As a kid, we would go to Chuck E. Cheese’s on a semi-regular basis. I remember going with the Van Houten or Wilcox kids, and eating pizza in this front room where they had a trio of large fuzzy animals that would “play” their instruments and mouth the words to recorded Beach Boy songs if you put in a token. I remember sinking into the ball crawl and tossing the balls at my sisters, playing skeeball and countless games of Pole Position.
Last weekend, we went to Chuck E. Cheese’s for the first time as a family, and boy, have things changed! For example…
- No ball crawl – I think because of liability and/or health reasons – which as a parent, I definitely appreciate. They do have a tunnel system that kids can climb up and through, however. Amazingly, Madi hauled herself up into the tubes and went down the slide…once. Usually, she won’t even think about it if there are “big” kids playing too. Maybe my non-stop encouragement helped, or motivated her to get out of there faster so that I would be quiet.
- No Beach Boys, but they did have the obligatory Chuck E. Cheese wandering around. I remember being a little stand-offish about him – who hugs a giant mouse anyways. My kids? Parker absolutely FREAKED out when he came over to say hi. He tried to climb up over my shoulder to get away from him and started shaking. Madi, on the other hand, gave him TWO hugs. So interesting how different kids from the same family respond…
- The video games are much more “extreme” now – there was even a kiddie ride that simulated a roller coaster ride, but they still have the games where you slide a token in for a chance to win tickets. Ben happened to win 200 tickets in one of these games…go figure. So, we picked out a handful of prizes that looked about the same as the prizes from 20 years ago…lollipops, stickers, rubber bracelets and rings…Madi was thrilled.
- As a kid, I didn’t realize the attraction of places like Chuck E. Cheese for parents…but the fact that Parker was so distracted at dinner that he didn’t even think about trying to climb out of the highchair and run away, like he did at Rose’s earlier in the week? Nice.
