I have to escort my 4 year old to a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese on Saturday. I’ve never been there and had always thought that it was mostly ball pits and slides; this appears to not be the case. As far as I can tell there are arcade games and you win tickets or something. I’m socially awkward and my kid is cautious of new surroundings and will likely hang near me for the first half hour or so until he figures what the place is about. Essentially, we would prefer to attend a birthday party in a quiet library rather than a rowdy play place. So how does this place work?
-It’s my understanding that these parties are usually commingled with other parties. Is this right?
-Do I need to bring quarters for the arcade games or are you allotted X amount of tokens as part of the birthday party?
-What else is there to do?
-It seems like you can win tickets… do you redeem them for some sort of trinket at the end?
-The party is 2 hours long, does anyone know how much of that is play time? I assume there is break for lunch.
It’s going to be a rowdy play place. Especially if you’re there when it’s already crowded to begin with.
-You’ll sit at a table with your group, but when the kids are off playing, it’s like a water park or a playground, they’re mixed in with everyone else there.
-You’d only be given tokens if the person throwing the party opted for that. They may have party packages that include them or the parent could just hand each kid some tokens, but I wouldn’t count on it. Only the games cost money, but plan on bringing some with you. $20 should be more than enough. Bring fives or singles so you don’t end up with tons of tokens.
-Yes, you win stuff with tickets. Nothing special. When I was a kid I’d turn all my tickets in for candy (Sixlets, lots and lots of Sixlets)
-WAG on the last one, probably an hour or so of playing and the rest is eating pizza, cake, opening presents etc. But it all depends on how they want to do it.
It’s like a big indoor amusement park, not really a structured situation. Don’t overthink it. Bring some cash, go in and find your group and go from there.
As for the kid, at some point he’ll want to go down a slide that you can’t get to and he’ll be fine after that. You can keep an eye on him from the ground.
It’s sucks only slightly less than Dave & Buster’s, and replace drunk people with little kids. I would just post up at a skee ball machine and run the clock out.
Sounds like I brought up some great memories! FYI- my birthday is in November, you’re all invited to my party there.
Ugh, it sounds worse than I was expecting. My wife refused to go, so I agreed to take him for the experience. She hasn’t been there in 30 years (and is a bit of a curmudgeon), so I figured she was exaggerating with some of the stuff and she wasn’t able to answer my other questions about the place. Thanks for the warnings.
Jesus, you guys. It’s just an arcade for little kids.
It’s fairly brightly lit. There are plenty of games that are easy enough for a 4-year-old. For the most part they’re fun to play WITH your 4-year-old. There’s a couple ride-ons (like a little fire truck or a merry-go-round). I don’t recall if the one I went to still had a climber area. I want to say yes. Not much different than a Burger King play area.
The parents throwing the party might have cheaped out and will just be at a few tables in the common area. They may or may not be providing each kid with a handful of tokens. If this is the case you’ll probably play games on your own (you and your kid, hopefully some other kids will join) and at some point the parents will call you over for cake, maybe presents. Don’t expect to be fed. There’s a snack bar from which you can order your own food. Pizza is fine but of course over-priced.
Or they may have rented space in the birthday party area in the back, which will have a more structured schedule and come with pizza and maybe prizes for the kids. They may get to use the “blowing money booth” thingy, and the animatronics might play for them.
All of the games will spit out tickets, and you can exchange tickets for trinkets.
The whole experience will be a bit loud and frenzied but if you go in with a good attitude, you and your kid will probably manage to have fun. And then you can go home, having slightly enjoyed a new experience.
It will be better than you expect for the four year old, and worse than you expect for you.
The cake will be dreadful, and the pizza worse. Everybody will wind up with leftover tickets, because there are not enough to redeem for something. Sometimes people throw away the tickets - consider asking people who are going to throw them away to give them to you instead. The prizes are junk anyway, but shiny.
Get your son involved in some of the easier games and that makes it easier to socialize with other kids. There will be other parents suffering the same way you are, and that makes it easier to commiserate with each other. I suspect if they could install a bar where you could drink and also keep an eye on the kidlets, they would do a land-office business but that is almost certainly too much to hope for.
I seem to remember a stage where the curtain would come up, and some moving statues of bears would play the same songs over and over every five minutes, but perhaps that was some other corner of hell.
It’s only a few hours. I doubt you will look back on the experience fondly, but your son will probably have a good time.
I hope your son has fun. May God have mercy on your soul.
My worst ChuckCheese experience was a hot, humid summer day. A downpour happened and the place lost their power. Emergency lighting kept the place lit up, but there was no AC and the temperature climbed quickly. The games wouldn’t work, there was no food or drink, and kids began crying. It was raining too hard to dash for the car, but we eventually said fuck it and ran.
