Oh sure, I think that by the time they hit my area in sufficient numbers to be considered, I was probably just getting outside the age range.
Please! Watch the language around the little ones; proper name is Cheesey Chuck’s.
There’s Chuck-E-Cheese and then there’s (was) Showbiz Pizza.
Very different animals, if you’d pardon the pun.
There is a great documentary about the Rock-Afire Explosion, the animatronic animal band that was featured at Showbiz Pizza and the creative talent that went into the creation of the shows and music. The guy behind it all, Aaron Fechter, is a friend of mine and a great guy, and he and his company, Creative Engineering, had technical, artistic, and musical abilities and aspirations that far eclipsed anything at Chuck-E-Cheese.
What happened to the characters and animatronic shows they created, and ultimately the demise of the Showbiz franchise and a buyout/“reverse merger” where the Rock-Afire characters and shows were replaced with Chuck-E-Cheese branding, is a sad story of creative talent clashing with corporate interests. The documentary explains it better than I could.
The good news is that Creative Engineering and the Rock-Afire Explosion are still with us even if Showbiz Pizza isn’t, and Fechter continues to create new programming for the animatronics, which he puts up on YouTube. It’s awesome. Here’s his YouTube channel. Cee-Lo Green featured the Rock Afire animatronics in Las Vegas in 2013 and more recently the characters (sadly, not in performing mode) had a cameo in Key & Peele’s movie Keanu.
Also, here is a really cool TV news feature from 1983 about Creative Engineering that goes behind the scenes to display just how much ingenuity, not to mention hard work, went into the whole thing.
The food is absolutely vile.
Everything is made of cheap plastic.
Children are screaming and running around like mad.
It’s horrible.
I haven’t been there in years. However, I’ve heard it’s been called “a night club for midgets”.
I don’t get it. 
Neither did I. It’s one of those jokes they tell on cruises to Alaska, and I heard it second-hand from my brother.
Wow, folks sure are harsh.
Sure it’s a noisy place with ho-hum pizza…but the pizza is still better then frozen pizza at home, and the kids love it.
I used to take our kids with a friend or two on a regular basis. That’s the most fun part, when you see how much fun your kids have with their friends. Ours would even pool all of the tickets at the end in order to get a slightly better prize.
In later times as they got older I would just take my iPad and hook up to the neighboring Panera’s wifi and do some surfing while they were all off having a good time.
For frequent visitors, search online for coupons before you go and print a few–I have never not found coupons, and they often provide 10 or 20% cheaper prices.
Yeah, I don’t have kids but last year I was visiting a friend who does and wound up accompanying them to a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party. My friend apologized profusely in advance for this, but honestly it wasn’t that bad, and I say that as an introvert. Chuck E. Cheese is just a brightly lit arcade for kids. The pizza certainly wasn’t great, but it wasn’t horrible. I talked to my friend and messed around on my iPad until the party was over. No big deal.
Both my nephews got one birthday at CEC and I managed, thank God, to get out of both of them. I was honestly working both times, but the parties were both scheduled for less than an hour before the end of my work day, and I could have got off early if I’d asked.
Oh kids, I’m so sorry, Aunt Baker has to work then.
For some reason that reminded me – as of a couple years ago there was a semi-surviving ShowBiz that has gone through a variety of names. The first time we found it it was something like Billy Bob’s Pizza Emporium and I believe its now Billy Bob’s Wonderland. I don’t know if it was the heat, the location (WVa), or the fact that we had been running around Camden Amusement Park all day but the pizza we got was terrific. Nice fresh mushrooms and a really nice sauce. And it was almost empty of screaming kids. Maybe having the chain fold forced them to actually start doing things better.
HA! This thread has some really good jokes going!
17 and 20 I’d of been. Doubt my parents would have taken me to either at those ages. 
Yeah, but I grew up in West Bend, Wisconsin, not Portland. Even the occasional trip to Milwaukee didn’t yield such delights for a kid in the early to mid-60’s. We didn’t get Chubby Cheeze Whiz, Bozo, or a rented bounce house. Just didn’t happen. And in West Bend even the poor kids were middle class. But we weren’t getting that stuff back then.
My wife and I raised 3 children (all in their mid-late 30’s) and have 3 grandchildren. All that we love more than life itself. But get a group of more than 4 kids in a “party” atmosphere and you have yourself an asshole convention. Throw into it oblivious parents and a little alcohol and you have Chuck E. Cheese.
OP: Run. Run! Run until you drop!!! 
I have severe social anxiety and managed to take my son there several times back in the mid-2000s without any issues, but it was always a solo fun thing for him to do and not parties. He liked playing skee-ball and climbing on things. I usually sucked it up and got one of their combos that included a “pizza” and a number of game tokens.
Well, maybe if you had gotten better grades…
I was 19 when I got married. Maybe I could have had my bachelor party there.
Oh wow.
When I was a very young child growing up in Thunder Bay, our yearly holiday was going to Minneapolis for the state fair and some shopping. (Later it upgraded to Valley Fair).
It included a trip to Farrell’s. Thinking about it now and knowing my dad’s low tolerance for noise, chaos, and silliness it is a wonder we ever saw that place. Then again, my dad does like ice cream.
We never saw a Chuck E Cheese though.
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I had totally forgotten about those machines! They fascinated me as a kid. I was into any sort of machine.
biometricks, did you survive?
I may have admitted this before, but I worked at CEC half a lifetime ago.
I don’t really think I’ve ever recovered: gang fights, attempted kidnapping, child abandonment, health code violations, armed robbery by members of staff…