Hi! This is the author of this piece, and since a lot of you seem to be interested in rise and fall of the ball pit, I wanted to add that there are two exceptions where the ball pit seems to live on (at least in the US):
- Here and there, you'll find ball pits that seem to exist for the sole purpose of providing Instagram photo ops and seem to be more for adults than children (The Color Factory chain of museums is a notable example)
- There also seems to be a growing demand for private ball pit rentals in the same vein of the rental bouncy houses you'll find sometimes at children's parties
I couldn't find a ton of up-to-date information concerning ball pits outside of North America, so it's interesting to hear that they're still alive and well in Europe! I suspected they might be thriving elsewhere based on this sort of silly article about a woman getting stuck in a ball pit in Singapore
FYI, there is a big business of playplaces in Canada, and by and large, they appear to be independently run. Most of the ones I've been to have ball pits. The good ones have pneumatic "cannons" that kids can shoot the same balls out of.
Here and there, you'll find ball pits that seem to exist for the sole purpose of providing Instagram photo ops and seem to be more for adults than children
Come to think of it, the last time I saw a ball pit was at a party where Lipton was promoting sparkling iced tea (so there was a general bubble theme). You jumped into a ball pit and they took a video so you could post it to Instagram, or whatever.
The article describes the lack of sanitation as a baseless part of the negative mythology, but a dearth of scientific studies (and questions of generalizability of the existing studies) does not mean that their reputation is without merit. When your kid finds turds in the ball pit you don't need a study to know there's a sanitation problem.
Anecdotally, as a child I had a near 100% rate of coming down with an infection after visiting the local ball pit and witnessed the discovery of fecal matter by another child, which, combined with the repeated illness, led to a ban on further visits.
Based on the frequency of my kids getting infected at daycare, I assume any activity where toddlers or even a little older get together has a near certain chance of transmission. Although, I still would not take my chances with a ball pit that I doubt is ever thoroughly cleaned.
Except, strangely enough, according to my anecdata, not COVID-19. For nearly 2 years there were, AFAICT, almost no cases of COVID transmission through our nursery. I'd love this to be followed up properly. I have a theory that not only are the kids more resistant, but the parents are too due to the circulation of the other coronaviruses in pre-school children, along with all the other various infections.
It's all changed somewhat with Omicron, but then it has everywhere.
That could be said until this year, but in France all restrictions where lifted before the presidential elections in April this year (for real) and weren't reintroduced ever since (even though we've had 2 Covid waves and 27k death in the meantime).
Yet, there's still no covid outbreak at my sons' daycare…
Exactly! And anecdotally speaking, almost every single one that I entered as a kid smelled like urine. Not that it ever stopped us from playing in it, but even as kids we knew that it wasn't a clean place.
And ignores all the people saying that cleaning them is the problem.
I'm yet another person who worked at a place with a ballpit as a teen. I loathed it. One Karen lets her brat with diarrhea in, and it's closed for 2+ hours as someone making minimum wage loads every single ball, some with shit on them, into a net bag and runs it through the commercial dishwasher. Then hand wipes every tube.
Meanwhile, a line of other Karens are taking out their rage at not having the ballpit available to them Right. This. Instant! on a bunch of minimum wage coworkers.
No, ball pits are ubiquitous at most indoor play parks here too, the author is extrapolating their disappearance from fast food restaurants, and correlating it to the 90s rumor mill. These rumors were definitely a thing, but more than just ball pits have been removed; most McDonald’s locations have had their entire PlayPlaces removed, due to the fact that people don’t sit down in fast food restaurants anymore, and also a general race to the bottom in terms of economics to remain competitive.
because they used to market to kids. the whole place was kid oriented. fast food switched their demographic to adults about 15 years ago with great success
A lot of McDonald's are franchised, its probably up to the franchise owner whether or not to build a play area. In the age of covid and monkeypox I doubt many franchisees would shell out the cash.
They're still common in Chick-Fil-A, and they complement the playgrounds with family night activities for kids on certain days of the week. Chick-fil-A prob doing better than ever too.
Tbh Chick-Fil-A is the only fast food restaurant where im like "damn this slaps" not "meh its food ig". Food i actually like eating at fast food prices.
Chicken Fillet is good; but I’d hardly describe it as “fast-food prices.” Although it is fast food. It’s more like a chain restaurant prices (think Olive Garden and such).
No fast food places have "fast food prices" anymore unless you heavily coupon and/or use their apps. Seems to be a method of price discrimination. If you're poor you know about the app and coupons and never pay menu prices. If you're not then you think "god damn, fast food got expensive" and pay menu price anyway, when you happen to go to such an establishment.
Like, they've always done coupons, but menu prices used to also not be a complete rip-off. They are, now.
I've never been to Chick-Fil-A, I'm not a big chicken guy, but now I think about it the one near me does have a spot for play place and none of the other chains do. Guess I'll have to try them out, any business that goes out of their way to make the experience fun for kids will get some of my money.
