I want to have a little fun today.
Credit: chuckecheese.com
Last night, I took my kids to a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. For those of you who live across the pond, CEC is a pizza place/kids gaming establishment. There are some video games and other activities that kids play to win tickets. They exchange the tickets for prizes. Click the link under the pic if you’re so curious you must know more.
Kids love CEC. I have yet to meet a kid who doesn’t. Parents…well, I’m sure there are some who love spending two to three hours of their free time surrounded by yelling, pizza and soda-fueled younglings who are learning how to gamble, but I haven’t met any. The food is meh and it’s tough for the staff to clean up after all those people as quickly as they should (because let’s face it, people are gross). Parents go there in spite of their distaste for the place because the kids love it. End of story.
But parents need not suffer any longer! I’ve devised a game for us adult types to pass the chaotic CEC hours. I designed it like a BINGO game, but if you want to up the ante, you can turn it into a drinking game. You’ll just have to do it with CEC beer. Have fun with that.
The rules are simple: All grown-ups in the party get a card. The items on the card are things I noticed at CEC last night or on previous visits. When you see something on the card, cross it out or smear it with pizza sauce or something. First one to fill the card (or a line, depending on how you want to do it) wins! Try to come up with a better prize than the rubber snake the kids get for 200 tickets.
Have fun!
Got your own CEC experiences? Share them in the comments! Maybe I’ll make an expanded card.
Allison Maruska 
Delightful. I’m child-free, but have been to Chuck E. Cheese once in my life. Should I ever be forced to go back, this bingo card is what I’m taking with me. It could only serve to improve the experience.
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Once is plenty. Trust me. 🙂
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I dread the invitation to CEC parties. I try hard to come up with reasons we can’t go. It always leads to a melt down. (overstim for my kiddo) And the whole birthday boy/girl gets to go in the wind tunnel and get tickets why can’t I thing is just infuriating.
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You know, that tunnel doesn’t look fun for anyone. Being in the wind sucks and catching tickets that way can’t be easy.
I don’t blame you for looking for ways out. At all.
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That’s hilarious, Allison. I’m almost afraid to admit that half my life-time ago, when my son was about 10, give or take a couple of years, there was a Charlie Cheese’s in our city. It too was a pizza “restaurant” and was filled with Atari games. We would all go for a couple of hours, usually on a Sunday evening, have pizza for tea and play the games. Hub and I enjoyed them as much as son. Those were the days of fun video games like Pacman and Pengo, and pizza restaurants were still new and clean, here anyway. However I do appreciate your bingo game. The game halls had changed a lot by the end of the 80s and I think morphed into something that would make it easy to win at your game.
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That experience sounds fun! I think I’d be on board! 🙂
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We still talk about it and miss it but it was just something of its time. The games have changed now, as has the way we play them.
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Your card needs more squares. Four more, I think. Pee in the tubes can be one. I’m sure it won’t take long to get the others.
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Wait. Wait. WAIT. CEC doesn’t sell wine anymore?!? 😳
And I couldn’t hold the “never work here” conversation, because that was my first job! Heck, I could do a whole other bingo chart based on that experience!
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Oh, wine is still on the menu. It’s just not an actual offering. The mom trudging away from the counter was ME.
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Awesome stuff. Very funny.
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Thanks! High praise, coming from you. 🙂
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I laughed. Almost out loud.
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The last time I was in CEC I was 15 and went for a younger cousin’s birthday party. I spent most of the party rescuing the younger kiddos from various parts of the climbing structure. Looking back now I wish I would’ve charged a dollar per baby cousin rescue mission. I could’ve made a small profit in exchange for my fragile teenage pride.
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LOL. I should add that.
A teenager rescuing small humans from the tubes.
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Teenager? I had to do it when Savvy got stuck in the hamster habitrail. The new CEC doesn’t have one.
That said, does anybody know how they clean those? I’m guessing they don’t clean them. At all. Ever. Or much of the other kid stuff, really.
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My guess is no cleaning occurs.
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Vacuum the carpet, wipe down the tables, that’s it. Some kid peed in the tubes? Your kid is crawling through that from now on. Cheers!
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I was *this close* to putting “A kid crawls through dried pee in the tube” on the card, with “Just check this one. We all know the truth.” But I didn’t have space for all that.
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I got the crouton! I got the crouton! And, ugh, I guess I got the sticky floor too.
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I start to think the crouton is intentionally placed there…
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Now there’s a story or two. Talk about an exercise in motivation! 🙂
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Maybe it’s a character quirk! The guy who does that every day because he HAS to.
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Imagine him explaining away the packet of croutons in his shirt pocket to the health inspector who doggedly follows him from buffet to buffet.
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LOL. Or not even a packet. Just loose croutons. Like Napoleon Dynamite and his tots.
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