Is This Chuck E. Cheese Or Hell?!

Now when I was a kid, the few times I had earned the right to go to Chuck E. Cheese, it was a lot of fun. I remember playing video games, throwing skee balls, and eating pizza while we were entertained by the Chuck E. Cheese characters. A few of my friends had a birthday party there, which was the thing back then. Most of the time the lucky parents would drop their kid off with the group and go home and await the call for a ride home.

Oh how things have changed in the last 20 years! A few short days ago, my wife and I, decided to bring our 21 month old son to the local Chuck E. Cheese in hopes of a good time. It sounded like fun and we had gotten a coupon for Chuck E. Cheese in a DVD that we purchased for him a few months back.

Upon entering and looking around we were a little disappointed right off the bat. We were greeted at the front desk by a forty something guy that looked like he could play a stunt double for Rosie O’Donnell. We presented our coupon and placed an order for a pizza and a couple of salads, we also got some complimentary game tokens. They didn’t have much in the way of games for younger kids. I did notice one good thing that has changed since I had been to Chuck E. Cheese years ago; all the games cost only one token to play!

After being brought out the wrong pizza twice, ours had finally gotten to us but not before my son started to go into a hypoglycemic tirade. Once he started to get some food in him he calmed down a bit, thank God! The pizza itself was very subpar; it honestly looked like a microwavable type. It was so rubbery I thought I was eating a slice of Goodyear with cheese on it! After I forced down a few slices my son and I hit the arcade.

I should have realized that the typical attention span of a 21 month old isn’t too long so it was mostly me playing the games in between chasing him around the place. It wasn’t too long before rowdy bunch of 10 year olds walked in and were brought back to the banquet area. It was obvious one of them was having a birthday celebration and Chuck E. Cheese was the place to have it. As my son was riding in a toy car with a Chuck E. Cheese mouse statue in it enjoying himself my focus was diverted to the banquet area.

It looked like as the Chuck E. Cheese mouse character was bringing out the birthday cake one of the kids ran up and kicked him in the crotch and then proceeded to smash the birthday cake on his face! “Did I just see a kid assault the Chuck E. Cheese mouse?” I asked myself. Chuck E. Cheese then got up and punched the little kid in the face; it was then that all hell broke loose.

Employees were running in, the manager was making his way to them, one of the kids’ Dad’s punched the Chuck E. Cheese mouse and threw him on the floor! There were a bunch of screaming kids, parents were going crazy, I heard the manager yelling that the police were on their way. I stood there in awe wondering if this was Chuck E. Cheese or the 9th level of Dante’s Inferno. It literally looked like a scene out of a Quentin Tarantino movie. It was about this time we scooped up our screaming son and got out of there. My wife and I were just so taken back that all we could do is laugh all the way home at what we had just seen. I knew at that moment I had to write about it, it was just too insane not to share my experience at the place where a kid can be a kid, Chuck E. Cheese.

-AngryDago-