Chick-Fil-A's core demographic is somewhat wealthier than McDonalds (the food is somewhat more expensive), and I think that helps keep the play areas clean and organized.
(fewer parents trying to use it as free daycare...)
I did not even know chick fil a had play areas (between west coast and north east). I thought all the play areas in McDonalds and Burger King had closed down due to liability reasons.
I'm glad you have a machine for cleaning them. One thing I noticed in the US, even as a child, was that ball pits were filthy and musty. I don't think they were ever cleaned.
Huh. That goes a lot slower than I would have expected. I wonder at their procedure for getting all the dirty ones out before the freshly-cleaned ones start piling back in.
Not complaining, glad to see them taking hygiene seriously.
The UK video I posted has some details, 15,000 balls per hour doesn't seem that slow to me[1], and still, according to the video, they are putting the clean ones into "netsacks".
Most probably when they have the sacks full there are not that many "dirty" balls remaining in the pit and they can put a separator of some kind across it to start putting back the cleaned ones.
Found the site of the manufacturer of that machine:
I really hope the adventure playgrounds mentioned are still a thing.
The ones in Germany were a bit more organized than just a pile of junk, but you basically went there, maybe parents paid some (nominal) fee or deposit, and you got a toolbox with basic hand tools like a saw, hammer and nails and there was plenty of wood to build with.
Larger structures were clearly built with some guidance and probably a civil engineer because there were multi-story buildings.
Wow, as a Brit with an engineer/machinist father, this would have been amazing to go to as a kid. We have absolutely nothing like that here short of taking a woodworking class.
Yeah, I don't think we're giving kids saws and nails to play with.
Saying that where I grew up there were a lot of homes being built so there were piles of scrap wood, etc all over and we'd raid them and build forts using saws and nails from our dads' workshops. So maybe we are overprotective today.
The nice thing about such basic hand tools is that you usually get to learn from mistakes without permanent consequences. Will a child hurt themselves at least once with a saw and a hammer? Probably. Will they seriously hurt themselves? Probably not. Will they learn to not hurt themselves? Almost certainly.
I also don't remember how exactly supervision works, but it definitely isn't just dumping a bunch of kids at some unattended construction site. Parents and/or the team managing the place are at the very least nearby.
My kids’ school has actually retained some elements of the junk playground. In the courtyard play area, there is a wealth of scrap wood that the kids use for building projects. When we did the tour before enrolling our kids, the older kids had just built a shed which I thought was appropriate because the school is based on John Dewey’s progressive education ideals, with his central example he returned to many times in his writings being, building a shed.
Amusingly, the director of the school, didn’t know this.
Heh, before the internet rumor mill existed, I had friends who worked at fast food joints with ball pits. They ALWAYS complained about kids pissing in the ball pits. That scared me off from ever messing with them as a young adult (and they didn't have them around my area when I was the right age/size to play in one).
Playgrounds in restaurants take staff time to clean. You have to do the windows since they get all fingerprinted. You have to sweep and mop the floors. Usually you send someone into the structure itself with a pack of sanitizer wipes and hope for the best. At a busy fast food place like chickfila, where they staff 15 people on a closing shift, they can afford to have an area like this. At a mcdonalds with a staff of 2, no chance.
I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be in ball pits. Are they even swimmable or do you just sink straight down? What if there was a very deep ball pit, think 12 feet or so. Could it be escaped by swimming back up?
I don't know for sure, but I don't think so. The balls are very light, so there's almost no buoyancy. The only way to support yourself is if the balls are locked in place from the force of your foot stepping on it, which might work for a stack 2~3 balls in height at the most before it becomes unstable and slips out from underneath you.
So presumably there could be a very deep ball pit with smooth walls somewhere in the world that is filled with the rotting skeletons of dead children at the very bottom?
Indeed, this would make a good high concept movie, taking place entirely within a ball pit, kind of like that movie Ryan Reynolds did buried in a box underground. Good jump scare when a kid finds a dead face while rummaging through the balls.
> the boy found peace in his formative years crawling among the debris and refuse on the outskirts of post-blitzkrieg Manchester.
As far as I know, Hitler never tried to take England in a blitzkrieg. It seems like the author just wanted to use a hip word, but they completely lost my interest with that mistake
I just enumerated the playgrounds our exurb and ALL except 1 have at least one of the things you mentioned. Most have both monkey bars and swings.
The exception is a splash pad playground, so not really indicative of any sort of trend (except perhaps that our summers got a lot hotter over the last 20 years).
There are parks that do not have any playground, but those are mostly either dedicated sports fields, "adult-oriented parks" (eg the city commons), or nature-oriented parks (with trails, trees, and water). So not the sort of parks that ever had playgrounds in the first place.
Additionally, we now have some parks with natural climbing walls that you need to bring ropes to use, which is quite a bit less safe than marry-go-rounds and what-not. (I've never seen them used without adult involvement, but TBF a fall from the top would probably actually kill/seriously harm a kid).
Yeah, as a parent of a young child, all those things are still extremely common (at least at all the playgrounds I've see constructed in the past 5 years). Many even have 10ft+ rope structures and 15ft tall slides.
