24 replies to this topic

[matt24]

I grew up in the Spring area, but now live in SW Houston (Meyerland). I was on Beechnut today and drove by Adventure Bay, which is now defunct. I got out and walked around - looks like they are clearing it out. I also noticed the "Fun Plex", which I think used to be Fame City. What is the story on Adventure Bay and Fun Plex/Fame City? I had never heard of either. Fun Plex is a MASSIVE complex. Any history on these? When they opened, etc? What is in Fun Plex now?

[Trae]

Fun Plex is complete crap now. Adventure Bay was there so people in the area didn't have to drive to Waterworld or Splashtown.

[MaxConcrete]

matt24, on Friday, June 2nd, 2006 @ 3:54pm, said:

I grew up in the Spring area, but now live in SW Houston (Meyerland). I was on Beechnut today and drove by Adventure Bay, which is now defunct. I got out and walked around - looks like they are clearing it out. I also noticed the "Fun Plex", which I think used to be Fame City. What is the story on Adventure Bay and Fun Plex/Fame City? I had never heard of either. Fun Plex is a MASSIVE complex. Any history on these? When they opened, etc? What is in Fun Plex now?

As best as I can recall, Fame City on Beechnut opened in the 1985-87 time period. The land developer built Beechnut from Dairy Ashford to Highway 6 a year or two before, and Fame City was one of the first major structures on that section of Beechnut. My recollection is that it was never very successful or well-regarded by the local area (I was in Sharpstown). I remember my cousin visiting in the summer of 1989 and she reported that it had a trashy crowd of patrons.

As for what has transpired there between 1990 and now, I have no idea. I'm somewhat surprised to hear that it hasn't been bulldozed yet.

[soifan]

Fame City was a very nice place to go the first few years it was open. I grew up in Katy and we often frequented Fame City in the mid to late 80's. (I definitely remember being there in late '86, but not sure how long before that it was opened.) People from all over went there the first few years and it was a clean, fun safe place for at least the first few years. It was always crowded when I was there in the 80's - don't know much after that. We went back in the mid 90's and it was a completely different place - run-down, dirty, shops closed, etc... I know it still functions some as some high schools still hold their Project Graduations there.

In its heyday, I remember the following things:
-a large bowling alley
-3 movie screens showing 1st run movies
-a roller rink
-bumper car basketball
-2 really nice indoor putt-putt courses
-laser tag
-a huge 2 story playscape with climbing towers, ball pits, slides, etc... (think fast food indoor playgrounds
on a much bigger scale
-recording studio - those that were everywhere in the 80's where you sing along to a favorite song and get a copy to keep
-teen dance club on weekends
-lots of video games/ air hockey/ small child rides/etc
-restaurants/ food vendors/ a few small shops

As you can see, there was alot to do and it was a really fun place for kids to go (this was when I was in junior high mainly). We went for birthday parties alot and for long days in the summer when it was too hot to be outside. We didn't go much in high school (don't really remember why - probably too far for a Friday night trip/ other interests then/ spent more time at Astroworld instead), so it was a long time before I went back. By then (1996-7 ish), it was run down and only had the main stuff open - roller rink, putt-putt, and bowling alley. The movie theatre then showed foreign films instead (think Bollywood) and it was all run down. We haven't been back since.

Fame City Water Works/ Adventure Bay was a nice little water park for a 4-5 hour visit back in the day. I always had a good time, but haven't been there in probably 12 years or more. The clientele at both went way down over the years and I didn't always feel safe there anymore. It's a shame b/c I have great memories of hanging out there with friends. Kids these days are different - it's all about personal video game systems, computers, etc... They don't get out and play (in the truest sense of the word) these days. It saddens me when I see another amusement place close (RIP...Astroworld, Malibu Castle Golf and Games, Waterworld/ Adventure Bay, Games People Play, Mountasia, etc...). I think kids are missing out on some great memories and lots of fun with friends. We were always on the go... dollar movies, sand volleyball games, poker nights, putt-putt, bowling, amusement parks, zoo, beach, Malibu grand prix, etc... The kids I know now spend much of their time playing video games at home, IM, on My Space, etc.... I know they hang out, but it's so different. I hope when our son is older the cycle has changed and his friends enjoy being outside and being kids.

