DATE: Tuesday, April 1, 1997                TAG: 9704010045

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  115 lines

FAST-FOOD PLAYGROUNDS WHEN IT'S COLD OR WET OUTSIDE, PLAY PLACES OFFER PARENTS A BREAK, AND KIDS SOME SPACE TO RUN OFF STEAM.

YES. Wendy Wilson sometimes feeds her preschooler fast food for lunch.

In fact, she's done worse.

She glances sheepishly around the glass-walled Burger King playground where 3-year-old Alexander has just disappeared up one of the tube slides.

``Once I was at a McDonald's from 10 o'clock in the morning until 3 in the afternoon,'' she blurts out.

Had to do it. It was cold, rainy. Dad was out of town. For five hours, that clown Ronald McDonald and his Playplace saved Wendy's mind.

How many parents turn to indoor playgrounds at fast food restaurants for some sanity? Plenty, judging from the gangs of small-fry clogging up their jungle gyms, ball pits and crawl tubes.

It's cheap, warm, dry; it's great entertainment and the little rascals can gobble a meal all in the same stop.

Moms in the know, like Wendy, keep a mental map of where the burger playgrounds are. Her mom's support group even holds playdates at these emporiums of play. That's why she drove to the Burger King on First Colonial Road in Virginia Beach in this downpour.

It's lunch time. The drive-through is busy, the dining room full.

A glass door leads to a two-story fun house thumping and bumping with giggly, screechy little bodies. That's where Pat Orr sits in front of a soft drink, her elbows on a table barely 2 feet wide, her eyes on a gaggle of kids.

``This is the first time I've let them play here,'' says Orr. Her two youngsters, 2-year-old William and 5-year-old Kathryn, are inside the jungle gym, creeping around in their stocking feet, looking for the way to the slide.

Orr lives in Great Bridge, so she knows the playground circuit there a little better.

``The Burger King on South Battlefield has the best ball place,'' she says. ``And there's a McDonald's over there, too, that the kids like. And the Hardee's on Battlefield is nice for small kids.''

Kathryn pops out of the tube slide and runs over for a bite of cheeseburger. William is right behind and then gone, too, mouth full.

So how much half-chewed food is left in these kid meccas at closing time?

Surprisingly little, says Tim Thurston, manager of the Bonney Road McDonald's in Virginia Beach. A two-story Ronald Playplace was added there two years ago.

Top 40 tunes fill the dining room. In the playground, the kids are bopping to the score from ``The Lion King.'' One ketchup-faced preschooler after another spills out of the plastic tube slide, hair sticking straight out from the static electricity.

``Oh, we might find a french fry or two,'' says Thurston. But they keep an eye toward clean-up, knowing full well that toddlers are germ conduits. They wash the balls in the ball pit once a week and do regular food sweeps.

Naw, the food's not a problem. Getting the kids to leave can be.

``We sometimes get a mom who's ready to go home who comes out and says, `My son's up there. Could you send somebody up to get him?' '' chuckles Thurston.

Thurston knows his Playplace regulars. Those kids have their shoes off before their mothers have ordered lunch. The pros bring along reading material.

``We have one man who comes every Friday morning at 9 with his son and the newspaper,'' Thurston says. ``I always tease him - `How can you concentrate in here?' - but he seems to tune them out.''

Saturdays are deafening - standing room only and birthday parties every hour on the hour all weekend long.

Carol Raines loves the combination of fries and slides. She is reading a paperback while her 4-year-old, Jesse, and his pal bat their way through a set of punching bags at Burger King.

``There's really not a lot of time to play in a preschooler's life,'' says Raines. ``They have school and then run errands with mom and dad. This is why these things are so popular. My children can't go out to play on the street alone. And I can't go with them all the time. It's sad, but true. I have things I have to get done.''

Raines has friends who home-school their children and then come here for burgers, playmates and a chance to meet other moms.

Thea Justice works fast-food playgrounds into her home daycare business. She and three kindergarteners come to McDonald's twice a month.

``They play for half an hour, then eat lunch, then play for another half hour and then we go home and I get them ready for afternoon kindergarten,'' says Justice.

Some in the burger business say all-season, all-weather kiddie gyms pay off. Burger King opened its First Colonial restaurant this past August. Its brightly colored tube slides face the road, in plain view of any sharp-eyed preschooler.

``It's a kid magnet, definitely,'' says Raymond Wolf, district manager of Virginia Cimm's, a franchisee of Burger King Corp.``Kids definitely bring their parents there. From Friday night through Sunday, it's a zoo.''

McDonald's has about 15 indoor playlands in Hampton Roads. The next one will open by summer near the new Salem Crossing shopping center at Lynnhaven Parkway and Princess Anne Road in Virginia Beach.

Hardee's has two and has no plans to add any more. The concept can cost from $25,000 up to $175,000.

``Sometimes, it definitely adds to the sales,'' says Mike Hancock, executive vice president for restaurant development for Boddie Noell Enterprises, a franchisee of Hardee's with 78 restaurants in the area.

And the folks at Wendy's give the idea a thumbs-down.

``We looked into it, yes,'' says Denny Lynch, vice president of communication for Wendy's International. ``Did we give it serious consideration? No. We believe people come to our restaurants to buy food.''

OK. But some people, little ones, come to McDonald's to sit on Ronald's lap.

Anna Siter's kids do. For two years this mom of six has made the playground trek twice a week. But the Siters are moving home to Gulfport, Miss.

``They don't have these back home,'' says Siter sadly. She leaves her tray of Chicken McNuggets to talk a skittish 2-year-old Katelyn down the tube slide. A few feet away, Lauren, 4, jumps into the ball pit. Beside Siter, 6-month-old Marsha is fast asleep. The rest of the gang is in school.

``We've got a lot of drive-throughs down South,'' says Anna Siter. ``None of them even has tables to eat at and nothing to play on. They forget that simple things can make so much laughter and fun.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photos]

PHOTOS BY CHARLIE MEADS

The Virginian-Pilot

David Berman, 4, peeks out at his dad in the indoor playground

playground at Burger King on First Colonial Road in Virginia Beach.

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