The comment about the birthday parties takes me back to when I worked at McDonalds as a teenager. One cold winter night I worked the closing shift dreading how the manager had spitefully scheduled me for the opening shift the following morning. To top it off, we had wasted hours preparing for a birthday party a family who ended up no-showing due to the incoming blizzard and forecasted record lows. The upside was that the crew was allowed to share the defrosted cake for no-show birthday parties. But while we were getting ready to chow down on the thawed-out sugar bomb, a shivering homeless man staggered in. We knew he couldn't afford anything and was too embarrassed to ask if he could just get warm. Since the manager was notorious for dealing with indigent customers by calling the local police (who unfailingly handled them with extreme brutality), we acted as though it was the homeless man who had booked and prepaid for the birthday party! We gave him a Happy Meal (with a larger than normal serving of fries) and helped him blow out the candles on the cake. While he was eating (for what seemed like the first time in several weeks), we called some of the nearby homeless shelters to arrange for a place he could stay to survive the blizzard. When we offered to drive him to an available shelter, he replied that never in his life had anyone thrown him a birthday party and that he didn't need to go to a shelter because tonight he was "headed to someplace beautiful." We took a Polaroid picture of him in his party hat with the rest of the crew and, again, asked him to let one of us drive him to the homeless shelter. Once again, he replied "thank you, but I don't need a shelter because I am headed to someplace beautiful." After he left and we all went home, I felt like I had done something meaningful in my life, so much that I didn't mind showing up for the opening shift just a few hours later, despite being terribly sleep deprived and in sub-zero temperatures. But nothing could have prepared me for when I took the morning trash to the dumpster and there he was - frozen to death. When the paramedics arrived, they thought he had his hand clutched to his chest in an effort to keep warm. But the moment they moved his arms to carry him away, it became apparent that he was actually holding the Polaroid to his chest. It was at that point that I realized I had never asked this poor unfortunate man his name! I held on to the Polaroid to remember him until my mother (with whom I have permanently severed any and all relationship) threw it out while she was cleaning my room. Wherever you are, I am so sorry that I never knew your name and lost the Polaroid of your memory!!!
This story just made me burst into tears. 💔🙏🏻🥺 to think that there are people who’ve never had something as simple as a birthday party in their lifetime. Hell I even had birthday parties at a McDonald’s as a kid. Poor guy may he RIP.
I felt such a strong emotional response when he brought up the 'Craze of kids safety' in the last 90s and showing people concerned bout germs and all this shit that barely ever affected anyone. The sheer disgust and anger it triggered in me was surprising at first, but honestly to this day I feel like that whole mess was the start of the decline we're living in today. The overprotectiveness ruined an entire generations and keeps making kids more and more entitled and fucked up. All so they won
@@CoqPwner disinfecting and sanitizing everything is the reason so many kids today are allergic to every damn thing. Seems like if one kid is allergic to peanuts, no peanuts for anyone. Today everyone is scared of being sued. My apartment complex no longer allows pets because somebody moving in after a pet owner left might be allergic and have to go to the hospital and will sue the complex. I feel bad for kids today because they will never know about learning by taking a risk. Instead it's participation trophies. Be certain to thank the trial lawyers for keeping us safe and sound.
I grew up in the Middle East and we used to play with dead dogs - poking sticks into their eyes - (yes, we were creepy & gross) played in household garbage dumps and even a medical waste dump outside of a nearby clinic, shoved sticks down sewer covers to collect raw sewage, & chased our friends and we were FINE, lol. Now my 35-year-old daughter-in-law calls me to ask if I think chicken is OK to eat if it's been uncovered in the refrigerator overnight. I mean, seriously, wtf has happened to people? The woman is a registered nurse!
I work in McDonald’s. It has a PlayPlace and its the same one i played in as a child! Sometimes im asked to clean it. The nostalgic feeling is amazing. Theres very few around now. Its nice working while seeing kids making memories instead of playing the tablets on the tables.
I remember passing a mcdonalds all the time when i was a kid that had an n64 with some games, but sadly its gone now (I can not remember if they upgraded the n64 for a gamecube though).
Whenever I got to go the playplace I always liked playing Melee with the kids and other adults on the GameCube kiosks, ahh…happy smashing memories of 5 minute KO-fests!
Went to a new McDonald’s the other day and they didn’t even have a counter to order from, just the kiosks. Kids will never understand how awesome it used to be, going to McDonald’s was a whole afternoon
That shoud be brought up more. We used to spend a whole hour between coming in and ordering, eating, talking, kids playing . Now it's in and out as fast as you can.
Honestly they don't even want you stop in in the first place. Hence the push towards curbside pick up and drive throughs in most places these days. But the bottom line was I would imagine the few extra sales they got from people hanging around were lost in free drink refills and cleaning and maintaining the play area.
Believe it or not over half of the play places in the US had a legal suit against them for a child getting harmed or sick, that's the more likely reason they left
@@gokuformanvsfood Yes and no. If the profits were there I don't think Mcdonalds would care, or they would move to make them safer in design or have staff watch over the place or something. Companies often do things that are unsafe or even deadly because they feel the profits they earn exceed the potential lawsuits in the future.
Play areas in restaurants are a good idea, especially for sit-down restaurants. While the food is being cooked, small children can burn off a bit of excess energy, rather than be forced to sit still an do nothing in silence, which in many cases, ends in screeching and crying. It also promotes healthy physical activity. As for kids getting hurt, that's just the natural way of things. It's better that they fall a couple meters while they're 7, rather than when they're 47. Kids recover faster than adults, and often are just being overly dramatic simply because they don't have as many baselines for what actually hurts yet, so everything painful is the worst pain ever to them. If they don't take a few rough tumbles while they're young, they'll be worse off once they're older.
@@davidvanhorn3340 Children too young to communicate (babies, toddlers, otherwise under 5 years old) should not be brought to sit-down restaurants, but sometimes, there's little choice; a road trip, and it's the only place to eat, for example. Children 5 and up can be in such a place, but it serves to let them burn off their excess energy before sitting down to eat, which is what I said. Don't think that all children young enough for the play areas are so young as to be crying infants. Children as old as 12 enjoy the spaces just as often as children as young as 5.
nah don't take your kids to fast food to begin with, you're kicking off what is basically a drug addiction in your kids. there is always another choice even if you can't cook that night. fast food is literally designed to exploit the psychology of children.
@@Mad_Possum Depends on the restaurant. Not every place that does food fast is terrible for you, nor is every sit-down establishment the pinnacle of nutritional health.
I feel like growing up in the 80s/90s the whole world was for kids and we were the center of attention and the world but now it feels like kids are just small adults now, wearing makeup and scrolling their phones and that can't be good.
My childhood sweetheart and I are both well into our 40s now. Still friends to this day. We were inseparable in middle school, and we've both had a good laugh about how times have changed since the '80s. "I'm glad we grew up before hypersexualized childhood was invented."
I was born in 1991. Times have def changed. I loved growing up in the 90s. I have so many good memories. I don't like kids are so attached to social media and not really outside playing anymore. When I was a kid, the only time I was inside was when I was sick, or at night when the sun went down. I was out playing int he mud, climbing trees, building forts, ect. I loved going to the park and playing with my friends. Berry picking, play in the river. I do miss the McDonald's play places. Now that I'm 33, seeing them gone, no blockbuster, no kids outside, it's depressing
The latest McDonalds format looks like a prison cafeteria. They have walled off the kitchen and there are no visible workers. Very little seating. Its absolutely terrible.
@@starcofan13 And charge full price for water, so I guess the cups cost as much as the soda. But mine was remolded to look like a Starbucks. It's all shades of brown, no real pictures of any the characters or mascots. Most the time it's drive through only due to "loitering teens" from a nearby school. Simply put Mcdonalds all but kicked out any one too young to drive, because no your not allowed to walk through the drive through.
@@jonc4403 You can say Mcdonalds isn't healthy, full of fats, salt and artificial everything. But I wouldn't say it's not edible, proven by the billions and billions of burgers served.
@@bluecoin3771 super Mario Sunshine, Tac and the Power of JuJu, Chibi Robo, some Mickey mouse game, Spyro a Hero's Tail, and a couple others I can't remember that got rotated in
When i was about 11 or 12, my mom was driving somewhere far, she was tired of drinving and so we stopped at a McD's and they had Tak & the power of JuJu on a GameCube, she had gotten a new cell phone and wanted to talk on it while she rested after eating food, i got on that thing and played while she ordered, while i ate, and while she talked on the phone, i practically begged her to stay so i could play more. i will forever remember that game as being awesome, was it for sheer boredom of the car trip? or was it truely fantastic? i doubt i will ever know from my 11 year old brain, but i should play it again!
