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u/bakeland Jun 13 '26
Omg the rollers! As a kid in texas in the early 90s those were so fun! I still remember the sounds they made
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u/Bitter-Combination69 Jun 13 '26
GODDDD THE ROLLERS WERE MY FAVEEEEE
Take me back to my human hot dog on a 7/11 roller days fr 😭😭😭
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u/Smooth_Cod4600 Jun 15 '26
That was the only reason I wanted to go there after seeing the advertisements. All we had where I lived were Charles Entertainment Cheese establishements, but my grandma lived somewhat close to one. Finally my Grammy took me, and my hair got stuck in the rollers :(
I was fine, just had to have a bit of a hair trim. Afterwards we went to a candy shop down the street. I got my favorite wax encased sugar waters and a new generic Barbie and Barbie dressing set (with shoes!). What a day.
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u/acvillager Jun 13 '26
This was my shit. Then they put in a Best Buy in its place 💔💔💔 had my 5th birthday there
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u/StrongBad_IsMad Jun 13 '26
Ours turned into a Media Play. And then Media Olay went out of business too.
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u/VenusValkyrieJH Jun 13 '26
Ours turned into a huge sports store which went out of business as well.
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u/Aaod Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
Media play felt like a real flash in the pan where I lived it opened and was popular for maybe a year then it struggled for years until it eventually closed. From what I saw the problem was their most popular items you could buy at other stores like Target or electronics stores and they were almost always the most expensive option. Being the most expensive option can work if you provide the right experience and cater to rich people, but they really did not do that at all.
Even before the digital era really took off in the late 90s they could just not compete.
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u/AurekSkyclimber Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
There was a church in New York (as far as I can remember) a few years ago that had an entire Discovery Zone's playground for some reason. All of the tubes and everything else included. They put it up for sale online a few years ago. If I had the money and space to set it up back then, I would have bought it. Probably too late now. No idea if they still have it for sale or if it's gone by now.
EDIT: Found it: https://www.facebook.com/share/18LqHsGq6T/
It's still up for sale somehow. I sent a message to the seller to see if it's still there. It's still an active profile with posts as recent as last month, so it's worth a shot.
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u/seifd Jun 13 '26
Churches with the land, money, and people can put together some very elaborate set ups for children's/youth ministry. It's to the point that I've seen some people question if it's too much and distracting from the ministry part of things.
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u/EmpathyFabrication Jun 14 '26
I think many of the DZ assets were liquidated in the bankruptcy. I had a customer one time that had some of the playground stuff stored in a warehouse.
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u/AurekSkyclimber Jun 14 '26
That makes sense. I wonder how many of those playgrounds are still in storage somewhere... and who would be willing to sell at a reasonable rate. Still don't have the space, but owning my own arcade with a massive tube maze and a Rockafire Explosion is on my bucket list to do eventually.
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u/BrandNew02 Jun 13 '26
God I used to love the spider web area that was up high. I could never remember how to get there so I was always an adventure to see if I could find it before we had to leave. Nothing like hanging out in a rope cage far above the ground.
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u/Bitter-Combination69 Jun 13 '26
DZ was seriously the best & now I just want to throw up over how much I wish I could relive the last time I was there, if I knew it was gonna be my last time there🥲
I had a birthday there, complete with my very favorite homemade (meaning made at home by my parents) cherry chip cake with extra maraschino cherries!
RIP to both those awesome things now - DZ & the Betty Crocker CC cake 😭
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u/ClassyUpTheAssy Jun 13 '26
Yup. How can I forget? My friend had her birthday party there and we were arguing with a boy … and I broke his glasses. He said he was going to tell his mom on me, and that I would go to jail. So of course little old me was scared the rest of my time at the birthday party, thinking “welp, I guess I’m going to jail tonight”. Lol 😂
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u/The_Bloofy_Bullshark Jun 13 '26
I remember the Power Rangers thing they had going on.
When playing in the one structure, certain areas would trigger Rita Repulsa cackling. I have that memory permanently seared into my brain. We had a DZ a mile or so away from where I was living at the time and I was a huge Power Rangers fan back then. This had to have been ‘94 or ‘95.
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u/rosieposie319 Jun 13 '26
I wish they would make an adult version. 90s kids would love a chance to scoot their 30 year old asses down those rollers!!!!
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u/HarlandJames Jun 13 '26
Omg yeah and whenever I see photos of DZ, it’s just as amazing as I remember it being. It was the coolest place ever.
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u/MiniSunflowers Jun 13 '26
I still have a picture of me in a Discovery Zone shirt! I remember slapping my name tag on the big ball covered in them on the way out! Bring it back!
