They call you Prince Baal, Abaddon, & Old Nick--I call thee Chuck E Cheese

Tonight I leaned into the gaping abyss of flaming hell and stared straight into the eyes of the Prince of Darkness. His name, dear friends, is Chuck E. Cheese.

My husband and I took Cranky Jr there to check it out. He’s almost four, and I thought he might be old enough to enjoy it. I figured it would be awful, but my boss swore her kids loved it and it wasn’t that bad. I trust her judgment, so I roped my husband into going tonight. That is, I used to trust her judgment.

As soon as we stepped in I thought I’d walked into the middle of someone’s migraine. The screaming kids. The running. The shrieking. The loud video games. The flashing lights. The cups and plates everywhere. The smell of stale pizza. The crackly PA system announcing birthdays. People were supposed to eat in this environment? And have fun?

My husband and I were absolutely horrified. For the sake of Cranky Jr, we stopped clutching at each other in terror, plastered on fake smiles, and tried to get into the spirit of it. We gagged down the pizza and the overpriced soda and let Cranky Jr put tokens in whatever machine he wanted to try.

Then we heard that some “show” was beginning in one minute. We shrugged [how could it be worse than the rest of the place?] and moved into the “Studio” area to watch. A curtain jerkily slid open and there, in all his cheap animatonic glory, was Chuck E Cheese himself. He appeared to be in a DJ booth and he “talked” to people & puppets on the video screens playing on either side of him as he spun tunes. It was not only laughably fake, but the plot (what I could grasp of it) was beyond boring. I noted to my embarrassment that we were the only family bothering to watch this abortion of a performance. I mean, the place was pretty busy, but no one else was dumb enough to waste time on this.

The saddest thing of all was that my son kept creeping closer and closer to Chuck E., waving shyly. He came back to me and moped “Chuck E won’t say hi to me!” I came up with some excuse about the bright lights in Chuck E.'s eyes preventing him from seeing his fans. Then Cranky Jr began calling Chuck E’s name as he approached him, calling it hestitantly, but a bit louder and more plaintive each time. It was pitiful. My sweet, innocent little boy was not only being sucked in by the Prince of Darkness, but he was getting his little heart broken at the same time. Again I struggled to come up with a reason why Chuck E was ignoring him which wouldn’t hurt his feelings. My husband said “I can’t believe you’re encouraging him to believe that hideous thing is REAL.” He had a point, but what to do? I just wanted to get the hell out of there without any more pain.

When we finally got out of there, I felt like I had narrowly escaped something evil. My husband and I are still reeling. And I will be FUCKED AND HORNSWOGGLED before I go back in there voluntarily. If for some currently-unforeseeably reason we do have to go back, I’m getting drunk first. I’d always hoped my son would have a happy social life with lots of little friends. But now I fear that every friend will increase the odds that we will be invited to some birthday party there at Hell Central. Please god, let my son be lonely and unpopular. He can make friends over the internet.

Mom? Is that you?

sputter gasp But. . .but, it’s where a kid can be a Kid!

Or is that somewhere else?

Is “hornswoggle” a vague sexual euphemism? Where’s Davebear when he’s needed to define these things? Can I help with the “hornswoggling”?

And FTR, the first two sentences of the OP made me laugh hysterically.

Please tell me places like this sell beer for the helpless adults?

We’ve got one of those here, too. I’ve been there precisely once. It wasn’t too bad (the fact that I was with SueDunhym made the experience FAR more pleasureable, I must admit).

The Dianasaur wants to go back, very very badly. However, she’s not going to. Not until she’s an adult and can go there by herself, on her own time and her own dime.

I’d wanted to take her there for her birthday last year, but…just a few weeks before then, there was a birthday party up there that turned very, very ugly. A fight broke out amongst the adults. Not just a shouting match or a fistfight. Oh no. This is Flint! We don’t do fights half-assed up here! The fight spilled out into the parking lot, where some of the adults pulled out GUNS and started shooting at each other!

Guns. At Chuck E. Freakin’ Cheese’s.

Ah well. At least now I can tell my daughter that I’m just scared of lunatics with guns at that place. That’s WAY easier than trying to explain what a “Tool of Satan” is.

Wow that’s a shame you had such an unpleasant experience! Me, as well as my friends, were crazy about Chuck E. Cheeses. We used to go there for practically every birthday from age 5-11.

I’m not quite clear why you found it unpleasant- was it simply overstimulating for you? I am an adult and yet I still have a blast when I go there for cousins birthday parties (although they won’t let me in the ball pit anymore…grrr! :mad: )

When I was a kid, CEC’s used to be cool. Except of course, my boring parents (no doubt seeking refuge from the screeching masses) would always insist on sitting in the room that had the big tv showing the news (or was it MASH? I forget). But back in the day, they had two sides, a kiddy side with all the stuff kiddies like (the little ride-on machines normally seen outside your local K-mart, small versions of the smash-em games, etc), and then the other side was a real video arcade with popular games and skeeball (ahh skee ball, I knew you well… now you’ve moved to Dave & Buster’s and I know you still - but not in a biblical sense, ew)

Anywho, my point is that there was a room for mommy and daddy to seek refuge from the overwhelming CEC-ness of it all, there was the room with an audio-animatronic fuzzy thing trying to be Elvis, and the “big” room with the original CEC show in all its hideous glory (remember the clapping hooves on the wall?) which had a swiss cheese-looking crawl through area right beneath it. On top of that it had the big kids arcade and the little kids arcade.