Having come from the Joshua Weissman video where they also called it Chee-Chee's Pizza I'm so confused on why it's called that lol, there's no H anywhere
Videos like this make me grateful for growing up in the 80s and 90s. Not to sound like the " Back in my day " kind of guy but it just feels like everything just sucks now. We went from bright and happy to boring and bland.
I used to get so many static shocks from these. I used to believe I was powering my electrical powers as a kid. I wish these were still around for my sons.
2 месяца назад
Those, and the Burger King ones too, my McDonald's still has an indoor variant, and I recently came across about a Burger King that still has the playplace, INCLUDING the decor with the Kids' Club characters, surprisingly.
PlayPlaces were a godsend when our 3 kids were little. They loved climbing around them and bouncing in the ball pits, and it was a great way for them to burn off excess energy after tagging along with Mom & Dad for a Saturday's worth of shopping.
My favorite McDonald's was in Mobile, Alabama. In the1980s the playland was a magnificent fortress of interconnected stairs and slides with a cage topped tower at its center. Made of metal that would super heat in the summer and padded with the finest bark to break our falls it was a glorious site to behold. The tower was taller than the McDonalds and could be accessed by an enclosed ladder until they welded the tube shut probably because some kid broke an arm or a leg or a skull or a few vertebrae. After that we had to use the narrow winding stairs and suspended walkways whose guard rails would not protect anyone over three feet tall all of which would guarantee the loss of teeth should you fall on them. My favorite part (aside from the total lack of supervision that allowed teenagers to run amok whenever we wanted) was a an almost two story tall wavy slide that would have you airborne just as you reached terminal velocity. Gosh I miss that playland. They really do not make em like they used to 😄
There's a meme floating around the internet somewhere...A pic of an average 80s style McD in the 1980s with the caption "McDonald's was a happy child in the 80's" and a pic of a modern day McD in the 2020s "McDonald's is a depressed mid-aged adult in the 2020s"
I used to play in those play places myself when I was an adult back in the early 80s. I would hope there were no children in there so I could go play in it. I loved going down the slide into a pile of plastic balls. They didn't have stuff like that when I was a kid. I'm 73 now. The Playplaces around here in Southern California are still standing and some of them even still have the balls in them. It would take but a wink of the eye to open them up again. Maybe Ronald and Hamburglar would show up too....
2 месяца назад+1
My mom's friend once cleaned McDonald's PlayPlaces ball pits, they were apparently filthy.
I was at just the wrong age for those play places. The "McDonaldland" phase of them was gone before my time. The "only kids under 4 feet tall" play place was introduced within months after I surpassed that height. The upgrade to bigger and fancier "12 and under" play places was made just after I turned 13. It was like they were singling me out to exclude from them. Naturally, I ignored those prejudiced rules as a matter of course...
Same, it was SO loud though as the tray ran over the horizontal cracks in the slide as you went down…”CLACK CLACK CLACK”, j was always worried the staff would investigate 😂
@Ervinabrahamian Are you seriously pretending that Harris is the only/most prominent politician to run ads or appear on TV interviews or whatever, or are you just reaching this far to complain when it's not relevant to the original post? You haven't noticed any others begging for attention in the last 8-9 years or so?
Those McDonald's Characters scared the hell out of me when I was a kid back in the '70's. Mainly the mayor one & the extremely strange Big Mac-headed cop one. Didn't know what to make out of the purple blob that looked like Barney, but, like Them all, I'm gone from McDonald's.
I think one of my least favorite things about getting older is remembering how awesome the McD's playplace was and now taking my kids to one and it just being sad and small xD
I spent a lot of time with my two littles at the PlayPlace on late nights when we couldn't afford to drive home and had to sleep in our car. They would split a 4 piece nugget Happy Meal because that’s what we could afford and those sweet ladies who worked there never judged us. PlayPlace got us through some tough times.
@@albtckl I actually run a crisis center that connects people to resources now. 211 saved our lives. PlayPlace just made it a bit kinder when it was hard.
@@ge2623 Unlike SickDonald's, Hardees used to have (maybe still does, I don't eat much fast food any more) decent food. The hot dogs and fried chicken were definitely good. (Had to supply your own hot sauce though.)
That happened to my little brother. It was at a McDonald’s though and I have was 12 at the time I had to go up there and stop kids from going down the slide and still they were trying to push past me and I was 12 years old, having to hold back a whole army of kids. My mom and granddad got him freed up. Then when that happened, I just went down the slide and told the kids they can go.
The McDonald's by my house still has the exact same play place I used to play in 26 years ago when I moved to this city. Glad it hasn't changed since then and that it's still there.
Don't lie... we all still went into the Playplace long after we exceeded the 4'6" height maximum indicated on the sign. I know I went into one once on a high school field trip as a 5'8" teenager, and some other boys (who may have even been 6' or more) went in there as well..
Depends where it is. In my area the outdoor ones were horrible because it rained so often where I live. They had a "roof" but it wasn't full coverage and rain would get in, making the ball pits a soggy wet mess. Even the plastic slides don't really work if they are wet at all.
@@JustaGuy_Gaming that sounds like the newer ones. They weren't as good. The OG metal ones didn't really have that problem. Even if it rained they would dry fast. And no ball pits to collect water in.
@@aniE1869 The old ones I vaguely remember still being around in some places when I was a kid were pretty good. But they were also roughly just a "park" next to a MCdonalds. Some slides, jungle gym and those rocking toys. Almost nothing you wouldn't see a normal public park, other than the Mcdonald themed characters. The funniest thing is most the accidents that happened at the place were due to stupid kids and negligent parents. The exact same things could and did happen in public parks. Just people expected Mcdonalds to act more like a day care in where they could leave their kids unattended and be fine.
@@matthew_natividad Well most had some kind of "roof" like tarp over them to avoid direct sunlight. But yeah cold in the winter and the metal parts being super hot in the summer were not uncommon. Especially for those without said roofs.
Let's see... 30 years x 12 mo./yr. = 360 months x ~13,000 McDonald's locations = 4,680,000 location-months. So that's 400 injuries over 4,680,000 location-months = 0.00008547 0.00008547 injuries per location per month over 30 years. This is why we can't have nice things?
It's because these things always get overblown, whether from a "concerned parent" or the media, all for the sake of the attention, views and power it brings.
That's how media sensationalism works. Case in point: "COVID-19 is causing, on average, several thousand deaths per day" is a lot more effective at whipping up a global panic than "COVID-19 has a mortality rate of roughly 0.1%, confined mostly to the elderly and those with pre-existing health issues." This is exactly why people need to stop allowing the boob tube to dictate their entire world view, because the world view that mainstream media provides tends to be heavily skewed in favor of the billionaire elites who own the mainstream media.
The playground at McDonalds always smelled like if someone didn't wear socks with their shoes for three straight summer days AND a faint smell of " skid mark underwear " that lingered in the air ....... * Location : Whole state of Florida
The Burger King by my work was renovated a few weeks ago and had the play place removed. The McDonalds across the street still has one, and it's probably one of the last in the city.
A lot of McDonald's is in our area. Still have play areas. But they're nothing like they were a long time ago. They just look very cheap. Now. Reboot one slide and no climbing.
@@gokaury Are yours on powerful or they Gray? With one slide. Because the tally are in my area. They don't really have any tunnels you can climb in anymore. They're just boring and colorless now.
I remember my quest to get all the Inspector Gadget parts until I had a complete action figure. Those were the days. Without the play place, there’s nothing worth going in for. You’re better off at Wendy’s or Burger King.
Back in the good ole' days, you had a Grimace jail. Nowadays, every McDonalds restaurant is styled like a jail, in institutional grey and muted tepid colors.
As a kid, I only remember McDonalds having play places, and quite a few around me still do, even after COVID. I don't remember any other restaurant having them. The closest was a Burger King with a coin operated rocket ride in it. Every time we'd go, my parents would let my sister and I sit in the rocket, put in a quarter, and let it "blast off". In reality, it only lifted off the ground a couple of feet (high enough that the restaurant needed to remove a couple of ceiling tiles for clearance), but it was still a lot of fun.
Video games and restaurants for families go together like peanut butter and chocolate. I've been a gamer since 1982-when Mom gave five-year-old me a couple of quarters and pointed me at a Pac-Man cabinet while she settled the bill at a Chinese restaurant. And at a local pizza place, I put plenty of money from my paper route through the Smash T.V. and Final Fight machines when I was in middle school. We have sadly lost something in the era of drive-thrus and Doordash.
I don't play video games anymore but sure loved them back in the 80's when I was a kid. I still have my original Nintendo with all the games. You just made me remember how much fun I had playing it as a kid. I think I'll dig that thing out and give it some love. Thanks!
@@emmyali920 I actually set mine up for my nine year old son to play. I love watching him play Super Mario Bros and Contra. He's never leaving the Jungle without "the code" though.
