Luna Park has been grinning at St Kilda since 1912, its giant clown-face entrance one of the most recognisable images in Melbourne. The heritage-listed amusement park sits directly on the beachfront and operates on a pay-per-ride basis, so you can walk through and look without buying a pass. The park's most important ride is the Scenic Railway, a wooden roller coaster dating to 1912 that is the oldest operating roller coaster in the world to still use a brakeman.
The park is compact and family-oriented, with a mix of heritage rides and newer attractions. It operates on weekends year-round and daily during school holidays. Even if rides are not your thing, the park is worth seeing as an intact piece of early twentieth-century amusement architecture, and the beachfront location — with the Palais Theatre on one side and the St Kilda foreshore on the other — is genuinely attractive.