It took me awhile to realize when you say "big kids", you mean adults. Sorry if I'm slow on the uptake.

I think there's a time and a place for both things, namely unstructured play and more-or-less passive consumption of entertainment designed and executed by adults. While I enjoy hearing children at play, I am sometimes annoyed by the noise. I don't think I'm different from anybody else in this.

I have always hated structured activities, for children or adults. (I was bitten by a camp counselor as a child.) But I have always loved animated cartoons and as a child I was certainly inspired to draw by the MGM cartoons (my favorites). And the forms of children's entertainment (books included) that are most inspiring are usually not the preachy ones or the ones with an explicit pedagogical intention, but the ones that are meant to entertain (e.g., Otfried Preussler, (German) author of "The Satanic Mill").