of the year.”
Yes, the end of the year, when the inspectors came and gave their valuation of the park. But not before handing out the Theme Park awards - I won Most Expensive Park and Most Rustic Park. After that, it was time to value the park and get it ready for auction.
Well, knock me down with a feather, but it seemed that the evaluators couldn’t do maths either. According to them, our park was worth less now than when it was just an empty plot of land. Not only that, but inflation was spinning out of control, and I wasn’t talking about those sulphuric balloons we were selling.
This led to a slightly bad day when Archie called me in a raging panic. “Have you done my money, Burkey? If you haven’t turned a profit by next year, mate, you’ll be at the bottom of that log flume with an axe in your face”. It sounded like a threat, but he hung up before I could get any of my pre-prepared excuses in.
But what could I do? My Sega system was lagging like crazy, once all that litter accumulated and the grass, flowers and weeds were growing like wildfire. I suppose it would have been better to try the DOS or SNES or DS systems to build my park, but what did I know about technology?
We were also completely out of money; no matter how much I rigged the Hook-A-Duck and Shooting Range games, it wasn’t coming in fast enough. Only when it was too late did I recall Archie’s bit of advice to me: “Never go into business without cheating, Burkey. You can’t make money without cheats.”
I didn’t forget everything he told me, though. So when I saw Archie’s gold-plated Rolls-Royce thundering up the road one day, and I knew that it would on me to tell him that we’d just declared bankruptcy, I knew my fate was sealed.
I’d had some great fun with the whole Theme Park game; loads of variety, a bit of strategy, a nice sense of progression, and lots of strange music and sounds. But now, it was all over. I had blown it. Nothing else for it - I pulled open the window, steeled myself, had one last think about how building that monorail was probably a stupid idea. And then I jumped. Thankfully, it wasn’t a long way down.
29 August 2025