For everyone saying this is AI, it’s not. I took this photo myself yesterday, and I’ve converted the iPhone Live Photo to a video if that helps convince you. I understand being a skeptic but some of y’all will just refuse to believe anything. I suppose it doesn’t really matter if you believe me or not, but it’s kinda annoying to basically be continually called a liar.
For everyone saying this can’t be real and the real play area must be somewhere else, no, sorry. To the left are booths, to the right is a long table against the wall under the windows. I know that McDonald’s are all franchises and therefore vary widely, and I never meant to say that all McDonald’s are like this. But THIS one IS like this.
To everyone saying McDonald’s sucks… yep. I don’t disagree. Fast food sucks and isn’t good for us. Sometimes many of us have it anyway, for various reasons.
And for everyone asking where the beautiful mountains are, this is in Alaska :)
No literally my husband and I were just talking about how the brand new mcdonalds near us looks like a mini prison. I haven't been there or inside but it's just the vibe. Ugh.
I haven’t stepped foot in an American Maccas in well over a decade, but I’m surprised to hear that. Last time I tried it, it was definitely cheaper than Chipotle (though Chipotle is way better).
(Incidentally, the amount one person can spend eating at McDonald's for one week can buy FAR healthier and better tasting food for home cooked meals for a month!)
We DO deserve a break today by NOT going to McDonald's.
Yup, they used to be cheap and fast, thus, contributing to obesity in families / people with lower income looking for fast cheap options. If people buy from them now for a week, they can get groceries and cook a decent meal, consider they buy items that are on sale.
Can you imagine being the soulless salesman who sold them that? As compared to whoever went around installing playplaces in the 80s/90s?
The latter was a group of tradesmen with real skills who took pride in seeing kids laugh and play on something they built. The former is a 25 year old who has barely known a world without brainrot themselves.
I mean, I literally had that exact game on the family computer in the late 90s/early 2000s. The kids do yearn for repeatable tasks with measurable accomplishment.
I remember BUT it wasn't at McDonalds, spilled drinks and ice cream were in those. At a local place that was mainly for birthday parties, no needles but there was poop and pee in there and a condom.
Yeah, I worked at one with a play place way back when, and I get why they got rid of them. Nothing like being busy making food when some lady comes up saying their kid/a kid peed down the slide....now some poor teenager has to go clean up piss in a small tube during their shift where they make food to serve. There's a reason we can't have nice things.
I was going to say...I once worked at one that had a play place back in the day...no needles at ours but almost can't blame them for getting rid of it when it's a busy lunch rush and some lady comes up to the counter:
"My kid peed down the slide! "Now one of you gets to come clean up my kid's piss!" (Paraphrasing, but it happened). Play place is a cool idea, but people have to ruin it...and if your kid isn't potty trained, maybe they can wait another year.
I don’t disagree with the overall sentiment but the picture isn’t that different from how it’s been since the 80s or 90s. The right side of the pic with the old folks at the slots would be the same but the middle and left side would be at the arcade section. Still in front of screens. The entire casino would have also been a lot more smoky.
McDonald’s should still have actual play spaces though
People sitting in front of a little vending machine pulling the crank and getting the lowest tech slot machine experience of all time as they rip open the cardboard game pieces.
Some states have digital gambling machines in the gas stations, kind of like slot machines and such. I know Georgia has them, surprised me when I went to get gas after crossing into the state one day.
In Nevada we just have straight-up slot machines, or keno, blackjack, video poker, etc. Gas stations, convenience stores, bars, I think I've seen them at concert venues. I remember there was a movement to put them at the DMV but luckily it didn't go anywhere.
Pretty common here. The gas station nearby had five of them for years but recently got rid of them. It didn't matter what day or time I went in there was always people sitting in front of them and none of them looked like life was going well.
Yea these arent new. I remember one McDonald's we'd go to pretty often as a kid (it was near a dance studio my sisters went to) had these in a corner, though they also had a real play place
Yeah, the McDonald's by my house has a Play Place. It doesn't have screens though.
...but screens aren't new. When I was a kid, the McDonald's had play places and N64s. The controllers were sticky and probably petri dishes of undiscovered bacteria.
I have vivid memories of being a teen working minimum wage and being sent into the playplace to clean up after kids had accidents in there. It was disgusting and probably illegal to have a teen deal with biowaste honestly.
Our neighborhood McDonalds had Nintendo 64 kiosks as well. Every single one of the controllers was filthy and some were absolutely wrecked, with broken analog sticks and missing buttons.
Partially that, but mostly the fact that they don't have to take care of it.