I'm sorry I got off topic at the end, but it feels good to rant and let it out -lol. Have a great weekend all!

[matt24]

soifan, on Friday, June 2nd, 2006 @ 10:42pm, said:

Fame City was a very nice place to go the first few years it was open. I grew up in Katy and we often frequented Fame City in the mid to late 80's. (I definitely remember being there in late '86, but not sure how long before that it was opened.) People from all over went there the first few years and it was a clean, fun safe place for at least the first few years. It was always crowded when I was there in the 80's - don't know much after that. We went back in the mid 90's and it was a completely different place - run-down, dirty, shops closed, etc... I know it still functions some as some high schools still hold their Project Graduations there.

In its heyday, I remember the following things:
-a large bowling alley
-3 movie screens showing 1st run movies
-a roller rink
-bumper car basketball
-2 really nice indoor putt-putt courses
-laser tag
-a huge 2 story playscape with climbing towers, ball pits, slides, etc... (think fast food indoor playgrounds
on a much bigger scale
-recording studio - those that were everywhere in the 80's where you sing along to a favorite song and get a copy to keep
-teen dance club on weekends
-lots of video games/ air hockey/ small child rides/etc
-restaurants/ food vendors/ a few small shops

As you can see, there was alot to do and it was a really fun place for kids to go (this was when I was in junior high mainly). We went for birthday parties alot and for long days in the summer when it was too hot to be outside. We didn't go much in high school (don't really remember why - probably too far for a Friday night trip/ other interests then/ spent more time at Astroworld instead), so it was a long time before I went back. By then (1996-7 ish), it was run down and only had the main stuff open - roller rink, putt-putt, and bowling alley. The movie theatre then showed foreign films instead (think Bollywood) and it was all run down. We haven't been back since.

Fame City Water Works/ Adventure Bay was a nice little water park for a 4-5 hour visit back in the day. I always had a good time, but haven't been there in probably 12 years or more. The clientele at both went way down over the years and I didn't always feel safe there anymore. It's a shame b/c I have great memories of hanging out there with friends. Kids these days are different - it's all about personal video game systems, computers, etc... They don't get out and play (in the truest sense of the word) these days. It saddens me when I see another amusement place close (RIP...Astroworld, Malibu Castle Golf and Games, Waterworld/ Adventure Bay, Games People Play, Mountasia, etc...). I think kids are missing out on some great memories and lots of fun with friends. We were always on the go... dollar movies, sand volleyball games, poker nights, putt-putt, bowling, amusement parks, zoo, beach, Malibu grand prix, etc... The kids I know now spend much of their time playing video games at home, IM, on My Space, etc.... I know they hang out, but it's so different. I hope when our son is older the cycle has changed and his friends enjoy being outside and being kids.

I'm sorry I got off topic at the end, but it feels good to rant and let it out -lol. Have a great weekend all!

Thanks for the update. Good point on todays kids and video games. I agree. That's interesting!! I used to frequent the Games People Play on 1960 back in the early 80's. I have fond memories of that place. I;d love to find some pictures.

[Greg1979]

My family and i used to frequent Fame City Water Works in the mid to late 80's. We would go nearly every day during the summer with our "summer passes". I can remember sitting in my yellow rented tube floating around "Lazy River" and also waiting in line for the chance to drop in on "Geronimo" the huge slide.
This place was always extremely busy during the summers. I still have an autograph from Allan Ashby of the Houston Astros on my napkin from a foot long cheese dog i had in my hand when we saw him.
Im not sure if it was truth or just a rumor but if anyone remembers the "spider" web they put in near the entrance of the park ? It was a tower with different length levels of what looked like bicycle inner tubs streched across. You would climb through one level and then down to the next, and so on and so on as the drops got futher and futher. Well i heard that shortly after that opened a kid broke his neck on it which resulted in a huge lawsuit. Not sure if that had anything or not to do with the closing it ?