Last time I took my nephew into one (2 or 3 years ago), no tv room, the stage show was worse than ever in their lame attempts to make themselves seem cool, and no big kids arcade. Just a handful of ride-ons, a couple dull games and the ominous BALL CRAWL (source of MOST of the screaming in the place).

One thing I do approve of is their child security measures - the way parents and kids get ID’d that they belong together. I forget whether it was a stamp or a wristband, but I remember being impressed.

This actually almost made me cry. Poor little guy! :frowning:

I had forgotten all of these things, but now they’ve come rushing back. We never went into the scary Elvis thing room. I think it scared me when I was tiny and we never chanced it again. And am I imagining things, or was there once a version (circa 1983) of the CEC show where most of the characters were just torsos in picture-frame like stages? Chuck E. might have been a full-body animatronic, but the others weren’t.

One of my friends once worked as the chump who dresses up in the Chuck E. Cheese suit and lets kids smear pizza all over them. The restaurant was in the same strip mall as a sex store. Interesting times were had by both staffs.

Oh God, my nephew once had a birthday at CEC. It was at 1:00PM on a Friday afternoon, and Aunt Baker was invited. I had to “regretfully” decline, because “I’m sorry *****, but Aunt Baker will still be at work.” In knew I could have left work early, as it was the end of the week, but I used my job as an excuse not to go.

http://rock_afire.tripod.com/ is a rather amusing site I found a month ago that contains the history and FAQ’s of Chuck E. Cheeses’ and its one-time competitor Showbiz Pizza Place, as well as forerunner Rock-afire Explosion. It’s full of amusing antedotes such as this gem from the “Misc.” nook:

It’s an easy site to get lost into…

Oh, and why does the place have that sickeningly-sweet smell about it? Has anyone else noticed this?

Also, there are a lot of bottles (beer?), cans, and cigarette butts in the stage area. Maybe the employees sneak back there to drink and goof off?

Oh, and I forgot – yes, *Thunder, they sell beer. :slight_smile: They usually have the handles right at the counter.

I think Christians everywhere would be somewhat mortified if it turned out that Satan’s name was Chuck E Cheese.

I wonder if they’d laugh.

Jesus, Cranky, you sound like you’re in bad shape. I’m sure a trip to LaShish will fix you right up, though. :slight_smile:

I laugh at your pain, Cranky. Try going there for a freakin’ birthday party. They never book one or two, there are always eight at a time so they stuff eight parties of kids into the room with the “live show”. There’s no room to move between the tables and, let’s be honest, with 40-50 kids in the room there will be a few who demonstrate the amazing depths to which child rearing can sink.

The worst part? You can’t leave until the party’s over and then they hand out tokens for the games.

Any time there’s a CEC party, my wife gives me the option of taking the kids to the party or hiring a man to viciously beat me with an axe handle. I figure the physical wounds will heal quicker than the psychological ones.

CEC is a migraine waiting to happen for anyone with an attention span longer than 30 seconds, it’s true.

But the kids love it. We take Baby Kate there every six months or so. She can’t get enough. She know the animatronics are fake but when the guy in the CEC outfit goes around the game room she’s all about giving him a high five.

The sweet smell comes from the 8 pounds of sugar they put in every gallon of pizza sauce. Man, only kids could like sickeningly sweet pizza.

“Take 2 aspirin and meet me at Chuck E Cheese tomorrow.” That’s our standard invitation around here.

Our local CEC does not sell beer. There used to be picketers outside carrying signs with pictures of a terrible looking car wreck and a slogan that said something like ‘why does a children’s restaurant sell alcohol?’

Our local CEC also has pretty good, if horribly overpriced, pizza- seriously, it’s something like $15.00 for a large one-topping pizza. Yikes.

The only time CEC has been useful to me is during a long rainy period after we have run out of absolutely everything else there is to do. There used to be a coupon on line for 100 free tokens with the purchase of a large pizza (that coupon has since disappeared) which made the overpriced pizza more tolerable.
Let me tell you about the time my youngest monkey got his hand caught in the moving basketball net… you know, up between the net and the backboard. Well, maybe I won’t tell about that. (hey, it’s CEC. I wasn’t really watching him all that closely).

Also, am I the only one who worries about perverts in the bathroom there?

They’ve obviously never been inside the place. Alcohol is the only (legal, non-prescription) way to make the place tolerable to any normal adult.

Hey, man, CEC is great. I take a book and chill out. I keep the little cup of tokens with me, so the kids have to come to the table occasionally to get a fresh supply. (I give them two at a time so they can’t go hog-wild; that also keeps them checking in with me on a regular basis so I know they’re okay.) Our CEC has a killer salad bar, so I can eat a salad and avoid the noxious pizza, which the kids love.

Seriously, if you know ahead of time that the place is gonna have a lot of kids in it, along with video games and flashing lights, I find it hard to believe you didn’t expect a lot of noise and chaos.

I have one word for you Gillian’s. If Chuck E. is old scratch, then she is your lord and savior. No jungle gym, but every imaginable electronic game to keep the little mutants occupied, plus bowling, decent food, and get this: a full bar. Find one near you now.