Build Your Own Theme Park

Tapscape: Happy Park (originally titled Happy Theme Park) is Infinidy Corp’s latest social game release. In this game, you begin with a Ferris Wheel and attempt to build up a profitable and exciting amusement park, complete with a mascot, decorations and shops.

Like most building games, the point is to raise currency from your attractions to be able build more attractions. In Happy Park, the rides generate coins, experience (for leveling and thereby unlocking new features) and customer population (needed to bring in more revenue).

Some of the park rides turn over profits at a set time, every two hours, for example. Others must be manually run, with a variety of lenghts ranging from ten minutes to 24 hours. The longer the ride runs, the more it generates. With this type of ride, though, the coins/exp/pop must be collected within a certain window of time or it “expires”. In this can, all revenue from it is lost, unless 1 “buck” (the currency bought with real money) is used to revive it.

Rides can be upgraded, to generate more revenue, but it takes some time to complete and only one can be upgraded at a time. A second super upgrade slot can be purchased, but it takes bucks to do so. Super upgrades are needed to unlock another feature of the game: research. In Happy Park, when certain rides are super upgraded, two can be “researched” together to produce a special ride.

The quests are a nice feature of Happy Park. They are mainly just “build this” or “upgrade that” type of quests, but they give you direction and purpose when planning out your park. There are so many rides, decorations and shops available, that it can be overwhelming at times. Having the quests gives some guidelines to follow, or not. Fulfilling quests results in coins or the occasional buck, experience and badges. Badges can be spent on fantastic attractions which will be the focal point of the park.

The social aspect of Happy Park is light, compared with similar games in the genre. You can search for and invite friends through Facebook, Twitter or your address book. You can visit the parks of your friends or a random neighbor. At this point, other than picking up some trash here and there, no benefits are to be had from visiting parks, but it is nice to see how other people have designed their park.

There are also some quests which give premium awards for inviting friends and adding friends, but these are not imperative to the game and Happy Park can be played flying solo. I experienced some difficulty connecting to Facebook after the most recent patch, which was the one that was supposed to fix the Facebook problems other people were having.

Happy Park uses a mix of animated and still graphics for the park rides, which keeps the park from looking too busy. The colors are loud and the overall look is “cutesy”, and teamed with the carnival-style it works to create an bright amusement park feel.

Two problems stood out for me. One is that Happy Park can not be played offline. Annoyingly, this has become almost standard for most social building games, but it is still frustrating to not be able to steal a few minutes to pick up revenue when you have 5 minutes to kill. The other was the overwhelming pop-up ads when logging on. You’re generally met with three ads, stacked on top of each other, all promising bucks if you follow through: invite friends, rate the game and download the day’s “App Surprise”.

Bottom line: Happy Park has a lot to offer with a variety of building and decorating, and a theme that is different from other building games. Losing revenue from the manual rides and the amount of ads will most likely drive away some players.

Big Theme Park Thrills on a Small Budget

Journal&Topics: Since The Cyclone first drew thrill-seekers to Coney Island in 1884, theme parks have become an ultimate family destination. Today, the U.S. boasts more than 400 amusement parks, and with summer's heat and crowds subsiding, now's the ideal time to plan a trip to the rides.

However, hauling the whole family somewhere, especially to a theme park, can turn into a big budget buster. These five tips can save you money so you can make your theme park vacation a reality. Your kids (and your bank account) will thank you.

1. Opt for a regional park

Fifty percent of Americans plan to visit an amusement park within the next 12 months, according to a survey by the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions. While national theme-park chains may have the most marketing dollars to spend on advertising, visitors can bag great savings and avoid major crowds by hitting up smaller regional theme parks. At Carowinds, a 337-acre park that straddles the North and South Carolina border, prices start at $42 for a single-day ticket when purchased online. Colorado's Elitch Gardens Theme & Water Park costs about $38, also when purchased online. In comparison, a day at Disney World will set you back $85 for each person age 10 and older. Many regional parks offer discounted tickets, so check local businesses like banks and grocery stores for special offers.

2. Buy online

Consumers also can save a significant amount of money by purchasing tickets online before visiting rather than purchasing admission at the gate. Some regional parks offer more than $10 off, and even bigger parks, such as Six Flags Magic Mountain in Los Angeles, offer an online special for $25 off the general admission price. Search the Internet for the theme park name plus "discount" or "coupon," however make sure you are dealing with a reputable website before purchasing.

3. Go after 4 p.m.

Some parks offer deep discounts on "Twilight Tickets" that are valid during evening hours. If the park is open until 10 p.m., that means you can spend up to six hours in the park without the sun beating down on you (a double bonus of savings and comfort).