I vividly remember the Big Mac climbing bars and the whole process of getting in and out of that thing being nightmarish. The low overhang and having to manuver around it was very difficult. Many heads were banged in the process and we all LOVED every second of it!
In the early 90’s there used to be giant wooden playgrounds at parks. 10 foot tall platforms and draw bridges. They were accidents waiting to happen but they were glorious. I use to pretend I was a fuckin pirate sailing the seven seas.
The park I went to as a kid had one of those. We found a place where we could crawl under the adult seating area, and that was like our secret hideout.
I made many friends on those playgrounds and can remember once in the 80s at Halloween the Play place near me was transformed into a haunted house that scared the shit out of me at 8 years old!! It was awesome and is a memory I still treasure to this day!!
in 1985 when I was one, I had constant ear and throat infections so I wasn't eating. So one way my mom got me to eat was taking me to McDonalds and putting me on the hamburger merry go round. As I went around, she would feed me bits of McDonald's hamburger and I would eat it. I still remember the metal slides and old school stuff before the Play Place plastic ball pit came around.
White horse rd, greenville sc, had one made of splintered wood and rusty chains. it was a shit ton of blood and broken bone and i wont trade those memories for anything
I recall being in the PlayPlace. I was in the "pilot's control centre" at the Mickey D's nearest Space Center in Webster, TX. It's the town where my youngest brother was officially born. I didn't ride; I walked there with my aunt. PlayPlaces are great notions for kids to not be attachable to little screens. If the zones were renamed, they would be dubbed McPlaygrounds. There are fewer of such juvenile zones on earth than they were decades ago. HAVE FUN. 'TIS THE PRIMARY RULE.😃
We have one here in Vacaville Ca right off I80 on Alimo road! It’s been there my whole life, they even had the GameCube setup with games back in the day.
@@shutterbug_713 What'd they do to the one by Knotts? That was like, *the* place to chill with the large train display & the ceiling train track, along with the arcade
@@APunishedManNamed2, they demolished it, and in its place, built a restaurant, "rubber-stamped", with NO originality! No more train and arcade! NO PIZZAZZ!
Oh, I always wondered what happened to Leaps and Bounds. There was one near us when I was super little, and I absolutely loved it. It was seriously such a blast. We'd get a big crew there and play tag or hide and seek and be ready to run around all day. Such good times.
7:47 You pronounced it Chee Chee's pizza, eh? I think their commercials pronounce it as See See's pizza, right? Pronunciation of Chee Chee's reminds me of an old Mexican restaurant named Chi Chi's. I find the name Chi Chi's to be a bit peculiar for a Mexican restaurant since they speak Spanish in Mexico. Was that name intended as it's Spanish meaning?
I was born in the mid-1970's, and actually played at one of the original McDonald's playgrounds as a kid during the 1980's. We would drive cross-country every year for our summer vacation, and in those days, that inevitably meant eating out at a McDonald's from time to time.
i once found a 20$ bill at the bottom of a mcdonalds ball pit and that made my year. when i was 10 we went to a mcdonalds and my older sister (12 at the time) was keeping an eye on our youngest sister (5yo at the time) my older sister was sitting on the entrance to the ball pit and somehow fell off it and broke her arm. the mcdonalds actually helped cover the medical expenses even though they werent required to.
9:24 as a kid, my family lived across the street from a McDonald's that had one of these & 1 day we see a bunch of first responders sawing a kid out of that big mac head thing, as he had gotten his head stuck between the bars
There's still a couple of McDonald's and Chik Fil A's in my area with indoor playgrounds. They are a godsend in the winter months when I can't take the kids to the park, or in the early mornings when all the other kid-friendly activities aren't open yet and I desperately need to get them out of the house and sit and sip coffee while they play. I dread the day those last few bastions close down.
Grandy's in Houston had an awesome outdoor playground. As my parents used the drive through lane, I'd hop out of the car and play for a few minutes. I do remember the McDonald's outdoor playground when it first came out. We only played on it a couple of times because my parents rarely ever ate there and wasn't enough time to play using the drive through lane.
Watched (and played) a lot of Final Fight with my older brother at a Round Table Pizza in Spring Creek, NV. Good memories. *side-note: One quick Google search, and I see that location is closed now... oof. The passage of time makes my bones hurt...
Man the outdoor playground at my town’s main McDonalds was an amazing place to experience. I was so devastated when they removed it. Then for awhile we had an indoors playground, but unfortunately it had an age limit. Now we have a tiny indoor playground not even worth using. I miss those cool fast food playgrounds. Hell even at 40 something I’d probably still play in them if I could find one still in use.
The McDonald's in my hometown had a completely autonomous area for kids' birthday parties in the Eighties: the caboose. The McDonald's in my hometown repurposed a train caboose which was in good repair and which happened to sit abandoned on old tracks behind the McDonald's location in Welland, Ontario, Canada, and held kids' birthday parties in it. I knew a lot of kids who began elementary school in 1985 who went to birthday parties held in the caboose. I haven't been back to my hometown in a really long time, but it might still be there. I also learned that McDonald's birthday cabooses also existed in Nanaimo BC, Charlottetown, Winnipeg, Bay Roberts NL, Lasalle QC (ex-CP), Malton, Orangeville, Orillia, Windsor and Stratford ON, as well as a few other locations in some northern Atlantic States like New York.
I live in New Brunswick. The Burger King in Presque Isle, ME, had a caboose for birthday parties, too. They'd let you sit in there if it wasn't booked.
I've always thought that the issue lied on the backs of the parents. I think they went to these places so that they could just let their child run free without the need of their supervision. And that kind of thinking is always going to result in disaster. Watch your d@mn kids. Stop relying on others to do your job!!!
First thing I thought of looking at this video was a McDonalds with a playground in my state that was right outside the entrance of an Indian Casino. They closed theirs down because they had multiple incidents of parents dropping their young kids at the playground and then going to the casino without them for a couple hours.
When I was 8-10 years old my friends and I would go to an outdoor play place while it was raining and ride the plastic food trays down the tube slide. Would go insanely fast due to the rainwater flowing down the slide, shot out the bottom and almost hit the side of the building.
@xeero24 No, the world's largest fast food chain should shell out a reasonable amount of money to employees who are expected to do work that, in anyplace else, would require protective equipment and a health clearance (because feces).
I worked at a Burger King in high school and the employees had sex in the ball pit all the time. I don't even want to imagine how much seminal fluid it contained.
I worked at McD's in the mid 90's. The ball pits are petri dishes. I lost count of how many times a kid would sh!t in the ball pit, and the only way to "clean" it was to load all the balls onto the plastic flat racks the bags of buns came in on the trucks, take them out back, and hose them off. No... not sanitized... just hosed off. To "sanitize" the tubes they just had us use the same cloths to wipe it down like we used to wipe tables.
Yes. This. And then I watched another kid going down the same slide shortly after. With each passing link connector, I could hear an audible pop from each zap this kid was receiving on the way down. I just remember seeing the biggest smile on this kid the whole way down, and I was left baffled after witnessing this as to how they were unaffected by it.
The only reason I ever take my family to any fast food restaurant are these play places. During an Arizona summer these indoor playgrounds are much appreciated.
Ill never forget those round capsuls where you got a view of the entire playplace. My best friend growing up in the 90s was used to playing cops and robbers with cap guns on the street with the older kids. We went to the playplace and he started "arresting" random kids who didnt know him, ordering them up into that capsul, and holding them against their will till these poor young girls started screaming for their mom
I do remember going to the playplace and even getting my first kiss there, just 10 years old, from my childhood best friend, the daughter of my mom's high school best friend.
The thumbnail was from the Ringgold, GA McDonald's that was destroyed on 4/27/11 during the super outbreak of tornadoes. That tornado was an EF4. I was part of it. Cannot believe I recognized the picture
I was obsessed with those play places as a kid...especially if they had a ball pit. I loved those things! And you could almost always see the play places from outside when you drove past, so they were like magical magnets. As a kid I didn't think/worry about the germs and potential gross stuff that could have been in them. As we can see, I survived.
When we travel we specifically stop at play places along the routes that still exist. They are rare, but it's the best option to stop so the kids can get energy out and eat a bit because its so cold usually that parks aren't an option and walking around a mall or Walmart just ends up being expensive because we buy all sorts of stuff we don't need.
There were so many great play places when i was a kid! best one in my town was at the McDonalds down by the mall. Big, colorful slides, ball pit, the works! It was always the best place to bug my parents to go, even if they didn't always say yes. But by far, the best play place i can remember from my childhood was this gigantic, 3 story MONSTER of interconnected tubes and slides, that you'd have to access via stairs. It was at a Burger King if memory serves and it was HUGE!!! I can only recall going there once, but those were some of my best memories
I am 80’s baby and I remember when everybody wanted to have their birthday party at McDonald’s. They had a big red train caboose car in the playground, and you could have the party in there. Those were some good times!
