Laptops??? There weren't gaming-capable laptops in the 90's, and besides that, the ultimate status symbol at a LAN party was lugging in your 80-pound 20" Sony Trinitron CRT.
Similarly, I'm not sure how 13 or 14 year old me got a 27" Trinitron TV downstairs by myself. 34 year old me would need an entire bottle of Advil for sure.
That aside, it sucked performance wise even with a Pentium 3. My main PC and 19in monitors were what we drug around to LANs all over.
There used to be an old movie theater in North Branch MN that was converted to basically a permanent LAN Party where people would just come and go.
Movies and bands would play on the stage on weekends or something, too. Best time of my life.
I don't live in the US though so perhaps we just missed out on that rite of passage not living somewhere where kids are more likely to have access to a car.