Memories of the Disneyland Arcades

While video games are normally played at home now they used to be more commonly played in arcades. Most gamers old enough will have found memories of playing at their favorite arcade. I was lucky enough to live close to and get to go to a place that had not one but three arcades. I grew up near Disneyland and had annual passes for years. Disneyland had three arcades to choose from when I was growing up and here is my memories of them.

Penny Arcade
The Penny Arcade was the first Disneyland arcade. I think it has been in the park since opening day outlasting other Main Street stores. The Penny Arcade has changed over the years. They do not have as many machine here as they sued to. They do have the not only the cheapest arcade machines but the cheapest things to do in the park. They still have penny machines. I suppose some day they may need to change it to the Nickel Arcade but lets hope that does not happen. They did not have any modern machines but they have lots of penny movie viewers. Some of my favorite were the San Francisco Earthquake and they even had a couple good Charlie Chaplin reels. I have seen lots of Charlie Chaplin shorts but these reels are different some were like a movie and some just showed things in pictures and I have never seen anywhere else. One other popular machine I discovered was the feet massager that just vibrates but it really does make your feet fill better after long day walking all over and being on the way out it is perfect.

Critter Country Arcade
I do not recall the name of this arcade for sure since it is no longer around but I think it was something to do with bears from the former country bear show. Now it is a Winnie the Pooh store. It also used to have some great old arcade machines. There used to be an old golf machine and an old football machine too. They were real classics and cheap to play though I do not recall I think they were about a nickel. The other games they had were more modern. They had some modern games at the time too. For instance they had some of the light gun games with video like Mad Dog McCree. I think they also had one of those quick draw games too.

Tommorrowoland Arcade
The Tommorrowoland used to be two stories and have a X-wing hanging between the two floors which was cool. Now the second floor is used for office space I hear. One of my first recollections of Tommorrowoland's arcade was when they had a huge Tron display and all the Tron games. I think they even had some special Tron stuff that was no where else. I also recall upstairs was the Dragon's Lair game and this is where I played it the one time at the arcade before I died real fast being just a kid. I also recall the alien trick draw game I got to play once and totally lost. For a time they had the Aladdin magic carpet ride game which cost $5 for 5 minutes and I played it once at Disneyland and later got to play again at Disney World at Disney Quest. There was one game that I wanted to play I never got to play though was the R-360. After convincing my parents to shell out $5 for a single arcade game in the 80's I was not tall enough to play this rare Sega game that literally took players upside down as they played a dog fight game.

Disneyland may still be doing well but like most arcades the Disneyland arcades are on the decline. At least I still have my memories.