My stepmother used to say that she needed a Valium before she could step into one of those places. 
Oh.My.God...
I would gladly pay a FISTFUL of tokens to see you inside of a Chuck-E-Cheese!!!
Dude, I even played skee-ball.
I'm glad to hear you took PK to Chuck E. Cheese. I know it's crass and commercial and loud, but he had a marvelous time, didn't he? He can learn about good taste and corporate responsibility later. He won't be small for long, so enjoy it while you can.
it's not like a strip club for kids, it's like an acid trip for kids. I remember vividly going to chuck e cheese when I was little, and then on the way home my brother was convinced he saw bushes and mailboxes walking around, like they were animatronic too.
I think that its the combination of artificial cheese and flashing lights that just winds kids up waaay too tight
when i was about 25 i tried to have my bday at chuckee cheese, i found it amusing and ironic--my friends didnt agree.
The way I remember, it's niched for the whole family. Puppets, beer, gaming. Also has a nice chaotic feel.
On a grimmer note, in Washington state someone tried to kidnap a kid whose parents were ignoring him there. It's easy to dump the kid and play the games with a beer.
I basically agree with Morgaine, though, except for bad parents.
Beer? I found no stinkin' beer. I couldn't *believe* there was no alcohol. My idea of hell. I avoided the place up until the cousin's third birthday, which was held there, at a strip mall in the burb north of grad-school city. My husband and I said goodbye to our formerly hip selves at the door. I had no idea it would be so bright! and so vacuous! (and not very clean). I pictured a sort of pizza den with video games, not the stark, whirring place it was. For what it's worth, the only pleasure I had was punching those damn ducks with the fist. And my daughter had almost immediate sensory meltdown in there from all the visual overload and cacophony of musack--the kind of fit I have when I try to see one too many galleries or museums in a day.
It is one of the levels of hell, isn't it?
ah skeeball!
hmm, it ate part of my comment - it probably hated my little heart that I made... well anyway, I love skeeball and think you're lucky, Professor B!
Skee-ball is soooooo much fun. I haven't played it in forever! My young cousin had her b-day party there a few years ago. I remember thinking...I can't believe they still have the singing gorilla. It was so, so...dare I say it, Cheesy (no pun intended). I guess that is their marketing ploy and it has worked for years so they continue.
Never been to one...yet. There's one on the highway on the way to the in-laws and I figure we can't avoid it forever.
The kids recognized the logo before they could read and they don't watch tv so I don't understand how they knew.
Liberal use of marijuana helps a lot!
The dialogue snippets are great
Whenever we go to a birthday party at ChuckECheese, I make sure to have a prepared bribe destination so we can get out asap. I always imagined it may be better if there wasn't the added complication of a birthday party. (It isn't easy to convince them to stop playing games and go watch someone open presents)
Now there is one item of pop-culture that hasn't made it to this neck of the woods, yet. Sounds like nothing worse than taking the kids to the "Jahrmarkt" though, really.
So now, the next time Im in the states I am going to have to keep my eyes open, right? One cannot criticise what one has not seen.... thats my excuse anyroad.
Have a great holiday, B and family.
The Girl insisted that her 5th birthday be celebrated at Chuck's place.
If I had been my father, it wouldn't have happened.
But since I'm a good mommy, she got her wish. And she (and the kiddie guests) had a wonderful time, and we (and the adult guests) had an equally wonderful time being sarcastic and mean (under our breath, of course).
I always wondered how a place that serves food came to be represented by vermin. Although it's better than the place's original name, "Filthy H. Rat."
My wife finally put her foot down at the end of last summer: no more airplane museusms for her. Either I would take them, or the boys could wait until they had their drivers licenses. I think the tipping point was when she started correcting mis-identifications of WWII airplanes at smaller airshows.
Just wait, Dr.B, just wait: it starts with mice but it doesn't end there!
Cranky
B, I have a mouse in my apartment. That doesn't bother me, but he's getting bolder and bolder and my son, who's 31 and past the cuteness stage, thinks that the mouse is taunting me. He/she will probably be sticking its tail in the air and mooning me pretty soon.
So do you want me to sent it to PK? I fear that something terrible might happen if I don't.
Fabulous post! Mr. B. is high.larious. This post brought back a flood of memories about my childhood, when I liked to go to Showbiz Pizza, which was kind of an early 80s precursor to Chuck E. Cheese. I don't know if they had them outside the south or not. I remember my dad, upon going inside, called it a "nightclub" for kids.
I also remember the jingle in the commercials for Showbiz:
At Showbiz Pizza you can act like a kid
You can have more fun than you ever did
You can giggle, you can wiggle, you can flip your liiiid...
Show-biz Pizza: where a kid can be a kid!
Showbiz had, IIRC, jovial purple animatronic gorillas (and other animals).
Hey, by the way, has PK ever gone to a (roller) skating rink?
No, no roller-skating yet...
And John, sure. Catch the mouse, box it up, and send it along.