[chrisngrod]

I heard the rumor that someone got injured on that spider web, but that rumor developed as I recall long before the park closed.

Look at the green algae in the wave pool and pools of water below the slides....

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&...c=addr&om=1

Someone on a review site said the slides were getting rusted out and towards the end the wave pool broke along with other attractions. None of which were they fixing.

I remember all the great attractions metioned above. Malibu, Mountasia, etc. Looks like any existing ones like that one of 59 S won't last long either. Despite how nice they are they're all getting torn down. The go kart track on I-45 south heading away from town was swallowed up to become a parking lot for the building next to it. You can still see the track, but the grass has been replaced by gravel. Never went there. Still sad to see all these outdoor recreation places dying. People just can't beat the heat.

[Pumapayam]

chrisngrod, on Saturday, July 28th, 2007 @ 5:17am, said:

I heard the rumor that someone got injured on that spider web, but that rumor developed as I recall long before the park closed.

Not a rumor. Don't know the details, but it was shut down due to an injury. Sometimes you could fall straight through 2 layers. It was a unique but strange attraction for a water park.

[chrisngrod]

Ah well then there were probably multiple incidents.

[GBryant]

My folks had a bakery in Sharpstown in the 70s and 80s and I remember them getting a job to do a cake for some new place called Fame City being built way the heck out in the 'burbs somewhere. I went with my dad to deliver the cake and can remember standing in absolute awe of the arcade. It was ginormous. I could be making this up, but I seem remember that when it first opened, you could pay a flat fee and play all the games all you wanted. That may have been a rumor born of the wishful thinking.

The whole place seemed to turn pretty shady, pretty quickly. Some friends and I were there one night when one friend adjusted the bill on his cap. He was immediately approached by a security guard and ordered to stop flashing gang signs. None of us were in a gang or even knew anyone in a gang, but that was the tone of the place by 1990.

There was a crappy dance club for teens upstairs called Studio something. In the seventh grade, it was the cool(ish) place to go.

[purelife]

I was a kid when Fame City/Waterwords opened. Back then, it really was in the middle of nowhere, but a truly novel idea. I remember going there nearly every day during the summer with my best friends in middle school - late 80s and early 90s. We had several friends that worked there during high school too as life guards, at the mini-golf course, and the bowling alley. It was still nice until about the mid 90s. For a while, a church held services there, probably in the little theater/party room they had in the middle. When they opened, they had these tanks across the street. I don't remember if they were on a track or how they worked. I went to see fireworks there every summer when I was little - it was in the middle of a huge field, and we'd park on the grass across from the main building. Good times.

It's kind of sad to see the water park torn down, but during it's last years, it never really looked safe to get on any of the rides anyway. It's unfortunate, because now there is so much new home construction along Beechnut, that it could be something good for the area. I don't see Funplex renewing itself again though.

[Fringe]

Fame City was great when it first opened. My kids went to birthday parties all the time there. Unfortunately, it went the way the area went. The kind of people that moved out to that area were not the kind of people you wanted your children around. To many gangs and want-to-be gangsters took it over.

[stormko]

I used to go to Fame City every weekend around 1987 thru 1989 or so. The teen club upstairs was called Studio Circus, and the DJ's name was Alex C. That was a cool place because teenagers actually had a place where they could go dance and hear cool music. Alex would break songs there that hadn't even hit the radio yet. You can't find places like that for that age group anymore. Kids used to actually practice dance routines and do them at the club. Alex would even play a few slow songs--something you never get at clubs these days. And everyone knew each other there. The guy at the door's name was Marcus and the refreshment girl was Margarita.