Sure there are more "thought games" and the merry-go-rounds won't pin and drag a child across the ground.
I mostly take my child to metroparks in my area. I wouldn't be surprised if school playgrounds have been made safer due to less individual supervision and liability for the school.
I’ve gone to a recently constructed playground with my child over the last few years, and I was able to observe the risk assessment strategies they took as they developed.
The playground in question has a truss ladder leading up to a playground platform that’s about two storeys off the ground. Dangerous stuff for a toddler just getting the hang of the playground, and they would self-select themselves out of it. However, as they grew, so did their abilities and they climbed higher and higher.
Yes, overly risk-managed playgrounds were a thing late 90s and 2000s, but risky play structures are making a comeback.
Jean Sweeney is very new, and not completed yet either. Has a fun tower to climb (tight for those over 180cm) that wide slide and the zipline is pretty good. When the rest is finished it should be even cooler. Also, if you're around there check out the Pinball Museum on Webster (used to be the record store)
Yeah, all of our new ones around here seem to use some Dutch or German (I can't remember which) company and look almost exactly like that. All their merry-go-round type things are very different from the old ones we were used to, and IMO less good, but they probably also produce fewer injuries than the old design. They tend to come with notices warning that you probably don't want to let your 4-year-old get on some of the equipment, because it's not extremely safe for all ages. Some have climbing structures like the one in the picture that go up to about 2.5 stories.
Middle of the country, and we're usually like a decade behind trends on the coasts. There was a brief "rip out all the fun stuff" trend but it didn't last long and that was more of an '00s thing.
To be honest, that thing is scary even for me as fit adult male. One little mistake and I could seriously hurt myself. Same for the children. I would be very uncomfortable letting my own child climb around on this to be honest. I would probably let it, but feel bad the whole time.
They are significantly easier for kids to climb on than adults. And kids generally have a good sense of their own limitations. Most playgrounds nowadays are deliberately designed with different levels of difficulty, which kids self-select on.
As a parent of two kids and a teacher, they don't make me nervous.
I used to play on that kind of thing in my childhood. A child can (and probably at some point will) fall down, but usually not from the highest point, but rather while climbing. Also, there's sand underneath, so the landing is somewhat softened. That said, it's still easy to seriously hurt oneself on that, but I was aware of that as a child and acted accordingly.
This is anecdotal "in my day" knee-jerk stuff... I've seen new playgrounds go up in my city and they've got monkey bars, swings, and merry-go-rounds with nets that kids can climb on.
AFAIK Kompan is the most popular playground equipment company around, and you can see all sorts of the stuff you list in their catalog: https://www.kompan.us
Certainly not my experience, I can’t think of a single playground I’ve been to recently that didn’t have at least 3 of swing, monkey bar, see saw and slide
The playground my city just opened (new suburb: was a corn field 2 years ago) has several merry-go-round things. They are speed limited unlike the ones of the past, but they exist. I've seen park catalogs with them - the tic-tac-toe game is a cheap option for a playground, the good stuff is expensive. (several companies have their prices online if you google - don't confuse park with home playgrounds though when you search)
I'm watching my kids play with all the other kids. tic-tac-toe is an indoor game and you rarely see kids finish a game before running off to do something else. Once in a while a kid will move something, but I've only once seen a complete game.
Parks need more swings, slides, merry-go-rounds, and lots more interesting obstacles to run over/under/around. (run is key: if you can't navigate it without getting caught in a game of tag it is too slow and won't be used much) The other stuff isn't what kids go to a playground for.
The playground nearest my home is brand new and has a merry go round, swings, and metal monkey bars.
And I live in Canada, which modern political discourse has decried as a communist dictatorship.
If anything, there has been a shift away from the overly-kiddy playgrounds of the late '90s/early-'00s into playgrounds that allow kids to embrace their desire for mayhem. Heights may still be disappointingly low, but otherwise there's plenty of tools for kids to spin themselves sick. One of the larger playgrounds in my city has a gigantic teeter totter that support a dozen kids crammed onto the platforms on each side, which is AFAIK a new invention. It also sports a pump track for adventurous kids on bikes.
If it makes you feel better, the kids usually end up scampering around/on top of the play areas anyway, sometimes a good 20 feet off the ground (the equivalent of jumping from roof to roof on something like https://www.playgroundequipment.com/figgs-landing/ ).
- Here and there, you'll find ball pits that seem to exist for the sole purpose of providing Instagram photo ops and seem to be more for adults than children (The Color Factory chain of museums is a notable example)
- There also seems to be a growing demand for private ball pit rentals in the same vein of the rental bouncy houses you'll find sometimes at children's parties
I couldn't find a ton of up-to-date information concerning ball pits outside of North America, so it's interesting to hear that they're still alive and well in Europe! I suspected they might be thriving elsewhere based on this sort of silly article about a woman getting stuck in a ball pit in Singapore
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/desperate-mum-drown...
Anyway, thanks for reading!