Gotta Catch Them While You Can; Review of Chuck E. Cheese; Nationwide But At the Darien, Illinois Location

When I heard that Chuck E. Cheese is removing the animatronics, I immediately knew that the kids had to experience the terror of my childhood birthday parties.  As an aside, I recently accepted a three-month role with a medical device company downtown, so the Chuck E. Cheese visit was a bit of a celebration of our ability to survive that much longer.  So, on Friday night we hopped into the car and headed to the Darien, Illinois Chuck E. Cheese after confirming that location had the full fab five Chuck E. Cheese band.   Other locations like the Villa Park and Naperville (two western Chicagoland suburbs) only have one animatronic, Chuck E. Cheese himself.

Without verifying the facts, much like our present embattled administration, I feel that Chuck E. Cheese and its one time rival, Showbiz Pizza, sprung up in the late 70's to emulate the success Disney had with its Country Bear Jamboree and to a lesser extent, the Tropical Tiki Room.  Those two attractions feature singing and sometimes instrument-playing animatronic animals.  Of course, the restaurants didn't nearly have the Disney resources like Imagineers and 24-hour maintenance, but the results weren't too bad- the Country Bear Jamboree located in every other metropolitan suburb!!!

What I remember as a child about Chuck E Cheese/Showbiz Pizza was:

• A terribly dark animatonics dining room;
• Large gigantic animatronics that creepily seemed to be watching me;
• Horribly tasting pizza that had rubbery cheese; 
• An awesome automated personal helium balloon making machine;
• A smelly ball pit with an urban legend that the finder of the golden ball got 100 free tokens;
• Running out of tokens hours before my fellow birthday party attendees did; 
• Being forced to simply watch others play games because I had no tokens left; and 
• More eerie monitoring by gigantic animatronics.

You aren't officially paroled into the game area/restaurant until you place your order.

To start, to my horror there are no more tokens!  All of your tokens are put on a credit card-like pass.  As expected, kids lose these cards like none other and our nice hostess told us that in the event a little one loses a card, a replacement can be obtained by showing the cashier a receipt.  We had a coupon and ordered a large pizza, four drinks and cards with 90 tokens-worth of credit for $43.99.  Not bad at all. 

The dining room wasn't dark but rather wide, well-lit and spacious.  No curtains between sets!

Well, the dining room was not dark at all.  There was no curtain that opens to reveal the band each music set; rather, the animatronics are exposed the entire Chuck E. Cheese experience.  

Maybe 5'8", not 10' as I remember

And well, they aren't as big as I remember.  They do blink constantly and some had a half-blink problem that evidenced repair was needed.

Look into my eye...

My seven-year old was scared and asked me if the animatronics were meant to be scary, which resulted in a good chuckle amongst the family.

Did they retrofit a purple costume over the gorilla dude's skin?

I makea' da' shoes!!!

The band didn't play pop hits as I remember and they just weren't loud enough.  Verdict- upgrade (or removal) is needed.  I guess this is why Chuck E. Cheese is making the dramatic change.  Also, no one was really watching the show either.

Not bad at all.

But- which poll are they referring to, the one among Chuck E Cheese marketing executives?

The pizza wasn't too bad.  It was significantly better than frozen pizza, Ci Ci's Pizza and the Shakey's Buffet in the Tokyo area, but in my opinion, still below Pizza Hut and Domino's.  The crust had a nice garlicky quality to it and the cheese wasn't rubbery.

No more ball pit!!! Let me let that sink in. No more ball pit!!!

The ball pit and tube climbing structure was gone!  Perhaps too much of a health risk with poopy diapers, unwashed hands and kids having accidents in the pit?  Since the girls are seven and ten, we didn't miss the play area.  So with the extinction of the ball pit, I assume the urban golden ball legend died too.  The tables, restrooms and game area was surprisingly clean, which impressed us.

Let's mine for thar' gold!!!

Hell's yes.  I still only win two tickets each time I play.

Simpson's ticket game!

I bet the kids understand this one.  Only the kids though.

No more arcade games or automatic balloon machine.  Instead it was all ticket games.  90 tokens-worth of credit lasted almost three hours.  We were very happy about this.  At other game centers, the kids would be done in after half an hour with the same amount of credits.  Also, all of the games were only one credit, which probably explained the great length of time we had playing.

The prizes were a bit to be desired but who cares if the kids got three hours of fun out of a 43-dollar dinner.

We left Chuck E. Cheese with a handful of Tootsie Rolls and Air Heads prizes, a semi-full stomach, nice pictures with the soon-to-be removed and not too overly scary animatronics and a bit of nostalgia sadness that Chuck E. Cheese had changed so much from my childhood.   It was a really fun time though, and I recommend that all of you experience this bit of 80's Americana before it changes to something that is completely different from our memories.  Thanks for the read.