Mcdonalds use to have such personality with the Ronald McDonald clown theme colors going on, Now it's this modern look atrocity, I remember playing at the McDonalds and Burger King Indoor Playgrounds as a kid, Those were fun times, I remember going to Mr Gatti's all the time, There were some serious health hazards there EVERYTIME I went the bowls and silverware looked like a sticky kid's unclean hand was on it all dirty and stuff which is a lawsuit in the making and the food was NOT good whatsoever everything tasted like it game from a dollar store, I only went to Mr Gatti's for the games pretty much and they occasionally played good kids movies in the kids movie room
When I was a kid in New Mexico, our elementary school was the recipient of McDonald's play place equipment, the burger bars etc, as the local restaurant transitioned to the plastic tube playground. I imagine that was commonplace across the country.
I worked at Discovery Zone for a summer after high school. Crazy kids, but definitely a step up from Chuckee Cheeze!! That place is truly creepy! Frankly, I'm amazed they can afford the ever-rising insurance 😮
Back in the late 70s I associated McDonald's with their playground and the magical forest seating area. I wasn't even thinking about the food. The same goes for kiddie parties I attended in elementary school. We had so much fun playing games in the store
I celebrated my birthday at McDonald's in 1987. There wasn't a play place, but the restaurant had a kids section with small flower shaped tables & chairs. The walls had Mcdonald Land artwork & there were little doors with characters behind them, (like a flap book). There was a Nintendo in the wall that you could play for free, (which was later changed to a Sega Genesis). My birthday party was planned entirely by McDonald's. They provided the goodie bags, games, prizes, cake, and....of course...the food. 😆 This may sound funny, but I remember feeling really special on that day. My previous birthday parties were great, but they were always at home. McDonald's made my birthday feel like a big deal. The staff gave me a tour of the full restaurant, (seeing the kitchen was SUPER cool to 7 year old me, LOL). Even though I know McDonald's food isn't good for me or my daughter, I still wish that I could give her a McDonald's birthday like I had when I was a kid. 🎂🎈🥳🍟🍔
A Nintendo what? Was it an NES or a SNES? You said they had a Genesis afterwards but didn't mention the specific console for the first one, just the company
@fishdude2954 A Nintendo. The NES was simply called Nintendo in the 80's. 😂 The McDonald's replaced it with the first nex-gen console, which was the Sega Genesis. It released August '89, (Super Nintendo didn't release until November '90). I said it was 1987, so that would already tell you what Nintendo system would have been in the restaurant.
i spent so much time in a burger king playplace. I have a lot of memories there. It's where i met my best friend, it's where I opened my first pokemon toy, it's where I first talked to a girl without being called gross (we were both like 10, shut up), and it's where I had my first fight. good times.
I did a lot of time in those Grimace Jails as a kid….Hard Times…
Ohhh oh hooh. Everything is gonna be alright alright alright.
@@rickmoskal2458 I loved it! 👍
Went in a boy but emerged a man
Those Big Mac jails made me a more balanced member of society! 😂
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
The comment about the birthday parties takes me back to when I worked at McDonalds as a teenager. One cold winter night I worked the closing shift dreading how the manager had spitefully scheduled me for the opening shift the following morning. To top it off, we had wasted hours preparing for a birthday party a family who ended up no-showing due to the incoming blizzard and forecasted record lows. The upside was that the crew was allowed to share the defrosted cake for no-show birthday parties. But while we were getting ready to chow down on the thawed-out sugar bomb, a shivering homeless man staggered in. We knew he couldn't afford anything and was too embarrassed to ask if he could just get warm. Since the manager was notorious for dealing with indigent customers by calling the local police (who unfailingly handled them with extreme brutality), we acted as though it was the homeless man who had booked and prepaid for the birthday party! We gave him a Happy Meal (with a larger than normal serving of fries) and helped him blow out the candles on the cake. While he was eating (for what seemed like the first time in several weeks), we called some of the nearby homeless shelters to arrange for a place he could stay to survive the blizzard. When we offered to drive him to an available shelter, he replied that never in his life had anyone thrown him a birthday party and that he didn't need to go to a shelter because tonight he was "headed to someplace beautiful." We took a Polaroid picture of him in his party hat with the rest of the crew and, again, asked him to let one of us drive him to the homeless shelter. Once again, he replied "thank you, but I don't need a shelter because I am headed to someplace beautiful." After he left and we all went home, I felt like I had done something meaningful in my life, so much that I didn't mind showing up for the opening shift just a few hours later, despite being terribly sleep deprived and in sub-zero temperatures. But nothing could have prepared me for when I took the morning trash to the dumpster and there he was - frozen to death. When the paramedics arrived, they thought he had his hand clutched to his chest in an effort to keep warm. But the moment they moved his arms to carry him away, it became apparent that he was actually holding the Polaroid to his chest. It was at that point that I realized I had never asked this poor unfortunate man his name! I held on to the Polaroid to remember him until my mother (with whom I have permanently severed any and all relationship) threw it out while she was cleaning my room. Wherever you are, I am so sorry that I never knew your name and lost the Polaroid of your memory!!!
May your memories live on forever…
Thank you for giving him a beautiful birthday party and for sharing your memories of him with us ❤
What a kind thing you & your crew did for him
This story just made me burst into tears. 💔🙏🏻🥺 to think that there are people who’ve never had something as simple as a birthday party in their lifetime. Hell I even had birthday parties at a McDonald’s as a kid. Poor guy may he RIP.
Ya I ain't reading that
PlayPlace was the official kids exchange place for divorce or separated families for a whole generation of kids!!
So true.
Facts
Ugh so true
@@kashawnb8102 Also can say that as well now really can't get that anymore.
I felt that one
For some weird reason, this video really makes me grateful that I just happened to be born when I was. The 80s and 90s were great.
It was definitely a great era to be a kid.
I felt such a strong emotional response when he brought up the 'Craze of kids safety' in the last 90s and showing people concerned bout germs and all this shit that barely ever affected anyone.
The sheer disgust and anger it triggered in me was surprising at first, but honestly to this day I feel like that whole mess was the start of the decline we're living in today. The overprotectiveness ruined an entire generations and keeps making kids more and more entitled and fucked up.
All so they won
@@CoqPwner disinfecting and sanitizing everything is the reason so many kids today are allergic to every damn thing. Seems like if one kid is allergic to peanuts, no peanuts for anyone.
Today everyone is scared of being sued. My apartment complex no longer allows pets because somebody moving in after a pet owner left might be allergic and have to go to the hospital and will sue the complex.
I feel bad for kids today because they will never know about learning by taking a risk. Instead it's participation trophies.
Be certain to thank the trial lawyers for keeping us safe and sound.
I grew up in the Middle East and we used to play with dead dogs - poking sticks into their eyes - (yes, we were creepy & gross) played in household garbage dumps and even a medical waste dump outside of a nearby clinic, shoved sticks down sewer covers to collect raw sewage, & chased our friends and we were FINE, lol.
Now my 35-year-old daughter-in-law calls me to ask if I think chicken is OK to eat if it's been uncovered in the refrigerator overnight. I mean, seriously, wtf has happened to people? The woman is a registered nurse!
@@hensonlaura A lot of kids with food allergies now.
Going to to Pizza Hut and hitting up mom and dad up for quarters for the arcade was some of my best memories
I can still remember the buttons and joysticks covered in pizza grease while waiting for my "Book It!" personal pan pizza.
I'll never forget playing Mortal Kombat the first time and dying almost instantly and had no more quarters so I just watched the demo screen
"AMERICA still needs your help!" as one of the continue screens is burned forever into my memory from my childhood Pizza Hut. Also, say no to drugs!
I miss old school Pizza Huts! They’re not even shaped like huts anymore! Just one more lame shopping center store!
I liked the reading corner at my local Hut
I work in McDonald’s. It has a PlayPlace and its the same one i played in as a child! Sometimes im asked to clean it. The nostalgic feeling is amazing. Theres very few around now. Its nice working while seeing kids making memories instead of playing the tablets on the tables.
our country has that but now its here and there and still held birthday parties and private events there
I wholeheartedly agree
I remember passing a mcdonalds all the time when i was a kid that had an n64 with some games, but sadly its gone now (I can not remember if they upgraded the n64 for a gamecube though).
Whenever I got to go the playplace I always liked playing Melee with the kids and other adults on the GameCube kiosks, ahh…happy smashing memories of 5 minute KO-fests!
@@panatypicalI agree too
Went to a new McDonald’s the other day and they didn’t even have a counter to order from, just the kiosks. Kids will never understand how awesome it used to be, going to McDonald’s was a whole afternoon
It was. The older you are, the better you knew.