4. Watch extra costs

It's easy to plan for known costs like airfare, hotel and admission tickets. It's the little things that will get you: $15 a day parking, $6 bottles of water and $10 funnel cakes. Buying burgers and fries for a family of four might cost you the price of a nice steak dinner at home. Saving for the trip ahead of time and being conscious of prices while in the park can help alleviate the money headache once the gates shut behind you.

5. Travel during the off-season

Another easy way to save money is to travel when others aren't. Away.com's Theme Park Survival Guide defines off-season for theme parks as anytime that's not summer, weekends or holidays. Parks might not offer substantially lower priced tickets, but you will most certainly find cheaper airfare. If you are staying overnight, check out members-only flash sales like "Insider Steals" for hotel deals from companies like Orbitz.com. Such members-only programs typically require a customer to sign up for emails - but the steep discounts go with it. Also look for specials at local restaurants that can offer even bigger savings than discounted tickets. Plus, in many areas the weather is better in the spring, fall or even winter (i.e. Florida), and the parks are a lot less crowded, meaning you can go on Batman The Ride as many times as your heart desires.

Playing Word Detective- Haters

The terms 'hater' or 'haters' once seemed like silly things that Laura Conrad and Heidi Montag would say on the MTV series "The Hills," but it is literally coming up all over the place, even in respectable media outlets, as of late.

The images here are of two fellow Turkish-Americans: the bald guy with the glasses is the Rev. Ergun Caner, who is four years older than me, and the other is of Cenk Uygur, a progressive talk show host who was also born in March of 1970 as I was. We will get to why you chose them for this piece, but I will say to those of you from Eskisehir, Turkey, who have never read this blog before that I definitely favor Uygur's view of the world more.

First, lets look at two instances when the term hater came up in two unexpected places this week. The first was when Fox News commentator Juan Williams, formerly of NPR, whose views of the world make him seem like Christopher Hitchens, David Brooks and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Ct.), all of whom seem to be contrarians, gave an interview with media journalist Howard Kurtz in "Newsweek."

Williams is presumably a conservative (or perhaps a centrist), but he has reportedly criticized fellow Fox News personality Sean Hannity as being too extreme. During his interview with Kurtz, Williams identified those who felt his views should be more liberal because he is African-American as 'haters.'

This week, I also read an article/opinion piece by another contrarian Martin Peretz of "The New Republic," who identifies himself as a liberal but his staunch Zionism make his views come across as a conservative. As much as I admire Peretz and the magazine he once owned (which is the "TNR"), this article which clearly had elements of Arab-bashing made me realize why Eric Alterman of the very liberal magazine "The Nation" accused Peretz of being a racist, though I would not go that far.

Peretz used the term haters for Moslems who don't like Israel in the article, which was also very critical of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and he went on to say that the Arab Spring will not likely bring about that many long-term major changes in places like Egypt or Syria. This sentiment, which I can in some ways sympathize with, does however sound like an argument made those on the far-left that there are no real differences between Obama and George W. Bush. Uh-huh.

And, haters is also used in religious circles as well. The Rev. Steven Furtick, a mega-church minister in Charlotte, NC, who seems to taking over the Queen City the way Godzilla took over Tokyo, has used the term haters to describe those who are criticizing him for merchandizing religion. But, with 7,000 worshippers on four, soon to be six, mega-church campuses, the assesment, even from an objective standpoint, seems fairly valid.

This brings us to the Rev. Ergun Caner, a former Liberty University dean, who has allegedly used the term hater for those disagree with him. Ironically, this includes Moslems who did not appreciate his Islam-bashing book that came out a year after September 11th, and Christians, who felt there were inconsistencies in his conversion story. Of course, it assuredly also includes us human secularists, though it is nice to see Christians and Moslems agree on something.

And, the term hater was used against Cenk Uygur by conservative blogger Jeff Dunetz who said that Uygur and others who differ with Glenn Beck were actually anti-semites. Apparently, this is the notion that if you differ with the Israeli government you are no different than a Neo-Nazi. Uh-huh. Again.

All of this leads to wonder where the term hater or haters started. I checked the Urban Dictionary, even though last week, I had a quasi nightmare that they were going to sue me for mentioning the terms they define on my blog. But, they did not provide me a clear cut answer, and neither did Google. Though I can verify there was a hit song in 2004 by teen icon Hilary Duff called "Haters."

It should be pointed that Cenk Uygur and I have one more thing in common in that we both went from right to left politically though my 'conversion' happened when I was 13 years old and basically sick of Ronald Reagan, who might ironically be considered a liberal now if the Republican continues to go to the whacko far right. (So much for Mary Eberstadt's theory that people go from left to right politically more often as was the thesis of her book "Why I Turned Right").

Uygur's chance of heart occured later in life when he realized George W. Bush was making a huge mistake by going into Iraq in 2003. But, I assume, since he was a Republican at the time, that Uygur didn't get any flack from Turkish relatives for voting for Michael Dukakis in 1988. That was not the case with me!