I'm dating myself a bit here, but I was on something very similar to this as a young kid and it fucking rocked! I still think about it to this day. Amazing memory.
My local Walmart has had so much theft they've blocked off all but 5 self checkout machines, which are manned by 2 associates at all times. Over the years they've gotten rid of all but 8 registers. Now these registers are all open and the lines reach the middle of the store. I hate going there now.
Also everything with a resale value is locked up in cabinets and the one associate with a key can never be found no matter how many times she's paged by other associates.
If Walmart wasn't cheaper by a giant margin I would never shop there again. But all Canadian grocery stores are owned by Billionaire aashats who raise the prices of everything then blame everyone else
Wanamaker's, most of it passed over the toy department
ETA: that's according to my mom. I was looking through an old photo album and saw a photo of her and my uncle. They both look very happy, my uncle is pointing down at something.
Apparently we had relatives there and before Christmas they always visited and went to Wanamaker's. Mom said it was the highlight of the trip (as kids), all the newest toys and you got to ride a monorail. After that they went to the restaurant and had a 'snowball' which was vanilla ice cream, rolled in coconut, with a plastic sprig of holly on top.
My childhood did not involve monorails and it shows
There are some great videos on YouTube exploring the history of these. There were multiple department stores that invested in similar kiddie rail systems. For example, Rich’s in Atlanta had one called the “Pink Pig” (it was painted pink).
There was one of these in Rochester NY at the Midtown Shoping Center until the early 00s, they would set it up during Christmas and it would go through a fake mountain. It was a blast I think it was the same exact design as this one.
This has got to be Peak Department Store Era, when it seems some made the effort to make visiting them an event.
Stores were in downtown, right? Among the skyscrapers.
As late as the 1970s, when I was a boy, I think I remember visiting the old Downtown of Los Angeles near Christmas and it still had at least one of its' old big chain stores, I remember walking down the street outside and looking at the Nativity and Santa Claus displays in the storefront windows.
They had also installed Christmas decorations and lights in Downtown, hanging overhead, that entire hazy memory is quite magical. Then in the blink of an eye, it seems, before my mind was fully developed, everything switched to malls near suburbs.
The thing is I can still glimpse a tiny bit that old era in my mind. Then I can clearly see the mall era when downtowns crumbled, and then the new re-emergence of this part of cities as a desirable place to be or visit.