OMG, I love skeeball! I actually made landisdad play it with me on our honeymoon. Needless to say, I whomped him (because you should never play skeeball against a girl from Jersey, unless you are one). I can't wait to introduce it to my kids, although I'm not willing to step foot in a Chuck E. Cheese just to do that.
> Catch the mouse, box it up,
I take it Mr. Emerson has never seen /Mouse Hunt/? After a parade of 29 mice through our lives (OK, we thought those 2 were both girls - oops) I am not totally sure that such a mouse really exists, but I wouldn't be against it either!
Cranky
I've only been in a Chuck E. Cheese once in my life (I think as a tween) and, oh, it marks one for life! All I remember is the animatronic mouse, the noise, and the lights, and that is more than I wish.
Now, if I could go with adult people who'd make as many entertaining remarks as you and Mr. B, perhaps I'd reconsider.
Perhaps.
I don't know which fills me with greater horror - the idea of a target demographic for Chucky Cheese or the idea of belonging to it.
Off the top of my head, the only person I can think of who might get away sort of unscathed would be Helen Keller.
Damn! My bluff has been called! Now I have to mail my mouse and her children and grandchildren to PK.
I loved it when I went as a kid. When I took my nieces to the same one a few years ago, I was appalled at the stench of urine eminating from the "ball room" where they also had the little enclosed Habitrail thingy for the kids. I don't know if things had gone downhill, or if they're all like that. It was terrifying.
I also now have trouble contemplating going back to a water park--which was paradise for me as a kid--because I can't help thinking "how many people are peeing in this water *right now*?" But this kid is going to want to go, someday, and I'll just have to deal with it and pray that the cleansing power of chlorine is enough.
Ooooh, Skee-Ball, one of my favorite things ever. I drove from San Francisco to the Santa Cruz boardwalk *just* for Skee-Ball. When I'm rich, I'm gonna have Skee-Ball in my house...with tickets & prizes.
Oh god, those ball rooms for kids. They are so very gross. And I'm not even germ-phobic. In fact, I think it's the knowledge that they've gotta be sprayed down with all sorts of chemicals, plus the idea of just sweat and grubbiness from small children, rather than germs.
And yeah, water parks are revolting too. Ewww.
We haven't had to do the Chuck E Cheese thing for Pistola yet, but I know the day is coming. I am well acquainted with Mr Cheese, thanks to my nephews and nieces--I've been to enough birthday parties there to last a lifetime. Ugh.
I will say, though, that I do love the skeeball. Skeeball makes almost any den of inequity tolerable.
And Clancy, I remember Showbiz Pizza as well. Showbiz and Chuck competed in my hometown for a couple years in the early 80s, but Showbiz was eventually run out of town. I remember the Showbiz near my house had "Teen Night" on Friday nights, with a dance and whatnot. I always wanted to go, and my parents would never let me. Sigh.
Dr B
I live in England and had to look Chuck E Cheese up on the internet. Please please keep it on your side of the ocean.
Also I think yout haloscan count is broken.
Yrs K
Your counter is definitely gone. I thought one comment how quaint. I should have known. I hate when something I like gets so popular, but alas, you were popular before I discovered you.
Anyway, I love skee-ball Daughter and I used to play. Also, I thought Mr. B's comment to you was rather rude re: finding you attractive because everything else was hideous.
Bwaahaaa!
Skee-ball good! I can see you playing it! Chuck E. Cheese? I can only thank the gods that the closest I came was almost first date with AXADH, when we took the Kid to Mc Donald's in Augsburg with many of her firends for her 12th birthday. It was apparently a cool thing to do.
Yeah, re. the counter, I think Haloscan is having "problems."
Misanthrope, it's okay: he was totally joking
Disney World/land Epcot is just Chuck E. on 'roids.
Same eventual response in us parents - "No, we are out of cash." Through clenched teeth.
End experience with extreme exhaustion and feeling of being covered in grime and grease.
bleh.
Fortunately the kids do grow out of it. Or grow tired of rejection.
Love the Skee-ball, but I suck at it. Very sad.
Do they have air hockey there, by any chance? 'Cause I do love me some air hockey.
Yep, there was air hockey. Which normally PK loves, but somehow we didn't get around to it.
I totally love Disneyland, though, lymie. It's like Las Vegas for kids.
dorcasina, no beer? That is the only thing that makes Chuck E bearable (and even so, it's really not). thankfully we've avoided it with kid #2, whose friends prefer laserquest (I just drop him off with the birthday kid and run away, fast).
So funny that you went to Chuck E's this weekend. Me, my girlfriend, and our best mutual friend (all of us in our early twenties) went there this weekend too. Mutual Friend was majorly crazing skeeball. We were actually a bit surprised that we could get in without a kid.
(crazing = craving)
You are a better mama than I am.
My response when the kid wants to go to Chuck E. Cheese's: "No, because if we go there, Mama will go insane and slaughter everyone in the place. Now shut up."
Odd. I swear I commented.
I used to love chuck E Cheese. We went once a summer, and it was the highlight of my summer.
