Fun Fore All, Cranberry Township, PA

A typical Friday night consists of us going and doing some sort of activity like bowling, mini golfing, and sometimes it includes a visit to an amusement park. At one point in Pennsylvania, spending a Friday night at a place like an amusement park was pretty easy considering the fact that if you lived in any midsize to large town, you had multiple options to go to within a fifteen minute ride. At one point if you lived in Pittsburgh there were more than a dozen different parks you could choose from. Fortunately Kennywood is still left, but the preferred option for us is usually something that involves more physical activity like bowling or miniature golf. Many of the older parks, including Kennywood, had mini-golf, and some even had bowling alleys and roller rinks. Some parks still retain mini golf courses, such as Idlewild, Conneaut Lake, and Lakemont, but they are also not within range of us to visit on a whim on a Friday night. We decided to go and do some mini-golfing and chose to visit Fun fore All. This family entertainment center is located off of Interstate 79 and includes many entertainment options, with an emphasis upon physical activity. Including batting cages:

Easy rock climbing...

And mini-golf....

Mini golf alone is enough to bring us to a place to spend a Friday night. With the evening pass for the   evening you get unlimited use of everything. We ended up spending the most time in the batting cages. But in addition to all of the physical activities, Fun Fore All also has go karts, some family rides, an arcade, and more.

And for all of you coaster guys, we did end up riding the coaster. This was not the primary focus of the visit though :-) This is a Zamperla Fiesta Express, a coaster that was exciting of the little ones.  

Fun Fore All offers a little something for everyone. People of all ages were at this entertainment center. It offers a fun array of activities to do on a relaxing Friday night. These types of family entertainment centers are on the rise and installing larger rides. They are filling a niche that was left once many of the smaller community amusement parks started to close. The local community entertainment aspect of many amusement parks has gone by the wayside with expensive gate entry prices. Lost in the process of modernization and expansion has often been the idea of going to an amusement park for just an evening as a local community gathering place as opposed to a day or weekend trip vacation destination.

These growing family entertainment centers are filling in the void that was left with the loss of many smaller community amusement parks and the expansion of others that once filled that niche. Places like ZDT's in Texas are growing. ZDT's now includes a small waterpark, and they are even building a compact wooden roller coaster through the world renowned Gravity Group company. Graphic from the Gravity Group.

I look forward to seeing the future of these family entertainment centers and also to spending more Friday nights at Fun Fore All.