11/6/2023 0 Comments Discovery zone for kids![]() "Why encourage them to violate the policy when your policy is not the '90s anymore. Shannon Dorman, a Chevy Chase resident who took her two daughters to the Germantown Discovery Zone before the White Flint site opened, says the franchise holders were right to give in to parental pressure. In their absence, their children wear wrist-band sensors just like the kind used in maternity wards to prevent kidnappings. But demand for the "KidzWatch" program was strong, and so parents who are willing to pay are outfitted with beepers that let them leave for a few hours, perhaps to catch a movie across the hall or to be pampered at a "day spa" set to open next door. Historically, adults have been admonished not to use the Zone and its high-school-age "Kidz Coaches" as babysitters, although some still did. ![]() ![]() It has a "Micro-Zone" for babies as young as 6 months, a huge eating area where children can munch on dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets, four rooms where birthday parties are held every 45 minutes, and the latest play stations, such as a jungle gym made out of bungee cords. So, to discover new uses for a hurting mall, White Flint is being marketed as a place for regular folks to mix a little entertainment with their consumption.īefitting its unusual status, the new Discovery Zone was planned as something of a Taj Mahal. It has been ailing since the real estate boom glutted Washington area shopping. White Flint is no longer positioned as an elite fashion center. Pei, the architect who created the new wing of the Louvre. Magnin department store that had been designed by I.M. But this spring, a new FunCenter opened in Rockville's White Flint Mall, occupying 13,500 square feet of the closed I. Smaller Discovery Zones had opened in the past two years in Germantown, Falls Church and Annapolis. ![]() Now, after years of blissful innocence, the Washington area is getting Zoned-out. By the end of last year there were more than 165 nationwide. The Discovery Zone vision of childhood made cleaner than mud pies, safer than tree swings and less competitive than hopscotch sprang to life in 1989, when the first FunCenter opened in Kansas City. Welcome to the bold new world of "pay for play," coming soon to a shopping center near you. "When I was a child, you only played outside or at a friend's house," she says. As she looks through the glass for the face of her son, sweetly flushed with excitement, a small frown tugs at the corners of her mouth. She pauses, thinking of those Ozzie and Harriet days of her youth - coming home from a bike ride at dusk, from the beach with shorts full of sand or from the playground with palms rubbed raw by the jungle gym. There is no way someone could run off with your child."Īsked how her childhood in balmy Southern California would have been different if there were Discovery Zones back then, Boxwell hesitates not a moment before saying she wishes there had been. I think it's wonderful," says Ramona Boxwell, 42, who, along with her 7-year-old son, David, is a biweekly regular at what the culturally clued-in simply call "the Zone." "I like this. If they wish, they can pay extra and leave their kids feasting on amusement while they shop or run errands. For a two-hour admission price of $5.99, parents can supervise their children from inside the "Quiet Zone," a sound-quilted fortress with such grown-up toys as a pay phone. Like so many Oompa Loompas, young boys and girls frolic in pools of Jujube-colored balls, or clamber over Slurpee-blue foam mountains.īut unlike Wonka's fictional chocolate factory, this futuristic FunCenter manufactures a product appealing to those stress-coated confections with soft centers of guilt: modern parents. The indoor plastic playground known as the Discovery Zone looks as if it were designed by candy kingpin Willy Wonka.
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