There was also a club downstairs that catered to an older crowd. I don't remember the original name, but at some point, Alex C took it over and they called it I.C.Q. There was art painted on the walls by a guy named Dez.

I'd assume that a lot of the people who went to Fame City regularly were kids from Elsik and Hastings high schools.

I've since moved from Houston, and it's a shame if that place went downhill or if it doesn't exist anymore. All good things, they say, never last.

: /

[taman25thc02]

Can anyone tell me what the Spider Tower attraction was? I slightly remember it from going there as a very young kid and always wanted to try it. It looked like the floor was made of rubber bands that had to be crawled through on each level.

Is there an official name for this attraction?

[Pumapayam]

taman25thc02, on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 @ 10:31am, said:

Can anyone tell me what the Spider Tower attraction was? I slightly remember it from going there as a very young kid and always wanted to try it. It looked like the floor was made of rubber bands that had to be crawled through on each level.

Is there an official name for this attraction?

The Web, that's what I remember.

[hbcu]

That was a big thing when it hit Houston..I remember the commercials and the book covers....

The first time I went there every attraction was up and running and the entire food court was functional......I went back later and the ride where you rode around in the dark and shot at the ceiling was broke and never reopened to my knowledge...the food court was 90% closed except for one area and the rest was nothing but storage

the bumper car area was too damn small and the mini-web had a height requirement where none of us could get on....you had to pay for all the arcades but I did enjoy the skating and bowling alleys...

all of that was in the early 90s.....I went back there in 2001 and the place was a dump then as the place reflected the chanign area...I saw more fights there in my life and more single young moms than I've ever seen

[DJ Cubanito]

stormko, on Sunday, November 4, 2007 at 6:34 AM, said:

I used to go to Fame City every weekend around 1987 thru 1989 or so. The teen club upstairs was called Studio Circus, and the DJ's name was Alex C. That was a cool place because teenagers actually had a place where they could go dance and hear cool music. Alex would break songs there that hadn't even hit the radio yet. You can't find places like that for that age group anymore. Kids used to actually practice dance routines and do them at the club. Alex would even play a few slow songs--something you never get at clubs these days. And everyone knew each other there. The guy at the door's name was Marcus and the refreshment girl was Margarita.

There was also a club downstairs that catered to an older crowd. I don't remember the original name, but at some point, Alex C took it over and they called it I.C.Q. There was art painted on the walls by a guy named Dez.

I'd assume that a lot of the people who went to Fame City regularly were kids from Elsik and Hastings high schools.

I've since moved from Houston, and it's a shame if that place went downhill or if it doesn't exist anymore. All good things, they say, never last.

: /

Wow! Stormko! You have a good memory! I bet I know whom you are!! You're right, that was a great place and I had a lot fun while I worked there.

I was know as DJ Alex C back in those days, but I changed my name in 1996 because there were too many DJs going by the same name at the time.

Alex Clavijo, Alex Cherry, and Alex Gutierrez, whom actually passed himself as me in some clubs, and Alex Cherry who also gave a club owner friend of mine my business card from Energy 96.5 FM and said he was also me. I just had to change my name.

Wow! Remember I.C.U.? That club made history!!! All hip hop, East Coast, West Coast, Houston music and even Miami Bass hip hop! I remember we used to fit 1,200 kids into a club that only held capacity for 600 people and at the end of the night you could touch the walls of the club and feel the perspiration or humidity when everyone was gone.

That used to be Club EFX and the manager was Sha Razai. That was the first club to play house music in Houston also. Sha gave me the opportunity to break and showcase house music for the first time in Houston back in 1987 and we even booked Micky Oliver from Chicago when his hit "Intensity" was big here on my mix show on KQQK 106.5 FM. Then I moved to Energy 96.5 FM and that was a blast.

Boy those were really fun days!