That shoud be brought up more.
We used to spend a whole hour between coming in and ordering, eating, talking, kids playing . Now it's in and out as fast as you can.
Customer service doesn’t exist and we’re paying more for what?
@@wesleywarsmith1113 That's what they did to us. 😕
I'm convinced that these places don't actually want you eating there.
They got rid of them because they want you out the door as fast as possible. I miss customer satisfaction.
We all do. Gone are the days of the guy playing checkers on a pickle barrel at the general store.
Honestly they don't even want you stop in in the first place. Hence the push towards curbside pick up and drive throughs in most places these days. But the bottom line was I would imagine the few extra sales they got from people hanging around were lost in free drink refills and cleaning and maintaining the play area.
@@JustaGuy_Gaming True.
Believe it or not over half of the play places in the US had a legal suit against them for a child getting harmed or sick, that's the more likely reason they left
@@gokuformanvsfood Yes and no. If the profits were there I don't think Mcdonalds would care, or they would move to make them safer in design or have staff watch over the place or something.
Companies often do things that are unsafe or even deadly because they feel the profits they earn exceed the potential lawsuits in the future.
Play areas in restaurants are a good idea, especially for sit-down restaurants. While the food is being cooked, small children can burn off a bit of excess energy, rather than be forced to sit still an do nothing in silence, which in many cases, ends in screeching and crying. It also promotes healthy physical activity.
As for kids getting hurt, that's just the natural way of things. It's better that they fall a couple meters while they're 7, rather than when they're 47. Kids recover faster than adults, and often are just being overly dramatic simply because they don't have as many baselines for what actually hurts yet, so everything painful is the worst pain ever to them. If they don't take a few rough tumbles while they're young, they'll be worse off once they're older.
Omg that's actually so wise
Small children should not be BROUGHT to sit-down restaurants
@@davidvanhorn3340
Children too young to communicate (babies, toddlers, otherwise under 5 years old) should not be brought to sit-down restaurants, but sometimes, there's little choice; a road trip, and it's the only place to eat, for example.
Children 5 and up can be in such a place, but it serves to let them burn off their excess energy before sitting down to eat, which is what I said. Don't think that all children young enough for the play areas are so young as to be crying infants. Children as old as 12 enjoy the spaces just as often as children as young as 5.
nah don't take your kids to fast food to begin with, you're kicking off what is basically a drug addiction in your kids. there is always another choice even if you can't cook that night.
fast food is literally designed to exploit the psychology of children.
@@Mad_Possum
Depends on the restaurant. Not every place that does food fast is terrible for you, nor is every sit-down establishment the pinnacle of nutritional health.
Wow, Discovery Zone.......core memory unlocked!
yep, there was one in my hometown in the 90's... until it closed down, which really sucked because that place was awesome.
I never got to go to Discovery Zone 😭.
Loved DZ!
@@winterspriteme either! But I'm glad I was able to experience McDonald's play spaces and when they still had the Nintendo 64s
Eating out, waiting for the food to arrive, and having a place to play are the things that make my two kids the happiest.
Yes, those were good times back in the good old days. It's sad that their gone now.
@@dreamguardian8320 It’s great to look back and appreciate those moments. At least we have the memories to cherish!
@@Whoremembersusa True.
I feel like growing up in the 80s/90s the whole world was for kids and we were the center of attention and the world but now it feels like kids are just small adults now, wearing makeup and scrolling their phones and that can't be good.
My childhood sweetheart and I are both well into our 40s now. Still friends to this day. We were inseparable in middle school, and we've both had a good laugh about how times have changed since the '80s.
"I'm glad we grew up before hypersexualized childhood was invented."
I miss Toys R Us
I was born in 1991. Times have def changed. I loved growing up in the 90s. I have so many good memories. I don't like kids are so attached to social media and not really outside playing anymore. When I was a kid, the only time I was inside was when I was sick, or at night when the sun went down. I was out playing int he mud, climbing trees, building forts, ect. I loved going to the park and playing with my friends. Berry picking, play in the river. I do miss the McDonald's play places. Now that I'm 33, seeing them gone, no blockbuster, no kids outside, it's depressing
@@aarontorres8101toys r us was the best. Rip with blockbuster 😢
Very true unfortunately.
The latest McDonalds format looks like a prison cafeteria. They have walled off the kitchen and there are no visible workers. Very little seating. Its absolutely terrible.
Not to mention that they got rid of self service soda machines to reduce cost.
Perfect for our inevitable future dystopia.
@@starcofan13 And charge full price for water, so I guess the cups cost as much as the soda. But mine was remolded to look like a Starbucks. It's all shades of brown, no real pictures of any the characters or mascots. Most the time it's drive through only due to "loitering teens" from a nearby school.
Simply put Mcdonalds all but kicked out any one too young to drive, because no your not allowed to walk through the drive through.
@@JustaGuy_Gaming Seems like a mistake for a place where the "food" isn't edible by anyone over the age of 6.
@@jonc4403 You can say Mcdonalds isn't healthy, full of fats, salt and artificial everything. But I wouldn't say it's not edible, proven by the billions and billions of burgers served.
My local McDonald's had gamecube consoles in addition to the play place, it's a core memory for me
What games were there?
@@bluecoin3771 super Mario Sunshine, Tac and the Power of JuJu, Chibi Robo, some Mickey mouse game, Spyro a Hero's Tail, and a couple others I can't remember that got rotated in
They didn’t clean those controllers often did they?
When i was about 11 or 12, my mom was driving somewhere far, she was tired of drinving and so we stopped at a McD's and they had Tak & the power of JuJu on a GameCube, she had gotten a new cell phone and wanted to talk on it while she rested after eating food, i got on that thing and played while she ordered, while i ate, and while she talked on the phone, i practically begged her to stay so i could play more. i will forever remember that game as being awesome, was it for sheer boredom of the car trip? or was it truely fantastic? i doubt i will ever know from my 11 year old brain, but i should play it again!
@@scienceisanartPikmin, Star Wars rogue leader and F ZERO!!!!!! I miss those days
“Chee Chee’s Pizza” 😂
that hurt a little
@@ted_nullindeed. Almost felt like Ai even tho I feel it not.
Having come from the Joshua Weissman video where they also called it Chee-Chee's Pizza I'm so confused on why it's called that lol, there's no H anywhere
All you have to do is watch a commercial and see how the company pronounces its own name (incidentally, it’s pronounced like the letter C twice).
I was just thinking omg this guy watched Mac n me?!?!?! Then he said chee chee's pizza and I died a little bit
I was that spider-monkey of a kid climbing on the outside of the Play Places where the danger was the fun part.
"Ninjas Gotta Practice".
Same!!!! Lol
And the goal was to get inside the barriered zone. There's the true fanger
Videos like this make me grateful for growing up in the 80s and 90s. Not to sound like the " Back in my day " kind of guy but it just feels like everything just sucks now. We went from bright and happy to boring and bland.
I used to get so many static shocks from these. I used to believe I was powering my electrical powers as a kid. I wish these were still around for my sons.
Those, and the Burger King ones too, my McDonald's still has an indoor variant, and I recently came across about a Burger King that still has the playplace, INCLUDING the decor with the Kids' Club characters, surprisingly.
PlayPlaces were a godsend when our 3 kids were little. They loved climbing around them and bouncing in the ball pits, and it was a great way for them to burn off excess energy after tagging along with Mom & Dad for a Saturday's worth of shopping.
My favorite McDonald's was in Mobile, Alabama. In the1980s the playland was a magnificent fortress of interconnected stairs and slides with a cage topped tower at its center. Made of metal that would super heat in the summer and padded with the finest bark to break our falls it was a glorious site to behold. The tower was taller than the McDonalds and could be accessed by an enclosed ladder until they welded the tube shut probably because some kid broke an arm or a leg or a skull or a few vertebrae. After that we had to use the narrow winding stairs and suspended walkways whose guard rails would not protect anyone over three feet tall all of which would guarantee the loss of teeth should you fall on them. My favorite part (aside from the total lack of supervision that allowed teenagers to run amok whenever we wanted) was a an almost two story tall wavy slide that would have you airborne just as you reached terminal velocity.
Gosh I miss that playland. They really do not make em like they used to 😄
Was that on Highway 90?
@@lynemac2539 Azalea I think
I came across that play place while driving to met relatives!! Oh man it was a sight to behold!!
McDonald’s used to look like a fun place to go, now it looks like a prison.
The food makes you FEEL like you've eaten in prison as well. 😅
There's a meme floating around the internet somewhere...A pic of an average 80s style McD in the 1980s with the caption "McDonald's was a happy child in the 80's" and a pic of a modern day McD in the 2020s "McDonald's is a depressed mid-aged adult in the 2020s"
This is why i always have takeaway
You can thank fear mongering politicians, lazy parents, and government regulations for that.
