LogFAQs > #941294903

treewojima posted...

Chuck E. Cheese was always just a place for parents to bring their young kids, especially for birthday parties. The actual fun places were the knockoffs that specialized more in big tube playgrounds than just games and stinky ball pits (yes, they reeked). Unfortunately, as parent overprotection and "omg where's my kid, stranger danger" fears grew, all those places went out of business and usually became Chuck E. Cheeses, if not completely repurposed into something else.

Same thing that happened to all the cool extravagant wooden playgrounds that are now nothing more than a few plastic slides and maybe a swingset.

Oh yeah, and their pizza is genuinely garbage, like cheap off brand frozen grocery store stuff.

Discovery Zone was the biggest Chuck-e-Cheese knockoff and they had a good system of parental protection with their wristbands and such. What killed them was expanding too fast and getting stuck with pricy leases.

The part about outdoor playgrounds is true enough. I remember the cool wooden ones with the wide metal slides. Sucks that most playgrounds these days don't really have much for those past the age of 6.

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