I would have expected animatronics to become more popular after Five Nights at Freddy's, not less. But I've never seen a store with animatronics in my country, so I don't really know how kids feel about them.
This is 100% wrong though, my 5 year old is in kindergarten and they LOVED FNAF. Like, seriously a lot.
I've done my fair share of Chuck E Cheese birthday parties - the place near me already doesn't have animatronics etc and is virtually unrecognizable by people who knew it in the 90s. It's literally just a single big room with 5 very long tables to host 3-5 birthday parties concurrently, taking up about 40% of the space. Then there's a smallish trampoline area (which requires paying an additional $10 or $15 or somesuch amount) comprising 10% or so, then the other 50% is just arcade machines laid out in a grid that take a card scan instead of coins, and pay out non-tangible credits instead of physical tickets.
So I assume that's the future here - take a low-rent semi-large space off a side-street of a main road, fill it with low-operating-cost stuff, and let it collect revenue. Pretty sensible business, and also utterly soulless and has absolutely no cultural or sticking power.
I really cannot believe FNAF hasn't done some kind of play here - you could absolutely charge 2-4x the price of Chuck E Cheese's parties for a FNAF-themed "what-a-6-year-old-calls-scary" birthday party / event space and no kid would ever go to Chuck E Cheese ever again.
I'm guessing it's because Chuck E Cheese is busy being mediocre and barely existing, and why do physical stuff when you can make millions off selling plushies and funkos.
So I really think this is just a case of capitalism being too lazy and profit-motivated to bother with providing something people - kids - would definitely want.
For me I really didnt care much one way or the other about the animatronics. You would snarf down your pizza watch the dumb show and go back to the game room. Now some of my friends were smitten by the things. They wanted front row and would try to get the merch.
They were mildly interesting and gave the place a uniqueness over the dozens of other places with video games and pizza. More importantly your parents would be in on it and would take you out to a 'safe' arcade.
When the places where all over the place. It was a tiered system. The showbiz/chuckie places were for kids under 12. Usually much cleaner and less of the older kids bullying the younger ones off the machines. The arcades were for the over 10 group and were much less supervised. The people running them would actively discourage older kids from coming in by themselves in groups of 4 or more. If you went in and dropped a couple of quarters and kept to yourself they would ignore you.
I was invited back years later to a CC with a family. The pizza was utter rubish, SB had better pizza. Many of the games were outdated or broken. The place felt worn out and tired and very focused on the ball pit (which any free playground can provide a similar experiance). Not pleasant at all for anyone involved. Pretty sure the animatronics was broken then too.
The five nights thing would be more for the 12+ crowd. CC is squarely aimed at lower aged kids and parents who want 'a break'. They might know about it and have played the game but it would not factor much on if they want to go.