@@jarrodnewman0514 That's so true.
I used to play in those play places myself when I was an adult back in the early 80s. I would hope there were no children in there so I could go play in it. I loved going down the slide into a pile of plastic balls. They didn't have stuff like that when I was a kid. I'm 73 now. The Playplaces around here in Southern California are still standing and some of them even still have the balls in them. It would take but a wink of the eye to open them up again. Maybe Ronald and Hamburglar would show up too....
My mom's friend once cleaned McDonald's PlayPlaces ball pits, they were apparently filthy.
People are not acknowledging this
It was such a bad idea. As if the employees would clean them and do a good job
I was at just the wrong age for those play places. The "McDonaldland" phase of them was gone before my time. The "only kids under 4 feet tall" play place was introduced within months after I surpassed that height. The upgrade to bigger and fancier "12 and under" play places was made just after I turned 13. It was like they were singling me out to exclude from them. Naturally, I ignored those prejudiced rules as a matter of course...
I recall using the brown tray to slide down unsafely and it was truly fun.
Same, it was SO loud though as the tray ran over the horizontal cracks in the slide as you went down…”CLACK CLACK CLACK”, j was always worried the staff would investigate 😂
lol, I did it too. You’d come flying out of the slide and get 3-4ft of airtime.
The Play place was genius targeted advertising towards children before we knew what targeted advertising was
I guess it is a way to burn off some of the calories
I once seen the playplace in Kissimmee Fl.. That was huge!!
Nowadays targeted advertising is towards adults, usually with political stunts by the types of Kamaleon Harris
@Ervinabrahamian Are you seriously pretending that Harris is the only/most prominent politician to run ads or appear on TV interviews or whatever, or are you just reaching this far to complain when it's not relevant to the original post? You haven't noticed any others begging for attention in the last 8-9 years or so?
@fishdude2954 I'm not pretending, reaching or complaining. It's called stating a fact, something you're obviously uncomfortable with.
Those McDonald's Characters scared the hell out of me when I was a kid back in the '70's. Mainly the mayor one & the extremely strange Big Mac-headed cop one. Didn't know what to make out of the purple blob that looked like Barney, but, like Them all, I'm gone from McDonald's.
I think one of my least favorite things about getting older is remembering how awesome the McD's playplace was and now taking my kids to one and it just being sad and small xD
I spent a lot of time with my two littles at the PlayPlace on late nights when we couldn't afford to drive home and had to sleep in our car. They would split a 4 piece nugget Happy Meal because that’s what we could afford and those sweet ladies who worked there never judged us. PlayPlace got us through some tough times.
Thank you for sharing your hard times, 🙏 I 🙏 they're better for y'all
Food banks are a thing if your kids aren't taking in enough food to stay healthy.
@@albtckl I actually run a crisis center that connects people to resources now. 211 saved our lives. PlayPlace just made it a bit kinder when it was hard.
Loser
Imagine being such a loser that you can't even provide food and shelter for your children.
old school arcade cabinets at fast food places NEEDS to make a comeback...
Difficulty: They never had 'old school' arcade cabinets. The Pac Man at the Pizza Slut was the new hot video game when they had it.
Brings back so much nostalgia. I wish McDonald’s today weren’t so depressing.
McDonald's Threw Away Decades Of History, Connections & Nostalgia.
Some guy near my house has a one of those McDonalds Burger climb things in his yard. I drive by it and reminisce every time.
@@emmyali920 I’m gonna take a wild guess that you live in the southwest USA
@@BillyBoucher-ql3pw nope. I live just a few miles from Chicago.
@@emmyali920 that’s awesome. I just pictured an rv in the middle of a desert with prop flamingos and a Big Mac climber outside 😂😂
Lawsuits and negative PR will do that. . .
I got my foot stuck in a slide at Hardees as a kid. I remember my dad trying to get me out while kids were still trying to go down it.
The fact that the kids were still trying to go down it, makes it more legit and believable.
At least it kept you from eating Hardees.
@@ge2623 Unlike SickDonald's, Hardees used to have (maybe still does, I don't eat much fast food any more) decent food. The hot dogs and fried chicken were definitely good. (Had to supply your own hot sauce though.)
That happened to my little brother. It was at a McDonald’s though and I have was 12 at the time I had to go up there and stop kids from going down the slide and still they were trying to push past me and I was 12 years old, having to hold back a whole army of kids. My mom and granddad got him freed up. Then when that happened, I just went down the slide and told the kids they can go.
The McDonald's by my house still has the exact same play place I used to play in 26 years ago when I moved to this city. Glad it hasn't changed since then and that it's still there.
So much nostalgia in one video. Play places, Discovery Zone, Leaps and Bounds, Pizza Hut arcades.
Don't lie... we all still went into the Playplace long after we exceeded the 4'6" height maximum indicated on the sign. I know I went into one once on a high school field trip as a 5'8" teenager, and some other boys (who may have even been 6' or more) went in there as well..
Did so as well during a road trip. Got stuck². I wasn't even particularly fat, just tall. That day, 14yo me learned why height limits exist...
I still go on every playplace that's still around. I'm a full grown adult.
As a young child I wouldn't even want to go in that gross thing
Ah YES, fond memories of outdoor play equipment in Phoenix Summers!!!!!
Omg lol sounds skin melty
Those outdoor McDonald's playgrounds where the best! So much better than the nasty indoor ones.
Depends where it is. In my area the outdoor ones were horrible because it rained so often where I live. They had a "roof" but it wasn't full coverage and rain would get in, making the ball pits a soggy wet mess. Even the plastic slides don't really work if they are wet at all.
@@JustaGuy_Gaming that sounds like the newer ones. They weren't as good. The OG metal ones didn't really have that problem. Even if it rained they would dry fast. And no ball pits to collect water in.
@@aniE1869 The old ones I vaguely remember still being around in some places when I was a kid were pretty good. But they were also roughly just a "park" next to a MCdonalds. Some slides, jungle gym and those rocking toys. Almost nothing you wouldn't see a normal public park, other than the Mcdonald themed characters.
The funniest thing is most the accidents that happened at the place were due to stupid kids and negligent parents. The exact same things could and did happen in public parks. Just people expected Mcdonalds to act more like a day care in where they could leave their kids unattended and be fine.
They must’ve been hot or freezing
@@matthew_natividad Well most had some kind of "roof" like tarp over them to avoid direct sunlight. But yeah cold in the winter and the metal parts being super hot in the summer were not uncommon. Especially for those without said roofs.
Let's see...
30 years x 12 mo./yr. = 360 months x ~13,000 McDonald's locations = 4,680,000 location-months.
So that's 400 injuries over 4,680,000 location-months = 0.00008547
0.00008547 injuries per location per month over 30 years. This is why we can't have nice things?
It's because these things always get overblown, whether from a "concerned parent" or the media, all for the sake of the attention, views and power it brings.
@@gokaury This is what happens when women get a voice...
That's how media sensationalism works. Case in point: "COVID-19 is causing, on average, several thousand deaths per day" is a lot more effective at whipping up a global panic than "COVID-19 has a mortality rate of roughly 0.1%, confined mostly to the elderly and those with pre-existing health issues." This is exactly why people need to stop allowing the boob tube to dictate their entire world view, because the world view that mainstream media provides tends to be heavily skewed in favor of the billionaire elites who own the mainstream media.
@@donellebullock7404 and male lawyers use it to make a quick buck.
They only see it as 400 possible lawsuits
The playground at McDonalds always smelled like if someone didn't wear socks with their shoes for three straight summer days AND a faint smell of " skid mark underwear " that lingered in the air .......
* Location : Whole state of Florida
Pretty sure that's just the whole state of Florida.
That is the best description of McDonald's PlayPlace ever. That was the vast majority of them.
The scummiest families children really played around a lot the most there.
@@jonc4403 yaaa 100 %
The Burger King by my work was renovated a few weeks ago and had the play place removed. The McDonalds across the street still has one, and it's probably one of the last in the city.
A lot of McDonald's is in our area. Still have play areas. But they're nothing like they were a long time ago. They just look very cheap. Now. Reboot one slide and no climbing.
All the McDonald's in my area still have their indoor play places. And there's like five or six of them.
@@gokaury The only place that has play place in my area is Chick Fila.
@@gokaury Are yours on powerful or they Gray? With one slide. Because the tally are in my area. They don't really have any tunnels you can climb in anymore. They're just boring and colorless now.
That's interesting, the Burger King where I live was renovated a few years ago and they put a play place in. I wonder why?
I remember my quest to get all the Inspector Gadget parts until I had a complete action figure. Those were the days. Without the play place, there’s nothing worth going in for. You’re better off at Wendy’s or Burger King.
