It appears that all of the fun events we used to have growing up are now gone. Remember the roadshows? The huge dance events at the Rose Bowl? Is the morg still doing those kind of activities? The dances were fun, but dances are easy. Put some balloons in the basketball hoops, string up the mirrored ball and there you go.

I remember the spectacular events that were multi-stake.
I'm from southern California and I remember mormon night at Disneyland and renting out shopping malls for the night to hold a big dance with DJ's at each end of the mall.

Do these activities still go on?

Probably not very... I'm right there with ya. Arcadia and Pasadena stakes back then when we had fun and no correlation. Dance festival, youth conferences at hotels, roadshows, etc.

My kids weren't that active and they didn't have anything like we had.

Boring, and glad I'm almost out!

It is not supposed to be fun!

So shut up sit still and PRAY--PAY--OBEY

Oh! Did I mention PRAY PAY OBEY?

Yep, that about sums it all up!

LOL

Was it just California, or did the stakes in Utah have these activities, too?

We won the Road Show competition, and competed in the finals at Lake Tahoe. We had our Youth Conference in Watsonville, near Carmel. There were beach parties; the ward summer party at a dude ranch; the Relief Society bazaar and bake sale, which raised tons of money; the singles fall picnic and hayride; the Halloween carnival with scary movies and a spook alley; several youth all-day ski trips, with our own bus; the dance festival; stake one-act plays.... Probably our parents paid for everything.... Parents probably would rather pay for that than EFY "sex camp" at BYU, or the torturous pioneer trek.

All of this did disappear with consolidation, so maybe it is a money thing. The "rich" california stakes had to tone it down, to favor the poorer stakes in other countries. I remember my mother, the Stake RS Pres, arguing with her GA relative, and the GA relative telling her that the RS was now under the complete control of the Priesthood, and couldn't make money on its own, anymore. Other California stakes allowed the RS sisters to take inventory at Nordstrom's and other big stores, but the church got paid directly for the slave labor. Inventory was not as creative and fun as the bazaars. New, improved computer inventory systems took over the women's work. (Inventory is why we have to wait in line so long for the cashiers, who are making the inventory entries on OUR time.)

Less fun, more money.

Not fun enough... So I left.

Way back, I learned quickly to be a magician! The ward put on a show.. I did a few tricks, had a great time. I can't imagine that happening now. It's totally different. No fun. Just pay, pray and obey.

I lived in several wards in different parts of the U.S. while growing up in the 70s and 80s and it was fun everywhere. We had road shows, youth ski trips, stake nights at theme parks and multi-stake dances in shopping malls. Not anymore.

Honestly, if the church would bring back some fun, it would probably be able to keep some members in the church. Polygamy might not seem so bad if you're skiing while thinking about it.

It's not fun at all. Frankly being a Mormon is boring, dull and bland. There's nothing fun to look forward too. Look at how boring their Sacrament services are, along with Sunday school and Priesthood. Is any wonder a lot of people leave once Sacrament's over!??

Yeah, definitely no fun. I don't get it. The weird/ wacky/ deep doctrine stuff may have been nuts - but it was sure a lot more fun to spend Sunday school taking about Kolob, becoming a god, and the secret alters that had been found in Adam-Ondi-Ahman than spending yet another week listening to correlated pray-pay-obey nonsense. And I remember doing lots of fun stuff growing up, some of my best memories are from adventures I had in youth program activities. Now days it seems like cleaning toilets is about as exciting as it gets.

So why on earth does SLC not get it? They are hemorrhaging members, obviously mostly because people are finding out the truth, but I still have to think that if they would make the doctrine and activities "fun" again, they might be able to hold on to a few more folks. The old suits sure are out of touch.

As you surmised they don't get it because ninety year olds are out of touch especially because of the isolated world they live in. Ninety year olds are busy "cramming for the finals" and are totally not able to put themselves in the shoes of normal people and families. They wouldn't have made it to the position they hold if they weren't true blue zealots.

It depends on where you live. Some stakes still have a lot of activities, like the one my mom is in. Other stakes don't do anything.

A lot of stakes still do all those things.

Being moron still isnt any fun. And probably wasnt in your time either.

I grew up in Washington State. I remember the road shows, ward camp outs, Friday night ward pot lucks at the church, ward breakfasts at a local park, ward baseball games and ward gatherings at a park I think it was for a potluck. They don't do any of that stuff anymore and haven't for a long time.

Growing up in the 50s & 60s I was lucky to live in a ward with a youthful bishop and a fun loving congregation. Mormonism was actually fun.

Having activities that made me feel special helped to compensate for living in a larger community where 'Mormon' was an epithet.

Ditto during the same time period in the old Las Vegas 2nd Ward, back when there was just one stake.

We had a mutual Laurel leader stage a party at her house where she eventually ended the party with a spin the bottle game!

Besides all the activities mentioned, did anyone have hay rides and inner tubing parties?

We had nothing else to compare it with. I didn't see any other groups having the same kind of fun...

Another possible factor was that if you had jeans, shirts and a bike, you were totally set for a good childhood. Our expectations were very, very low, compared to what my kids thought they needed to be "happy"

Tubing, water and snow.
Road shows
Dances
Pot luck dinners
Haunted houses and sleigh/hay rides
Hunting trips (men folk only)
Cleaning the gardens and orchards of the elderly.
Carolling

Somewhere along the line a sense of community was lost and replaced with a sterile set of rules.

It's gotten to the point where my Mormon mother is posting Ensign-derived homilies on facebook and pretending to be maternal about it. Mormonism is as fun as stubbing toes or getting earaches. It's a rash from head to foot that won't go away. Mormonism is the midnight mosquito that flew into your ear and can't get out. Just the kind of buzz you don't want.

Mormonism is not sober. It's not intoxicated. It just isn't sober.

I'm from Southern California too, being a mormon back in the day was fun. I got my first kiss at a New Years Eve dance at Parkway Plaza in El Cajon back in the 80s. And yes I remember mormon Disneyland days. So much fun. But nope nothing exciting now in the church. It's boring, so glad to be out.

I had a band with a couple of other church members. We played for a few young adult dances and that was it. We wrote a rap song called "the joseph smith rap". It was dumb. We played at a dance in Cardiff the weekend before we all went to the MTC in June of 1985. I miss the group I was in but I fear that I'm the only one who woke up to the truth about the mormon cult.

Not sure about the rest of Blighty, but in my early days as a convert in Hull and the surrounding areas (2005-2007 ish I would say) I enjoyed tons of fun activities, even the stake and regional YSA dances were good.

The stake put on some really good hog roast/barn dance things, talent shows were actually full of talent and were enjoyable, we had regular quiz nights which were a lot of fun, and then we had multi-stake/multi-region conventions over a week or weekend with loads of indoor and outdoor activities.

I don't know if there's any relationship to this, but back then we also had missionaries who were fun to be around and work with aswell. With perhaps one or two exceptions they worked hard but they all had personality and it made for some really good teaching and finding times both for us as members and missionaries, and for the investigators who turned up not just for church but for the activities aswell.

After a while budgets started getting hacked up, leaders were replaced and little kid missionaries started coming out which contributed to the rather miserable state that the church is/was in when we started planning our escape.