[RyanStark]

DJ Cubanito, on Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 2:10 AM, said:

Wow! Stormko! You have a good memory! I bet I know whom you are!! You're right, that was a great place and I had a lot fun while I worked there.

I was know as DJ Alex C back in those days, but I changed my name in 1996 because there were too many DJs going by the same name at the time.

Alex Clavijo, Alex Cherry, and Alex Gutierrez, whom actually passed himself as me in some clubs, and Alex Cherry who also gave a club owner friend of mine my business card from Energy 96.5 FM and said he was also me. I just had to change my name.

Wow! Remember I.C.U.? That club made history!!! All hip hop, East Coast, West Coast, Houston music and even Miami Bass hip hop! I remember we used to fit 1,200 kids into a club that only held capacity for 600 people and at the end of the night you could touch the walls of the club and feel the perspiration or humidity when everyone was gone.

That used to be Club EFX and the manager was Sha Razai. That was the first club to play house music in Houston also. Sha gave me the opportunity to break and showcase house music for the first time in Houston back in 1987 and we even booked Micky Oliver from Chicago when his hit "Intensity" was big here on my mix show on KQQK 106.5 FM. Then I moved to Energy 96.5 FM and that was a blast.

Boy those were really fun days!

[bred]

Somebody uploaded a home video to youtube from 1989 of Fame City. Brings back a lot of memories...



And here's footage from 2009:



Compare footage at 0:31 from the first video to 0:23 from the second video. Same spot.

[Fringe]

That did bring back some memories. It was a great place when it opened but as the Alief area went downhill, so did Fame City.

[IronTiger]

I read that there was a Fame City installed in Memorial City Mall (spread out through the mall, apparently) in the late 1980s (didn't last long). I'm guessing there were multiple locations...?

[GBryant]

IronTiger, on Monday, December 12, 2011 at 12:46 PM, said:

I read that there was a Fame City installed in Memorial City Mall (spread out through the mall, apparently) in the late 1980s (didn't last long). I'm guessing there were multiple locations...?

I remember the place, but I don't think it was a Fame City. They had a virtual reality setup and a Battletech simulator center - neither of which I ever got to try.

[Chris Geo]

I know this topic is 6 years old now but I thought I would put on the record that I was the LAST person in the world to make the long drop on the Spider Web . I remember going down it (you had the option to puss out of the big drop) but I went. Then the person behind me tried to do it, it was a young girl I believe and she hurt her neck. It's unclear if she fell on it wrong, broke it, or got caught in one of the webs but I specifically remember the EMTs inside of the web focusing on her neck. That was the last operating day of the Spider Web and the last time it was ever used. Tragic really, not just for the girl but because that was a cool ride!

Next time I went to that place it was in 1998 or 99, they were throwing a rave party inside and we were rolling our nuts off by the ferris wheel where they set up a stage. Then as a surprise act, South Park Mexican showed up and did a set. I was sitting by the Ferris wheel and my girlfriend threw up near the train hehee (it was GOOD TABS), and suddenly SPM comes walking in with about 20 other people. It was the SHIT!

How times have changed. I went from a fun loving kid to a fun loving raver to a boring business owner who does nothing but work. And now I host a radio talk show too. Pretty boring life but I guess it's good to get it out of your system when you are young. I skydive sometimes though so I guess I still have that adventerous side of me left!

Edited by Chris Geo, Sunday, January 15, 2012 at 4:17 PM.

[ChannelTwoNews]

IronTiger, on Monday, December 12, 2011 at 12:46 PM, said:

I read that there was a Fame City installed in Memorial City Mall (spread out through the mall, apparently) in the late 1980s (didn't last long). I'm guessing there were multiple locations...?

The location in Memorial City opened in 1989. Think it closed at some point in the mid 90s though...

I have this commercial on my YT from the launch of that location.

[BIG-O]

I got season passes to the water park for 3 years around 2001-2004...Now its an old folks home.