When you walk in, you go thru a gate where they invisible ink stamp your & your kids hand w/ a number. No kid leaves w/o an adult w/ a matching number; therefore, it’s okay to lose sight of your kid in the place & not worry about it. If they go thru the maze, you will lose sight of them at some point, even if you’re trying to watch them thru the maze. https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=843266
Your kid gets to burn off energy & have fun & you don’t need to be responsible for watching them like a hawk & still get to be called a fun & responsible parent, all for a few bucks & some mediocre pizza that’s still better than Poopy John’s. Great for when you’re tired one day on a cold/wet day.
I have a 5 year old and have been to CEC probably a half dozen times over the last few years, but only the one in my town so I’m not sure if they are all set up the same. At ours there are three main areas: the big kid area, the little kid area, and the party area. The big/little kid areas aren’t limited by age or anything, they just have attractions designed for different age groups. The big kid area is a mix of video and skill games, for which you earn tickets to turn in for prizes. The little kid area has maybe a dozen little rides along with some easier skill type games, which also give tickets. This area also has the play structure/tunnel system/slide (no ball pit). The party area consists of a few long rows of tables and at the far end is the stage with animatronic Chuck and his band. They “perform” according to some schedule, maybe like for 10 minutes on and then 10 minutes off. The three areas are separated from each other and bordered by rows of booths where people who aren’t there for a party can sit.
Rides and games use tokens but they might have switched over to a card swipe system. I was a little disappointed when ours switched because the machines also accepted quarters, which was a much better deal than the 3-tokens for a $1 rip off exchange rate you get at the token machine (unless you want to get some crazy amount). I think $20 would be plenty for a 4-year old. I’d bring some quarters in case they haven’t switch to cards.
You don’t have time before this visit but the CEC website has 2-week behavior/activity charts you can print out and complete for your kid to turn in for 10 free tokens/credits (one per visit). We’d do this before each visit and then supplement with a few bucks in quarters and have more than enough to do a round or two of all the games/rides in the little kid area before eating, and then a little more after. We also only go on a week night as it tends to be less busy and we don’t want to be there when the big parties are happening on the weekends.
A few years ago CEC made a big stink about reformulating their pizza and it’s really not that bad. I’d put it a smidge better than Little Cesar’s or Domino’s. Ours also has a salad bar, a few other menu choices other than pizza, and tap beer.
Chuck E Cheese is great for kids and not as great for adults. Pretty standard arcade really, but it is cheap, generally a token a game and about 50 tokens for 10 bucks. Every game gives out at least one ticket, win or lose, so the kids always get something. Mine always loved it when they were younger and we would go a couple of times a year as a random treat. It is a bunch of kids in various states of supervision, so it is chaotic and noisy, but it’s a kids arcade, what can you expect. 95% of the kids are as well behaved as you would expect them to be. The other 5% are rude or pushy, but again, it’s kids, you sort of have to expect that.
The reason for the reputation is in my opinion classist. Because it is so cheap, it’s a go to for parents that don’t make a lot of money. I’d say at 80% of the Chuck E Cheese’s I’ve been to, the clientele is shall-we-say not Newport Society. This leads to people who think they are Newport Society looking down on it. Most Chuck E Cheese’s that I have been to also have a disproportionate number of brown people and I think that causes a lot of pearl clutching again among a certain set of people. The only real problem I have with Chuck E Cheese is that they serve alcohol and alcohol and children don’t mix. Parents get a little tipsy and then they can get overprotective of their offspring and a spat over ‘that kid stole my ticket’ can turn into two mama bears going at each other. Oh yeah, and the food. It sucks. It’s edible, but it tastes like a cheap frozen pizza. You won’t spew it out of your mouth in revulsion, but you won’t like it either.
Overall, your kid will have fun and if you’re the kind of person that has fun watching your kid have fun, you will too. Mine always liked getting the ID badges with their picture on it. For a token, it’ll take your picture and print out an ID card that says “Super Spy” or “Princess” and a miserable print out of your face on it. My kids always got a couple of them every time we went. There’s also one that ‘draws’ your picture poorly that they enjoyed.
Your kid will have a good time. Unless you are firmly committed against it, you will too. Remember, he is their target audience, you aren’t. There are some fun games that you can kill time with, maybe even one or two from your own youth. As mentioned, SkeeBall is a wonderful place to set up observation post. Constant supervision won’t really be required. The food will never be confused with five star cuisine, but in the end, that’s not really their hook.