Back in the good ole' days, you had a Grimace jail. Nowadays, every McDonalds restaurant is styled like a jail, in institutional grey and muted tepid colors.
How i miss those times, those were great memories to remember
As a kid, I only remember McDonalds having play places, and quite a few around me still do, even after COVID. I don't remember any other restaurant having them. The closest was a Burger King with a coin operated rocket ride in it. Every time we'd go, my parents would let my sister and I sit in the rocket, put in a quarter, and let it "blast off". In reality, it only lifted off the ground a couple of feet (high enough that the restaurant needed to remove a couple of ceiling tiles for clearance), but it was still a lot of fun.
These playgrounds generated one of my favorite „yo mama „ jokes:
„McDonald’s called- yo mama is stuck in the slide“ 😅
When i moved to kentucky i was shocked at how many places still have them. I thought they were extinct
I live in Kentucky
@@VixenSkyfront my heart goes out to you
Well Kentucky IS known for being a decade or two behind the rest of the nation...
@@nicholasharvey1232 huh!?
@@nicholasharvey1232 behind in ruining fun apparently. Oh the horror. Smh
Video games and restaurants for families go together like peanut butter and chocolate.
I've been a gamer since 1982-when Mom gave five-year-old me a couple of quarters and pointed me at a Pac-Man cabinet while she settled the bill at a Chinese restaurant.
And at a local pizza place, I put plenty of money from my paper route through the Smash T.V. and Final Fight machines when I was in middle school.
We have sadly lost something in the era of drive-thrus and Doordash.
Drive thurs weren't the problem since Drive thurs were a thing then, but certainly Door Dash but you can just blame Covid for that.
I don't play video games anymore but sure loved them back in the 80's when I was a kid. I still have my original Nintendo with all the games. You just made me remember how much fun I had playing it as a kid. I think I'll dig that thing out and give it some love. Thanks!
@@emmyali920 I actually set mine up for my nine year old son to play. I love watching him play Super Mario Bros and Contra. He's never leaving the Jungle without "the code" though.
@@adamgh0 That's too funny. I did let my kids play my Nintendo back when they were little. I do miss those days as well.
I don’t miss those greasy controllers
I vividly remember the Big Mac climbing bars and the whole process of getting in and out of that thing being nightmarish. The low overhang and having to manuver around it was very difficult. Many heads were banged in the process and we all LOVED every second of it!
In England some of the Pubs would have kids play areas inside when I was a kid. I remember one with a ball pit.
Lmfao
@@selcatron Hey don't knock it, the food was far better than McDonalds. And I'm sure my parents had a good time lol
@@atodaso1668 i didnt hate just cracked me up
4:35 - The first kid's *ball pit* I know of was at America's first IKEA at Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, in August 1982.
In the early 90’s there used to be giant wooden playgrounds at parks. 10 foot tall platforms and draw bridges. They were accidents waiting to happen but they were glorious. I use to pretend I was a fuckin pirate sailing the seven seas.
Those ones always had earwigs, but they were still the best.
The park I went to as a kid had one of those. We found a place where we could crawl under the adult seating area, and that was like our secret hideout.
I made many friends on those playgrounds and can remember once in the 80s at Halloween the Play place near me was transformed into a haunted house that scared the shit out of me at 8 years old!! It was awesome and is a memory I still treasure to this day!!
7:47 Cici's pizza is pronounced see see's or sea sea's pizza
Was about to say this lol.
I *have* to know: do YOU pronounce "see see" differently than "sea sea"?
@@OG_AgrivarI pronounce it C.C. A little different, I know. 😅
@@OG_Agrivar I actually do. They sound exactly the same but I make the sounds differently when I speak them
I almost had an aneurysm when I heard that. 😂
in 1985 when I was one, I had constant ear and throat infections so I wasn't eating. So one way my mom got me to eat was taking me to McDonalds and putting me on the hamburger merry go round. As I went around, she would feed me bits of McDonald's hamburger and I would eat it. I still remember the metal slides and old school stuff before the Play Place plastic ball pit came around.
White horse rd, greenville sc, had one made of splintered wood and rusty chains. it was a shit ton of blood and broken bone and i wont trade those memories for anything
I remember that one. I'm originally from Greenwood.
I recall being in the PlayPlace. I was in the "pilot's control centre" at the Mickey D's nearest Space Center in Webster, TX. It's the town where my youngest brother was officially born. I didn't ride; I walked there with my aunt. PlayPlaces are great notions for kids to not be attachable to little screens. If the zones were renamed, they would be dubbed McPlaygrounds. There are fewer of such juvenile zones on earth than they were decades ago. HAVE FUN. 'TIS THE PRIMARY RULE.😃
So much Nostalgia
We have one here in Vacaville Ca right off I80 on Alimo road!
It’s been there my whole life, they even had the GameCube setup with games back in the day.
Play places used to give the McDonald's in town some real personality. Now they're as depressing as the employees are.
If the current prices somehow don't drive you away, the depressing decor certainly will!
ESPECIALLY the 1 by Knott's Berry Farm!
@@shutterbug_713 At least the theme park is still rad.
@@shutterbug_713 What'd they do to the one by Knotts? That was like, *the* place to chill with the large train display & the ceiling train track, along with the arcade
@@APunishedManNamed2, they demolished it, and in its place, built a restaurant, "rubber-stamped", with NO originality! No more train and arcade! NO PIZZAZZ!
Oh, I always wondered what happened to Leaps and Bounds. There was one near us when I was super little, and I absolutely loved it. It was seriously such a blast. We'd get a big crew there and play tag or hide and seek and be ready to run around all day. Such good times.
7:47 You pronounced it Chee Chee's pizza, eh? I think their commercials pronounce it as See See's pizza, right? Pronunciation of Chee Chee's reminds me of an old Mexican restaurant named Chi Chi's. I find the name Chi Chi's to be a bit peculiar for a Mexican restaurant since they speak Spanish in Mexico. Was that name intended as it's Spanish meaning?
Bruh
I was like what the heck? It’s pronounced cee-cee’s. This creator is so robotic
@@Tophatjones358 stop
@@Tophatjones358 Don't stop, I agree with you 100%
I'm fairly certain that the "chee" sound is an attempt at an authentic Italian pronunciation, which is quite hilarious to me.
I was born in the mid-1970's, and actually played at one of the original McDonald's playgrounds as a kid during the 1980's. We would drive cross-country every year for our summer vacation, and in those days, that inevitably meant eating out at a McDonald's from time to time.
Well frankly I hate that McDonald's no longer has their outdoor playgrounds. BRING BACK THE OUTDOOR PLAYGROUND!
Truly this channel is a way to mainstream your nostalgia for 90s food culture.
i once found a 20$ bill at the bottom of a mcdonalds ball pit and that made my year. when i was 10 we went to a mcdonalds and my older sister (12 at the time) was keeping an eye on our youngest sister (5yo at the time) my older sister was sitting on the entrance to the ball pit and somehow fell off it and broke her arm. the mcdonalds actually helped cover the medical expenses even though they werent required to.
They didn't want a lawsuit. Probably.
9:24 as a kid, my family lived across the street from a McDonald's that had one of these & 1 day we see a bunch of first responders sawing a kid out of that big mac head thing, as he had gotten his head stuck between the bars
2:59 WTF?! That Hamburglar looked like the Creeper in his scarecrow form, from Jeepers Creepers
That's the original Hamburglar, he can't help how he looks. He just wants a Big Mac and an extra thick chocolate shake like everybody else....
I noticed that too
@@deeya Maybe Hamburglar drives a van.
There's still a couple of McDonald's and Chik Fil A's in my area with indoor playgrounds. They are a godsend in the winter months when I can't take the kids to the park, or in the early mornings when all the other kid-friendly activities aren't open yet and I desperately need to get them out of the house and sit and sip coffee while they play. I dread the day those last few bastions close down.
I miss Saturday morning cartoons . 😢 Maybe a video about that ? 😊
Grandy's in Houston had an awesome outdoor playground. As my parents used the drive through lane, I'd hop out of the car and play for a few minutes. I do remember the McDonald's outdoor playground when it first came out. We only played on it a couple of times because my parents rarely ever ate there and wasn't enough time to play using the drive through lane.
I have a core memory of seeing my first Mortal Kombat Fatality at a Round Table Pizza lol
Watched (and played) a lot of Final Fight with my older brother at a Round Table Pizza in Spring Creek, NV. Good memories.
*side-note: One quick Google search, and I see that location is closed now... oof. The passage of time makes my bones hurt...
Man the outdoor playground at my town’s main McDonalds was an amazing place to experience. I was so devastated when they removed it. Then for awhile we had an indoors playground, but unfortunately it had an age limit. Now we have a tiny indoor playground not even worth using. I miss those cool fast food playgrounds. Hell even at 40 something I’d probably still play in them if I could find one still in use.