And is that duck game Whack-a-mole, but with ducks? I *loved* Whack-a-mole almost as much as Skeeball.
When we went, we also used to play lots of games because the tokens were the same weight as tokens for the Champlain bridge, which had recently stopped being a toll bridge. My father had bought out a lot of the tokens, which cost something like 4 cents each.
Everyone grew out of Chuck E Cheese before we ran out of tokens.
Oh, man! How did you make it out of there without a crashing headache? Chuck E. Cheese always slays me, with all those bells and whistles and flashing lights. My brain can't take it.
The only thing worse than the flashing lights, constant noise, scuzzy ballpit, and shrieking children that is the average Chuck E Cheese/Discovery Zone franchise, is that psuedo-food they try to pass off as pizza and birthday cake. It's hard to make a pizza my kid won't eat, but they have done it, and in mass quantities. I don't know what that cake's "frosting" is made of, but it looks deeply unappetizing, like fluffy spackle or some such.
The first time I ever went was for a birthday party. There was a shocked silence from all the adults at the party when they brought out the "cake," and then the father I was sitting next to murmured, "Better living through chemistry..." and we all cracked up. No one over the age of 5 touched the cake, which, considering there were older siblings there in the 7-12 year old range, is really saying something.
Does Chuck E. Cheese still have that lovely sweaty-kid-body/dirty sock/wet diaper smell? Ugh. I took my daughter there once, to a b'day party, and got hysterical when she went into the ball pit and promptly was buried by balls. Never again.
i haven't laughed so hard in a while. this is priceless!
we have so many food allergies and we live in NYC which is devoid of CeC. I can at least see another 5 years without getting near one --and by then, the interest will be long gone.
fabu post!
I remember Showbiz, too, Clancy and ABDMom. It was one of the few noisy places targeted at kids that I actually liked, though the animatronic stage shows always repulsed me. I was depressed that it didn't come along until I was too old to jump around in the ball rooms.
But SKEE-BALL! ROCKS! Oh, I miss it. I used to actually win crap at skee-ball: it was quite possibly the only time I was ever rewarded for my eye-hand coordination, which is generally not of the best.
So is Chuck E Cheese carnivalesque?
I had to ask.
Perhaps for the kids it is. I'll have PK read some Bakhtin and get back to you.
Wolfa, no--the duck game is like a shooting gallery, except that instead of a gun it's a boxing glove on stick that pops out and punches the ducks. They do have some kind of whack-a-mole thing though, which sadly we didn't play.
RedHeadDread, agreed. Certainly the vileist pizza I've ever eaten. Clearly, the food is not the draw at Chuck's place.
OK, then, is it transgressive?
Someone I knew had an exchange student staying with them who wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese. He somehow got the idea that it was some type of jazz club based on the Rickie Lee Jones' song Chuck E's In Love.
In 7 or 8 years you will long for the days of Chuck E. Cheese.
You teach him to drive, his friends give him dope, he starts sneaking beer, oh how did we live through it.
I'm about ready to start taking grandkids to Chuck-Es, so all is forgiven.
Lymie is right on the money, Disney is one of the most pernicious influences on American culture. Discuss.
Chuck E. Cheese is obviously not transgressive in any way. Nope.
Eh, I'm not so fearful about the "driving teens who will inevitably use drugs" thing. He may have a wild streak, who knows--but I think he'll have good sense. I certainly did. I fully plan on using the "if you drink or get high, give me a ride and I'll come get you" line. It always worked for me.
Mimbreno, I like Disneyland. I don't care. I know about its many evils, but I like it anyway. Like I said: I feel about it the same way I feel about Vegas. I know it's wrong; I know it shouldn't exist, and I would hate it if the entire world were like that. But within its own borders, I enjoy the hell out of it.
Maybe I should have said "insidious."
Ok, it is insidious. Granted.
Here's a nice post about a student writing a poem about the man in the Chuck E Cheese costume. (Although, is there really a man?) A nice Chuck E Cheese picture is included. For those as would like a visual.
> post about a student writing a poem
> about the man in the Chuck E Cheese
> costume. (Although, is there really a
>man?)
When my brother was in high school he worked at a C.E.C. for a while. All the employees took turns wearing the mouse suit. He reported that big sisters/aunts of birthday guests sometimes responded quite, um, positively to the appearance of the big guy in the mouse suit. He put it down to his "animal magnetism" (ha ha); I put it down to the aftereffect of 3 hours of boredom!
Cranky
I expected to loathe Disnee, based on general corpo-skepticism and, in particular, my loathing of what they did to Winnie the Pooh (Milne and Shepard must be grave-rolling supersonically) and to a lesser extent to Kipling (don't get me started).
But I loved almost every minute. There's real talent in those places.
I have never been to a chuck e cheese, though. What -- other than sensory overload, which I've never foudn a bad thing in and of itself, and the hygiene issues that accrue whenever ANY sufficiently large number of people gather -- is the problem with?
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