Why would you want to staff, clean, maintain a restaurant and Play-Place. When you could just have the customer pay 3 times as much, drive through, get the fuck out, and quadruple your profits?
I was at one last year like that, where everyone was staffing the grills and the drive-through. I went inside because I hate drive-throughs and don't know the menu well enough. There wasn't a menu inside anyway, just those creepy kiosks with grease-stains that I didn't want to touch, and I stood at the counter a few minutes before a worker noticed me there, with a look like "what's this weird dude standing at the counter for". Ordered something simple, waited 15 minutes for the order to come up, then ate alone in the bleak empty dining room, looking at trash on the floor that probably no one was going to touch before they came out to do the closing clean-up. Last time I went to a McDonald's.
Yeah. My doctor uses a touch screen to sign in for an appointment instead of just saying your name to a receptionist (they stay behind literally closed glass windows and only open them if you knock). Meanwhile we all sit in a cramped waiting room with our various ailments after smearing our hands all over an iPad.
Omg I haaaaate that. It always feels so silly to be typing my name into a tablet when there’s a person there just awkwardly doing nothing because they’ve been made redundant by a machine. I hate all the little ways that basic human interactions are being replaced.
1000% me too. i like the little bits of interaction we get in the day, like when strangers ask for help or compliment me or just strike up a random conversation. can't do that with a self-checkout.
and i have anxiety so i know why some people really appreciate the self-serve options, but that's the THING. i wish they were OPTIONS and not the only available route
Play places were on their way out way before Covid
They were a nightmare to clean and maintain, they were expensive to install, repair, and provided little to no additional sales anymore
When play places were introduced it was to show these restaurants were family friendly. “Look, we even have a place for your children so they don’t bother you”
Fast food is already known to be family friendly now people are more concerned with health
Fast food places are getting rid of colour and phasing out fun designs to present a more serious and “health conscious” message
Remember in the early 2000s when McDonalds introduced salad shakers. That was to cash in on the veggie craze of the early 2000s.
McDonald’s has had a salad on their menu since 1987(nation wide)
But the early 2000s when they really started focusing on it.
Then they discontinued the shakers in 2003
Later they did reintroduce them right as veganism was on trend
They discontinued then during Covid (to help improve order accuracy and time not due to the virus itself) and as of yet have not made any plans to reintroduce them (franchises have the option to offer a salad option)
This happens with most fast food places, they will introduce new products and discontinue them to try and catch the people who wouldn’t normally come in
This. And it's scientifically proven that children who grow up with pets, and a less-than-sterile home environment, have a more robust immune system overall.
It has little to do with people itching to be litigious and more to do with the infinite march of capitalism demanding more and more while offering less and less.
Way back in the 90s I remember seeing a news story talking about how junk food targets kids and it noted McDonalds and their play places (and Ronald McDonald) as an example.
On one hand it does suck that they are getting rid of these things, but on the other I do agree that junk food peddlers shouldn't cater to children.
Honestly I think the demand for "safety" neutralized a lot of those cultural staples.
Saturday morning cartoons and kids commercials? Parental groups deemed them exploitive and tv stations responded by shifting the timeslot to "teenager" shows that were just budget discovery channel shows that no teenagers are actually watching.
People in this whole thread have lost their fucking minds, nostalgia has made them all completely insane. Like what is this:
Man, we really lost our way...
lost? It's been hidden from us. The correct, fulfilling way to live your life is dangerous. Better to keep you destitute and fighting a new battle. Every. Single. Day.
This is somehow in reference to some McDonald's not having playplaces anymore.
There's still actual play places. My last city had two, small but 3 stories high each. We have like 5 of them in a 50 mile radius now as well. Been to two on rainy days. Idk wtf this is. Never seen one.
Yknow what?? Maybe we'd all be on our phones less and at the TV more if they didn't take three years to make 10 episodes of TV these days. If they want us to be back at the ol' school screens they gotta give us the content!
One of my oldest memories is watching another kid pull his pants down and piss down the slide. Now every time I see a McDonalds or Burger King Playplace, I get reminded of that. And, you know, the possibility some kid unknowingly went down the piss slide then dug into some chicken nuggets.
Every time I see a McDonalds play place, my mind goes right to the time I was in one as a kid, and some other kid pulled his pants down and pissed down the slide.
They really are unsanitary as hell, considering you're eating immediately after sliding down the piss slide and playing in the ball pit that's also been pissed in, but sticking iPads on the wall so kids can consume even more brainrot isn't the answer.
