I'm no fan of Chuck E. Cheese — and, of a mercy, Kay is well beyond the target demographic or desiring to go there. Still, it's kind of interesting watching the evolution of the iconic mascot.
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Chuck E.'s Makeover
Established in 1977 with its first location in San Jose, CA, Chuck E. Cheese is a chain of restaurants aimed at kids — commonly for their hellish birthday parties — and offers "pizza, a salad bar, appetizers, desserts and a feature musical and comic entertainment by life-size, computer controlled robotic characters, family oriented games, rides, and arcade style activities." Owned by CEC Entertainment, there are over 500 corporate-owned locations and 50 franchises in 48 states of the U.S. and…
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I am; our kids are just edging out of being young enough to like it, but as a place to take young kids on a budget, it's fantastic. The food certainly isn't anything to be excited about (although it's better than it was when I was a kid – and bear in mind, I remember it as-a-kid, when I was a lot more forgiving), but they don't push the food. We ended up getting some a couple of times, but we could go in and just let the kids play for quite a while on remarkably little money, and nobody ever came up and said anything like, "Hey, if you're not buying a pizza, you need to clear out." There's enough just climbing-around stuff to do that we didn't even need much for the arcade.
In terms of cost : time-your-kids-are-entertained ratio, I can't actually think of any business that compares. (Of course, parks win, pretty well hands down, but "free" skews the ratio too much to be a fair comparison.) Their birthday party policies are very budget-friendly, too. No, it's not geared for the grown-ups, but except during their busiest times, it's not really that bad. For anybody with kids in the right range, I highly recommend it.
I'll admit that, from a pure gaming aspect, it's a pretty sweet deal. The pizza is frozen-food-section awful, and the overall ambiance is such to create agoraphobia, but the kids do love it.
But I have to admit, having seen their new commercial, I'm inclined to take about half of it back. "Funner." Hmph.