McDonald's fan stumbles across 'old school' feature that's been quietly disappearing from restaurants
Rachael Davis
Featured Image Credit: Philip Gould/Getty Images
McDonald’s outlets have certainly changed over the years. The sleek and modern ones we’ve grown accustomed to came to the detriment of a more kids-focused setup of yesteryear, with fewer kids’ play areas and Ronald and friends iconography than you might remember from the late 90s and early 2000s.
It wasn’t uncommon for McDonald’s outlets to feature huge kids’ play areas, complete with soft play frames, ball pits, slides and more. Good fun for the little ones, and an opportunity for their immune systems to get introduced to some God-only-knows-what.
PlayPlaces, as they were known, have fallen by the wayside, but some still remain. One Redditor discovered as much when they visited a McDonald’s in New York complete with a fully-functioning PlayPlace.
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“This place hit me right in the childhood,” dhoppy203 said in their post featuring several pictures of the classic setup.
The McDonald’s itself is complete with old school decor that will take you right back, and the comments section was full of people pining for the bygone days of wolfing down a Happy Meal and then testing their stomach’s integrity with some play area high jinks.
“I yearn to be there,” said one commenter.
“Old school for you whippersnappers who didn’t get to enjoy an outdoor playground maybe,” said one lamenting an even more advanced passage of time.
“Do not know why they got rid of these,” said another. “Of course kids are going to want to go to McDonald’s because they have a PlayPlace and Burger King and Wendy’s don't. Great for creating loyal customers for life.”
“Better not let corporate see this, they demand grey and sterile only now,” said another. Modernised as McDonald’s has become, they’re more Scandi-style than grey and sterile aren’t they?
In 2017, Eater covered the trend for fast food play areas fading out of existence. At that time, Pokémon Go had been out for about a year, and it was cited as a symbol of the changing face of play by Playscapes blogger Paige Johnson.
In essence, the personalised and boundless play opportunities provided by modern tech like Pokémon Go has beaten out traditional spaces, in Johnson’s view.
“That’s the direction that play is heading,” she told Eater. “Not just as an experience that’s divorced from any location, but also an experience that resides with the player and is individualized for the player. And the question is, how does any static playground, whether that’s a community playground or fast-food playground, compete with that experience or conform to new expectations of what play is?”
FOODBible has approached McDonald’s for comment.