There’s a more “grownup” version of this called Dave & Buster’s. They have a full restaurant inside, games area separated from the food (plus it’s pretty well-lit and comparatively low on all the flashing lights and stuff). There are two bars, one inside the game area (so you can keep an eye on the hyper kids while drinking) and one past the restaurant area. It has a decent-sized crowd of 20 and 30-somethings who go there to play driving/shooting games against their friends, plus enough ticket-dispensing machines to keep the kids happy. (They even have more adult rewards for tickets, like logo’ed shotglasses and such.) My husband and I have gone there occasionally with friends, and after they’d get done with the tank simulators and stuff, we’d blow the rest of the game credits in the ticket machines, then hand out tickets to nearby kids on our way out.
I have never, ever, in my entire life, come any closer to a Chuck E. Cheese than driving past its mall-parking-lot location on the freeway. And if I am fortunate, I will die the same way.
Um, meaning, not having gone in. I don’t mean, I’ll die driving past one. That would be weird.