This video pops up in my feed while standing in line at McDonald's😂
Same
Get out of line while u can.. nasty food.
@davequinn3484 Sorry there's no quinoa for your kind available there 😂
@@Ervinabrahamian gross quinoa
The McDonald's in my hometown had a completely autonomous area for kids' birthday parties in the Eighties: the caboose. The McDonald's in my hometown repurposed a train caboose which was in good repair and which happened to sit abandoned on old tracks behind the McDonald's location in Welland, Ontario, Canada, and held kids' birthday parties in it. I knew a lot of kids who began elementary school in 1985 who went to birthday parties held in the caboose. I haven't been back to my hometown in a really long time, but it might still be there. I also learned that McDonald's birthday cabooses also existed in Nanaimo BC, Charlottetown, Winnipeg, Bay Roberts NL, Lasalle QC (ex-CP), Malton, Orangeville, Orillia, Windsor and Stratford ON, as well as a few other locations in some northern Atlantic States like New York.
I live in New Brunswick. The Burger King in Presque Isle, ME, had a caboose for birthday parties, too. They'd let you sit in there if it wasn't booked.
I've always thought that the issue lied on the backs of the parents. I think they went to these places so that they could just let their child run free without the need of their supervision. And that kind of thinking is always going to result in disaster. Watch your d@mn kids. Stop relying on others to do your job!!!
Ok. Cool.
Right cause parents are so much better today giving kids phones and zero exercise or expecting the school to raise their kids for them 🙄
Here in Australia all the playgrounds (at fast food joints, inside shopping centers etc) have big clear signs saying "parental supervision required"
How did we survive the 70s? 😜
First thing I thought of looking at this video was a McDonalds with a playground in my state that was right outside the entrance of an Indian Casino. They closed theirs down because they had multiple incidents of parents dropping their young kids at the playground and then going to the casino without them for a couple hours.
When I was 8-10 years old my friends and I would go to an outdoor play place while it was raining and ride the plastic food trays down the tube slide. Would go insanely fast due to the rainwater flowing down the slide, shot out the bottom and almost hit the side of the building.
The employees at those places don't get paid enough to clean those monstrosities.
Then they should fine another job.
@@xeero24no shit
Or kids would do their work for them so to speak
@xeero24 No, the world's largest fast food chain should shell out a reasonable amount of money to employees who are expected to do work that, in anyplace else, would require protective equipment and a health clearance (because feces).
I worked at a Burger King in high school and the employees had sex in the ball pit all the time. I don't even want to imagine how much seminal fluid it contained.
I worked at McD's in the mid 90's. The ball pits are petri dishes. I lost count of how many times a kid would sh!t in the ball pit, and the only way to "clean" it was to load all the balls onto the plastic flat racks the bags of buns came in on the trucks, take them out back, and hose them off. No... not sanitized... just hosed off. To "sanitize" the tubes they just had us use the same cloths to wipe it down like we used to wipe tables.
I remember getting static shock from the slide and then suddenly being afraid to use it.
Yes. This. And then I watched another kid
going down the same slide shortly after. With each passing link connector, I could hear an audible pop from each zap this kid was receiving on the way down. I just remember seeing the biggest smile on this kid the whole way down, and I was left baffled after witnessing this as to how they were unaffected by it.
Not only the slides but nailheads too
The only reason I ever take my family to any fast food restaurant are these play places. During an Arizona summer these indoor playgrounds are much appreciated.
"they got used needles just sitting in the ball pit :(" ~90's scaremongers, probably
This was commonly talked about as a 90s kid wasnt the first thing that had that rep in the 90s either lol
Ill never forget those round capsuls where you got a view of the entire playplace.
My best friend growing up in the 90s was used to playing cops and robbers with cap guns on the street with the older kids. We went to the playplace and he started "arresting" random kids who didnt know him, ordering them up into that capsul, and holding them against their will till these poor young girls started screaming for their mom
I do remember going to the playplace and even getting my first kiss there, just 10 years old, from my childhood best friend, the daughter of my mom's high school best friend.
Nice bro! Hope you didn't catch an STD from that little vixen 😂
The thumbnail was from the Ringgold, GA McDonald's that was destroyed on 4/27/11 during the super outbreak of tornadoes. That tornado was an EF4. I was part of it. Cannot believe I recognized the picture
I think that’s called trauma. That’s why recognized it…part of it!
CHEE CHEE’S PIZZA!?!? Bro….really ?💀
Those play places were great! Used to go to many parties at McDonald's, and the kids loved playing there and gobbling up all the food
I was obsessed with those play places as a kid...especially if they had a ball pit. I loved those things! And you could almost always see the play places from outside when you drove past, so they were like magical magnets. As a kid I didn't think/worry about the germs and potential gross stuff that could have been in them. As we can see, I survived.
When we travel we specifically stop at play places along the routes that still exist. They are rare, but it's the best option to stop so the kids can get energy out and eat a bit because its so cold usually that parks aren't an option and walking around a mall or Walmart just ends up being expensive because we buy all sorts of stuff we don't need.
when i was little i was so sad when mcdonalds got rid of the play place
There were so many great play places when i was a kid! best one in my town was at the McDonalds down by the mall. Big, colorful slides, ball pit, the works! It was always the best place to bug my parents to go, even if they didn't always say yes. But by far, the best play place i can remember from my childhood was this gigantic, 3 story MONSTER of interconnected tubes and slides, that you'd have to access via stairs. It was at a Burger King if memory serves and it was HUGE!!! I can only recall going there once, but those were some of my best memories
8:35 They also added GameCubes to some Play Places in the 00s.
*_Brooo. I remember that... I miss those days._*
I am 80’s baby and I remember when everybody wanted to have their birthday party at McDonald’s. They had a big red train caboose car in the playground, and you could have the party in there. Those were some good times!
Agree 💯
Mcdonalds use to have such personality with the Ronald McDonald clown theme colors going on, Now it's this modern look atrocity, I remember playing at the McDonalds and Burger King Indoor Playgrounds as a kid, Those were fun times, I remember going to Mr Gatti's all the time, There were some serious health hazards there EVERYTIME I went the bowls and silverware looked like a sticky kid's unclean hand was on it all dirty and stuff which is a lawsuit in the making and the food was NOT good whatsoever everything tasted like it game from a dollar store, I only went to Mr Gatti's for the games pretty much and they occasionally played good kids movies in the kids movie room
Yes. My 4th birthday party was at an outdoor one. Late 80s. Happy meals, playing, it was awesome.
I was in the ballpit, if you want to get a child mad at you, call them "short."
When I was a kid in New Mexico, our elementary school was the recipient of McDonald's play place equipment, the burger bars etc, as the local restaurant transitioned to the plastic tube playground. I imagine that was commonplace across the country.
I worked at Discovery Zone for a summer after high school. Crazy kids, but definitely a step up from Chuckee Cheeze!! That place is truly creepy! Frankly, I'm amazed they can afford the ever-rising insurance 😮
That's the weirdest way I've ever seen someone misspell Chuck E. Cheese
Back in the late 70s I associated McDonald's with their playground and the magical forest seating area. I wasn't even thinking about the food. The same goes for kiddie parties I attended in elementary school. We had so much fun playing games in the store
I celebrated my birthday at McDonald's in 1987. There wasn't a play place, but the restaurant had a kids section with small flower shaped tables & chairs. The walls had Mcdonald Land artwork & there were little doors with characters behind them, (like a flap book). There was a Nintendo in the wall that you could play for free, (which was later changed to a Sega Genesis).
My birthday party was planned entirely by McDonald's. They provided the goodie bags, games, prizes, cake, and....of course...the food. 😆 This may sound funny, but I remember feeling really special on that day. My previous birthday parties were great, but they were always at home. McDonald's made my birthday feel like a big deal. The staff gave me a tour of the full restaurant, (seeing the kitchen was SUPER cool to 7 year old me, LOL).
Even though I know McDonald's food isn't good for me or my daughter, I still wish that I could give her a McDonald's birthday like I had when I was a kid. 🎂🎈🥳🍟🍔
A Nintendo what? Was it an NES or a SNES? You said they had a Genesis afterwards but didn't mention the specific console for the first one, just the company
@fishdude2954 A Nintendo. The NES was simply called Nintendo in the 80's. 😂 The McDonald's replaced it with the first nex-gen console, which was the Sega Genesis. It released August '89, (Super Nintendo didn't release until November '90). I said it was 1987, so that would already tell you what Nintendo system would have been in the restaurant.
i spent so much time in a burger king playplace. I have a lot of memories there. It's where i met my best friend, it's where I opened my first pokemon toy, it's where I first talked to a girl without being called gross (we were both like 10, shut up), and it's where I had my first fight.
good times.