Like I said, the old Showbiz Pizza turned into a Chuck E Cheese at some poin, but I don't remember too much about the place afterwards. I'm sure I was getting too old. I'll talk about a couple other CECs.
The Chuck E Cheese we most frequented was rather large. I'm going to draw a map to give you an idea of how big it was. I think this one was located in Annapolis, but it could have been somewhere else. Don't ask me where because I'm not good at directions. It may or not still be around.
While Showbiz seemed to be divided into the table area and the game areas, this Chuck E Cheese was divided into several sections. There were at least three places to eat, and one of them didn't have the animatronics. Of course, it had a lot of arcade games on the other side of the room, so it wasn't exactly kiddie free for parents.
When you entered you could see the first room on the right. (Keep in my that I'm guessing at this poin.) I thought that the room contained some female bird things called the Warblettes, but on second thought I think they were backups on the main stage. Looking at this page, I'm thinking that maybe it's own band, like The Beagles. My memory isn't being specific, and all I can remember is there were more than one animatrons. I didn't like this room because these guys or gals seemed to be second stringers while Chuck E. and the gang were in the main room. I think we insisted on being in the Chuck E room after being in here.
The arcade/table room was rather modest. All I remember about it was that the arcade games seemed to be old NES games. I remember watching the demo for Gumshoe but I never played it. Or I played it and got my butt kicked immediately. I don't know.
The ball pit/games room was rather large. If this is the CEC location I'm thinking of, the ball pit/jungle gym was HUUUUGE. At least at some poin where I was already too tall to jump in. I remember going one day and having to watch my sister and our favorite cousin play while I couldn't. Oh well. Life is cruel to a (approximately) ten year old.
As for other games, I don't remember any except for one game where you had to move a marble upwards by balancing it. Not a big deal but I only saw it once. Otherwise they probably had the usual stuff like skeeball. I don't remember.
The big stage had Chuck E. and usual cast. Instead of being on stage like Rock Afire Explosion, I think the animatrons were above the stage and we could only see the heads and a little bit of their upper bodies. I may be wrong, but I just this memory of one of them lying their head on their hand. There were also several back up singers on the walls, and it was fun to watch them be brought into the act. I don't remember too much about the acts. I don't even remember if they had the monitors set up to tell you when the next show was starting. I think my favorite song they did was Twelve Days of Christmas because that forced them to use every animatronic character in the room. Don't kids love the most annoying things?
I left out tickets in my last entry. That's probably because I didn't play the ticket games too often. I think my mom poked fun at me for playing the non-ticket games, but it doesn't take long for a kid to realize that the good prizes are too expensive. You have to have real skill to get the high scores in skeeball, and most of the time you barely qualify. I was always given plastic spider rings by my parents, which I hated. (We did have several of these little CEC figures. I'm sure we still have them somewhere.)
I do remember once watching my mom paste a ton of CEC tickets into a big book. The book had several pages with pictures of tickets in them. I don't know if we ever did anything with those.
Hmm, I can't remember much else. Let's move on to another CEC location. This one is located in...I don't know. It was a much more recent one built in the nineties. We went there a couple times and I was waaay too old each time.
The first time we went my sister wanted to go because she was still just young enough. She was probably still short enough to jump into the plastic balls, I bet. Sadly, they took out most of the arcade games and put in more kid stuff. That was a recurring joke for me and my parents, by the way. That would have been a boring stay if it weren't for one arcade machine which was just a few SNES games built into a cabinet. I think I played F-Zero or some other early SNES game. Our table wasn't next to the entertainment, but I'm not sure if that place even had animatrons. It may have just been all monitors and people in suits.
The second time we went it was when I was in college. We went because my cousin was just celebrating his 6th birthday. I spent the whole time being miserable at a table, but this was shameful of me because I later found out that the whole poin of this party was because my cousin had just finished his treatment for his tumor. Everybody had thought that he had beaten it, but the tumor returned and he passed away later that year. Not one of my greatest moments as a human being. Anyway, at some poin Chuck E and some waitress started performing during a recording of Happy Birthday. Chuck E needs to work on his rapping. Part of the act was to get one side of the room to say Happy and the other to say Birthday, but it wasn't quite working.
I hate to end this post with that story of how awful I acted at this party but it's the last time I've set foot in such a place. Hopefully when I have children I won't be an ass and my kids will have some good memories about these places as well.
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