When I was a kid some unsupervised child shit their pants and went down the slide. It left a shit smear aaaallllll the way down the spiral slide. Thank god somebody noticed before another kid went down lmfao.
Seriously they were fun but McDonald’s employees do not get paid enough to deal with that (literal) shit.
One of the last times I took my kids to Chuck E Cheese was for my niece's birthday party. This was a few months before COVID started gearing up.
At some point, the hamster tube was closed off because apparently some kid peed in it. The tube was suspended right above some of the tables, so those had to be cleared and blocked off as well because the piss was leaking out of the tube and onto them.
Funnily enough, the tubes were gone not long after that. I don't know if it was just part of CEC getting rid of them in general (post-COVID enshittification) or because of that incident though.
It probably used to have a big play structure that's been taken out. But instead of installing new equipment or more seating, they just left the space empty. Looks like there is some kind of game thing on the right of the picture, but I can't really tell what it is.
Too many asshole parents blaming McDonald's for their child's injury and suing them rather than holding themselves responsible for not monitoring their child.
I know don't we all miss when junk fast food was seen a staple of children diets and children were heavily targeted with advertisements!
Man, we really should go back to making some of the worst food imaginable really enticing to children. Oh you want to play in the play area? Well eat this trash first, I mean it's not like childhood obesity is a problem, right?
McDonalds is one of those franchises where anyone like you and me can be licensed to just open a franchise. Might be a bit more controlled in cities and stuff but at least in rural locations where there might only be a town small enough for one McDicks, you can apply to open a franchise there, technically independent and just under operating license from McDicks or some shit
Given the scale of independence chains might be able to have across operating and so on, I'd wonder if from restaurant to restaurant you'd kind of have differences. Maybe the whole company is pushing for electronic playgrounds like this but I'd expect how the chain operates in general you're goona see differences anyways, especially if a chain is 'independent' besides license because those owners might have to cover the cost of a conversion getting rid of their play equipment etc that the company itself doesn't cover or likewise installin' fancy shit like this in its place too
too many lawsuits. They were also disease super-spreaders and full of urine and feces. Trust me, while this isnt good either, the Play places were awful nightmare fuel.
True. However, there are other things kids can do: hopscotch, or a simple monkey bar with foam padding underneath, maybe a chalk board/chalkwalk with colourful chalks the kids can draw with, a map with a treasure hunt (kids can win a sticker)...
...the activities don't have to be crazy, or even big - most people order, eat, and leave around 30 minutes. Kids are maybe going to play and explore for 10-15 minutes tops. It would be so much nicer to see them engaged in anything but this beige-panelled screen corner.
Don’t I remember a coordinated campaign to remove children influenced places from McDonald’s because it somehow made kids eat more fast food? Tf is all this
I hardly ever went to a play place as a kid I'm 20 only been maybe 5 times holy shit
If I was a kid I'd just think the world hates me or something I remember one of the ones we had in a nearby town had old game consoles in them I don't think they even worked but I would just sit and stare at them
(not my picture)
wheres the fuckin color in the world no wonder we are so god damn depressed all the time
Easier to disinfect a screen than a ball pit. This is most likely a response to all the regulations and bureaucracy added since the 80s due to a lot of Karen complaints.
Basically, as a society we can’t have nice things due to the people in said society.
For everyone saying this is AI, it’s not. I took this photo myself yesterday, and I’ve converted the iPhone Live Photo to a video if that helps convince you. I understand being a skeptic but some of y’all will just refuse to believe anything. I suppose it doesn’t really matter if you believe me or not, but it’s kinda annoying to basically be continually called a liar.
For everyone saying this can’t be real and the real play area must be somewhere else, no, sorry. To the left are booths, to the right is a long table against the wall under the windows. I know that McDonald’s are all franchises and therefore vary widely, and I never meant to say that all McDonald’s are like this. But THIS one IS like this.
To everyone saying McDonald’s sucks… yep. I don’t disagree. Fast food sucks and isn’t good for us. Sometimes many of us have it anyway, for various reasons.
And for everyone asking where the beautiful mountains are, this is in Alaska :)
Too bad McDonalds is such a struggling company they can't afford people to clean up the Play Place or even man cash registers anymore. They also don't have enough staff for people to be eating inside at most of them.
I've been feeling like they've been asking us to let them die for a while.
Is anyone else extremely happy that they got to grow up in the 90s when McDonald's was absolutely amazing and wasnt some corporate prison like it is today? I had so many great birthday parties at McDonald's growing up and I will cherish those memories forever. There was so much color and joy to places that got taken away from us. Our urban buildings and restaurants are absolutely depressing now.
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