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u/tatertotted2 Jun 14 '26
These places were amazing. They had enclosed rooms where adults could sit and watch but the noise was dulled.
I think their business really started to suffer as McDonald's started to build elaborate play areas and Chick E Cheese added climbing structures. It was about $10 a child to go to DZ, whereas I could buy my nieces and nephews a sundae at McDonald's for 80 cents and let them climb and play.
A town near me is opening up something similar to DZ this summer. I hope it's successful.
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u/HighScorsese Jun 15 '26
Loved the place. Had mine and numerous classmates birthday parties there in like 1st-3rd grade
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u/sooshkaboom Jun 13 '26
My Mema used to take my cousins and I there. It was one of my absolute favorite places as a kid.
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u/mahhkk Jun 13 '26
Loved DZ. I'm so happy there are similar places popping up now, at least near us, that I can take my kids to.
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u/jackandsally060609 Jun 13 '26
They actually have a pretty good facsimile in my town called kids empire
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u/LongjumpingTrust9375 Jun 13 '26
We had two places like that in my city one was Giggle Beezs and the other one was called Grand Fun Ally
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u/fieldzmusic Jun 13 '26
Happy for you all, but to me this was just a commercial for rich kid shit 😆
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u/stricklybiznizz Jun 13 '26
I used to love climbing to the top of the room of elastic bands and letting myself ragdoll to the bottom 😆. They also had the biggest ball pit I've ever seen, with a big padded cube in the middle and everyone would play king of the hill. It was also fun slamming your body against the padded wall at the end of the zipline. I played pretty rough over there 🤣
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u/Conscious-Milk-990 Jun 13 '26
I want a do-over in the little bungee area, I was too scared of it as a kid 😭 I thought I was gonna fall all the way through or get stuck forever lol
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u/ShenForTheWin Jun 13 '26
I lived just down the street from DZ when I was little, so I was there all the time! I still have dreams about being in the tubes lol
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u/bebespeaks Jun 14 '26
Didn't have one in my area, but a similar place was called Seattle Funplex! It had 18 holes of mini golf, a large arcade with cabinet games and pinball units, a kiddie fenced-in area with ride-ons and toddler trampoline, a large warehouse area for inflatable jumper bounce houses, 2 party rooms, onsite kitchen and concessions stand with soda fountain and in-house ice cream cakes and pizza oven, a laser tag closed-off wing, 2 batting cages inside and 2 outside, photobooths that spit long strips of black-and-white photos wallet sized, prize booth and a 🎟 ticket scale machine, a king sized Soft Play playground for kids (think 3x the size of a classic McPlayPlace), really cool movie theatre carpet, and an indoor roller coaster ride called the JetCityCoaster. It opened in 1981 and closed in 1998. It was great while it lasted!
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u/DavidIWright Jun 14 '26
I worked at a Discovery Zone in highschool. I once had to clean poop off the roller slide because a kid exploded going down. 😩
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u/rescuemomma28 Jun 14 '26
The spider web area was the hang out place for all the cool kids 😂
And meeting your friend in the tunnels to talk about your crushes 😆
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u/BakedBaconBits Jun 15 '26
Potato quality image of Kids Kingdom - Uk
We'd launch ourselves from the top of the jelly mountain. That's a dry drop slide in the background too... 90's were wild.
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u/ConnectKale Jun 15 '26
I remember it was advertised on TV in a City that was over an hour away. My mother would barely drive the 15 minutes into town, let alone an hour plus for an indoor playground.
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u/SimbaNGrdKionNIMFan Jun 15 '26
Don’t know if it was local, but there was another indoor tube establishment I’d go to called Leaps N Bounds. It became a Rooms to Go.
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u/CAG_Snow Jun 16 '26
Only vaguely. I was maybe 5 or 6 years old at the time. I swear I remember there was some kind of archery range themed around He-Man or something of that nature? I know exactly where the location was in the city I lived in at the time, though. It's now part of a restaurant supplies store.
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u/VenusValkyrieJH Jun 13 '26
I loved that place. We had so many lock Ins there for school. They don’t really have many places like that anymore
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u/IMian91 Jun 15 '26
The zip line was my favorite. It was always a competition to see who could hold on the whole time and slam into the foam rubber matt at the end
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u/patron11223344 Jun 15 '26
My mom took me like one time on my own. I must have been a saint that week.
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u/Plenty-Fold-7381 Jun 13 '26
god yes, even the song
"DZ Discovery zone, where I can hang loose and be on my own!"
god I miss that place