5 Nostalgic Chain Restaurants That Ruined Their Dining Room Designs: Wendy's, Cracker Barrel, And More

Ready to travel back in time? Picture it: You're kicking back in a Wendy's circa 1995. You've just loaded up your plate with a salad from the SuperBar, or maybe made a burrito or served up a side of pasta (yes, that was a thing). You gaze out of the curved atrium windows, enjoying your junior cheeseburger, five-piece nuggets, and a Frosty — all for less than $5 (we miss those days too).

Maybe you're relaxing at your local Taco Bell instead, where you're immersed in décor that would fit right in at the Saved by the Bell cafeteria. You're about to bite into your Beef Gordita Supreme and you've got a few 99 cent chicken soft tacos on the side. Maybe you decide to dig into a Mexican pizza before you hit the road with your just-refilled Baja Blast. While we can't provide you with the prices of yesteryear, we can remind you what restaurant dining rooms looked like back in the day. Let's take a nostalgic journey through what Cracker Barrel, McDonald's, and other eateries looked like once upon a time.

Remember sitting at the super-creepy McDonaldland tree for birthday parties in kindergarten, wondering if barbecue sauce with your nuggets would be too spicy? Just us? McDonald's has undergone many stylistic changes over the years. While you can still find a McDonald's PlayPlace every once in a while, you can't find the old-school brown-and-orange décor in this century.

Even if the Cracker Barrel in your area still looks the way it did a decade or two ago, change is on the way. Some Cracker Barrel locations are updating to a cleaner, less cluttered, more streamlined look. Some say the chain's poor sales is behind the new décor, with Cracker Barrel hoping a new vibe can help increase sales of both its restaurant and retail facets.

Sunroom? Gone. SuperBar? Gone. A few decades ago, the décor inside a Wendy's positioned the restaurant as one of the classier fast food options. There weren't many places where you could load up on fresh vegetables and relax as you enjoyed the sun. The interior of Wendy's today is far more straightforward — with the bonus of Coca-Cola Freestyle machines (our heads would have exploded in the '90s at the mere idea).

Whether you ordered one basket of breadsticks after another, kept running back to the buffet for another slice of dessert pizza (apple was superior to cherry, obviously), or were just there to pick up your Book-It personal pan pizza, Pizza Hut, with its signature tablecloths and lamps, was the place to be before hitting up the mall or a movie.

There was nothing like spinning around in a Taco Bell swivel chair, Choco Taco in hand, not a care in the world. Taco Bell still hits the spot today, whether you're stacking items to create a Hulk-style burrito (trust us, it's among the best Taco Bell menu hacks) or dipping cinnamon twists in sour cream (don't knock it til you try it).