Earlier this month my nephew's 3rd birthday was hosted at Chuck E. Cheese's. We joined my family on our typical twin standard time (you may not know this but the number of kids you have to load into the car delays you exponentially). My brother reserved a table for an hour and a half, and we arrived and enjoyed pizza and my sister took my three-year-old to play some games and collect tickets. Moving along, Chuck E. Cheese comes out to do some birthday songs with the kids of the hour and socialize. A lovely teenager working there sliced the cake and brought back a tray of cake slices, which she perceptively placed in front of my nine-month-old, who was very happy about it. About seven minutes before the reservation time is up, a teenage employee squeezes behind my chair and I hear her say, "excuse me" and think she's just passing by until I see she is taking away my cake that I have failed to finish because I've been doing some sort of child-feeding thing. Noooooooooooooo, I'm not finished! Okay, it was just the voice in my head that screamed, but, come on, chocolate cake, I'm not giving that up without a fight. So, my brother asks if we can have any more time before we clear out, and they give us fifteen minutes. So, we look around the room and see lots of tables with nobody sitting at them. Granted, some do have "reserved" signs on them, but we assume we can just relocate to a vacant table and all will be well. Not so. We find a table out of the birthday area and a silent alarm must have gone off somewhere because an employee ascended the table immediately to tell us we couldn't sit there. Oh well. My brother just announces that he'll relocate the party to his house, I bow out and say I'll just hang here and finish off our tokens and be on our way.
I strap Grace to my back and Joy to my front and proceed to follow Hope around distributing tokens. She wants to go up the slide. The one slide that's there. I remember Chuck E. Cheese used to have ball pits and lots of room to play. Now, they've cleared everything out to pack in more games. There is one slide, and narrow cross-platform "steps" to reach that slide and a crawl tunnel that is above the floor (and more games on the floor). Hope, who is three and climbs up on things all the time, cannot manage to climb onto the platform that reaches the slide. She's just an inch or two short to get up on her own. And the "tunnel" that the platform steps are in is too narrow for an adult (and especially one with two children strapped to her) to get up. So, I dissuade Hope from the slide and we spend the rest of our tokens on the "rides". Hope does love those anyway, and the one plus is they were only one token each.
We finish our tokens and I have a handful of tickets to redeem at the choking hazard counter. I take them up there thinking there are few enough to just count, but the teenager at the counter insists that I must have a receipt from the ticket-counters located throughout the room. All four of them have lines of people with literally hundreds of tickets in their hands. I resign myself to standing in line. Twenty minutes later, and waiting for an employee to come fix the machine twice, we go home with a deck of miniature Chuck E. Cheese playing cards. Whew. I survived.
Chuck E. Cheese was creepily interested in Joy. He stared at her for a full minute or two, which doesn't sound like long, but when it's a larger than life mouse that doesn't say anything - it's creepy. She didn't seem too bothered.
Ah. Super Franks. Look at the space. This is just one room that the kids have to explore and play. Sorry I didn't take pictures yet, so I just pulled this photo from their web site. Look at the cool and not creepy mural. What you cannot see in this photo are the multitude of leather lounge chairs that line the play area. In the adjoining room are plenty of games for young persons that area spread out and only cost one token as well. My husband noticed that the tokens were very sparkly, he believes they must wash their tokens. We had a family special coupon for $24.99 that got us a large pizza, four drinks, twenty tokens, and two admissions to this "Taught Town" area. Hope and the twins were all able to roam around on their own and we could watch without being too stressed out. There was also very polite, friendly, and helpful adult employee that supervised the room. The pizza was fresh and delicious. My husband is fairly picky about his pizza and his claim was that it was as good as Round Table pizza. Hope was a bit tired when we arrived because she fell asleep in the car, so she didn't play as actively as the first time I brought her here in the afternoon. However, when she didn't want to play on the slides and cars, she gladly played at the craft table or did some of the puzzles. The babies had so much fun watching the kids and crawling around on their own. They want to walk so badly. At one point, Grace was very interested in the "Flintstones" cars (the ones kids sit in and move with their feet). A kid would hop in one and she would grab on the side without them knowing and walk along with them until I'd grab her, fearful they would start going too fast. Pretty amusing. Joy was delighted with the punching balloon balls and chased one across the room. They even had a music circle time which delighted the twins. Overall, it was a positive experience for everyone - mom and dad included! I highly recommend Super Franks in Pleasanton if you're ever in the area!
