Free Parking

 In 1988 Parker Brother's released Free Parking (Feed the Meter) Card Game. It is made for 2-4 players. It includes 4 parking meters which can be set between 60-0 minutes and 90 playing cards. The cards will fall into the following catagories; feed the meter, point cards, special parking, and second chance. On a players' turn they will draw a card from the tray and play a card. Alterntively they can choose to exchange 3 cards they are holding for new cards from the tray. They can also draw a second chance card at the end of their turn. The game ends when one player reaches 200 points.

Feed the Meter Cards; There are 38 cards with the time amounts 20,30,40 and 60 minutes. This allows players to add the corresponding time to their meters and avoid violations.

Point Cards: These cards allow players to score points by spending the time they have on their meters to run errands.

Special Parking Cards: These cards will either protect a player or hinder an opponent. There are 4 types of special parking cards; Officer Jones, free parking, time expires, or talk your way out of it. Officer Jones cards can be played against another player if their meter is at 0 and in violation. That player will have to discard any already used points card. Free parking can be placed faced up on your turn and protect the player from opponents' Officer Jones and second chance cards. Time expires cards can be used to force an opponent to set their meter to 0. Talk your way out of it will help a player avoid violations if his meter reaches 0.

Second Chance Cards: Drawing second chance cards are optional. Once you decide to draw a second chance card the player must perform the action. These can either help or hinder the player. Actions include taking another players point card, giving up one of your point cards, opponent losing a card, trading places with an opponent.

I don't actually own this game, I was able to write about it by reading the instructions. I would definitely be up for playing, it sounds fun. I also appreciated the amount of Monopoly imagery/materials included. Sadly Officer Jones is not the police officer featured in the original Monopoly, that would be Officer Edgar Mallory. I would assume that with a game featuring a police officer, I could be sent to jail, sadly that action of game play is also missing. 

In 1999 Free Parking was re-released in a two game bundle with Water Works. The game was repackaged and redesigned but game play is the same.  Water Works was a re-release of a leaky pipes card game  from the 1970's and  has no relation to the Monopoly family, aside from a space on the standard board.

In 2009 Habro released a Free Parking Mini Game. This could be played alone or as an add-on to the standard game.  The taxis get split evenly amongst all players. The first player to get rid of all their taxis by balancing them on the board wins. Each player takes turns rolling the dice. The dice will instruct what to do.

The game can be used as an add on with the directions below.