Chuck E. Cheese

First, I want to mention that I haven't been to a Chuck E Cheese in 20 years when my nieces and nephews were little. I worked at Chuck E. Cheese back then as both a cast member and as a manager, and at the time, all of the Phoenix Valley locations and the one in Tucson were owned by one franchise. Apparently now, at least at this location, they are owned by another management company. The Kid Check, which is supposed to be a security feature for CEC,had no one stationed there, and people can just walk in and out. 20 years ago, they always had someone watching it from the time the doors were unlocked until the last guests left. The Kid Check system is in place so that everyone who comes together leaves together. Basically, a random person can't just walk in, grab your kid, and leave because their number stamp doesn't match the kids. We were also told when we arrived by the person who did stamp my group that they lost the flashlight to make the ink show up in order to read the number. You also can't tell who employees are unless they were behind the counter. There was no uniform that I could tell, no name tags, nothing to differentiate them from a guest. Cast members were walking around with headphones on and would pull out their cell phones in the middle of conversations with you. Gone are the days of the pizza being brought out to you. 20 years ago, you used to receive a tall, plastic number that would stand up on your table, and the pizza would be delivered. Now, you get a buzzer, and you walk up to the window, and you can just grab whatever food was waiting there because there is no way of knowing which pizza was yours. Did you order a gluten-free crust? Good luck guessing which pepperoni pizza sitting in the window is the gluten-free one. They've also replaced the tokens with a card system that can be loaded with either points (one point is one token) or by time in 30-minute increments, and the tickets are just automatically loaded onto the card once you're finished playing the game. This has its pros and cons. You no longer need to wait for all of your tickets to be dispensed before walking away to play another game, games can't run out of tickets so you don't need to wait for someone to come replenish the game to receive your full amount of tickets and you don't have to worry about your kids walking away forgetting to collect their tickets. A card is also less bulky than hundreds of tickets, and there is less chance of losing some of your tickets. But lose your card, and everything you had is gone. Also, there seems to be a timer built into the cards, so you can't use it too quickly. Games used to have it where you can insert multiple tokens and have multiple plays back to back without interruption. Nope, not anymore. Did you just play a game that has a "continue" countdown? Good luck beating the clock to continue. Want to go head to head on basketball, but your group only has one card? Fat chance. There were also games in very poor states of repair. One claw machine, the string was broken to raise and lower the claw, but the game was still turned on. Another claw machine, two of the 3 claw "fingers" were broken off, so it couldn't even grab anything, it was also still turned one, and another claw game had absolutely nothing in it. And guess what, it was still turned on. One of the photo machines was out of paper the entire 3 hours my group was there. I even saw an employee going around to the games that have ticket jackpots resetting the game when the jackpot got high. Do you kids want to see Chuck E? Well, you're going to have to schedule and purchase their birthday package because that is the only time Chuck E comes out. He no longer walks through the rest of the restaurant. He comes out, "sings" happy birthday, and then disappears. Speaking of Chuck E and the program, when did CEC go from Kid friendly songs like The Wiggles and VeggieTales to KidsBop versions of adult songs? Songs like Hey Ya, or that ABCDE F you song played on a loop.

Pizza was very good! The regular crust has a nice flavor and my 1 year old enjoyed the gluten free crust pizza. Half the games are still shut down which is kind of a bummer, but there weren’t that many people when I was there (Sunday evening). I walked around maskless not as a political statement, but because I felt safe doing so here. The children weren’t masked at all and they enjoyed the time we spent here. I wasn’t bothered by the staff about it and I appreciate them. I know it’s an unpopular stance still but I hope you will continue serving those who look at scientific data from our state and make wise risk assessments. I will continue to support establishments who let their customers make their own choices. Thank you.