Why on EARTH Does Chuck E. Cheese Serve Alcohol?!

Charles Entertainment Cheese

Imagine how selfish you have to be to fight at a Chuck E. Cheese. It's your child's birthday, and you're gonna ruin it by physically fighting with somebody else. Literal brainrot

Ok but mad respect to Chucky, he’s an orphan who never found out his legal birth date, and instead took that sadness out by making sure he created an establishment where every kid can have the best birthday possible

The idea of a booze-fuelled Yakuza-style brawl taking place in a Chuck E Cheese is too funny for RGG to not make an actual game event at some point.

I remember one time the Skee-Ball ticket dispenser had an error and it spit out all the tickets inside, and the staff let me keep them!

I actually used to work at a CEC in MS. Firstly, I will say, the children were very, very rarely ever an issue. It was almost ALWAYS the parents. Either starting fights, causing scenes, breaking things, or even stealing things. Not to mention the several full on abandonments we had to deal with. I couldn’t tell you how many families we’ve had that were always trying something stupid. I remember this one family that kept saying they never got their food, and accused us of racism when we asked them about the 4 previous pizzas we brought them when they said it before. My manager once refused to serve beer to one woman after she asked to have it served in a paper cup, instead of the transparent ones we served it in, because she didn’t want her daughter to see her drinking. She proceeded to scream, and throw a full on tantrum. In front of her daughter. One of the worse abandonments I remember was this little 4 year old girl. Her parents just straight up left her there. She came up to one of our showroom girls, asking for food. They gave her some water, I made her a little pizza, and once we realized what happened, the manager called Child Services. Another, and the last story I’ll tell was this one mother who told the manager that she was just going to drop her daughters off, and come back later. He pointed to the sign on the check in booth that said that unattended minors would be reported to Child Services. It basically also said we were not a babysitting service. Well, at one point, she managed to slip out past him. She dropped her daughters off at 9am. Both her daughters came to him around 2pm, asking for food, because they had no money. Manager asked where their mother was, recognizing them, and they told him she’d left to go shopping. Police, and Child Services were called, and took the kids. Mom came back to pick her girls up at 10pm. We closed at 9pm, at the time. Manager called the police, and she fought them when they tried to question her. When I came into work the next day, one of the front door windows were shattered from said fight.

The thought of some soul-sucked manager at Chuck E. Cheese being like "Yeah, yeah... just call the police again" just has me 💀 damn, those poor bastards.

Fun fact the guy who voices Chuck these days is apparently the lead singer of Bowling for Soup. You know, just to add to the insanity.

I took my son to Chuck E. Cheese’s on his 5th birthday. I hadn’t been myself since I was a kid back in the early 2000’s. I was shocked when there were no tickets, gold coins, animatronic shows, no Chuck himself walking around offering hugs and pictures. They got rid of everything that made Chuck E. Cheese different from your run of the mill arcade. This place was my absolute favorite place in the world when I was a child. Now, my son barely even mentions it. Shame.

You know Chuck E. Cheese is going in a bad direction when they're retiring the "Where A Kid Can Be A Kid" slogan they've been using for 3 decades

Former employee here. At my location, most of the employees were teenagers and the managers strictly prohibited us to handle alcohol without a manager present (aka an adult). However during the weekends, it gets so busy that so many adults order alcohol and yell at the poor cashiers (who are teens fyi). Even though a manager is like, “oh yeah I’ll be there in a minute!” They never come out of the kitchen. Literally it was a nightmare working there….

I think the most depressing thing to me and my memeories of CEC is how brightly lit and open floor planned they are. The dimly lit maze like layouts and different rooms was a big part of the excitment of exploring them as a kid. I also think it the newer exposed layouts just invites more conflicts that plague them these days.

I used to be a door person at CEC. The pizza scandal was never true. Turns out from what I was told by my old boss, a guy on the internet (Shane Dawson) purposely put different sized pizza on a platter and then ran with the accusation of recycled pizza. It caused a huge issue for the company and they make sure to make completely fresh and perfect pizza for every order

Funny thing is I remember when Chucke used to have a policy of no alcohol at all, because it was a kids place. Then they started to serve it, then offered IPA's and wines. Worst bit is many adults would just leave their beer cups unattended on tables for any kid to grab.... Honestly really seems like a bad idea.

I grew up in a town that didn’t have a chuck e cheese and my parents weren’t keen on driving two hours to the closest rat themed pizzeria, but we did have cable tv. I remember seeing ads for the place and wanting to go SO BAD. I explicitly remember watching an ad where a kid did a bunch of chore’s for his mom to convince her to take him to Chuck E. Cheese, and trying that myself. I didn’t really understand why we couldn’t go and would honestly get really upset whenever my mom said “no” by the time I was legally allowed to drive there myself needless to say the place lost all of its appeal.

"Child that cracked themselves in the head after a wildly inappropriate overhand throw" had me crying laughing. ...I was that kid with the overhand throw

Chuck E. Cheese brawls are some of the weirdest things in humanity. It's like they combined Freddy fazbears pizza, a saloon, and Mortal Kombat all into one event.

Chuck E. Cheese tokens became an in-joke with one of my friendgroups. Like a little urban legend. They work on a sort of monkey's paw principle. If you flipped a token and wished on it, you would either get exactly what you asked for instantly, or something horrible would happen to you (related to the wish) instead. The problem, though, is that the tokens look the same on both sides. So you wouldn't be able to tell if you won or lost until the change actually happened. I like to think that they switched to the card system after enough people discovered their true power.

I remember as a kid my favorite game was one that involved scooping as many cute little bees into a net as you can. It was so fun and I miss having that cup of coins. I think I still have an old Chuck E Cheese coin. It was so much fun back in the day.

I work for a performing arts theatre. Having seen the sales figures, kid shows are the 2nd most alcohol selling shows per customer only beaten by rap shows. This means if mom and dad bring two children with them, mom and dad drink as if they were five people at a rock concert.