Hello, and once again, thank you for taking the time to read the latest entry into the Hoosier Day Trip blog. As you have probably concluded from the title this entry is about the Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Columbus, Indiana. There is no Chuck E. Cheese in Bloomington, where we live, so our options are Greenwood or Columbus. Both places are about an hour away. We have found the Columbus location to be very clean and rarely crowded.
As I have written earlier, I do not believe that the only places that can, or SHOULD, be reviewed as a day trip are the places most of us think of as a "destination". So my goal is to convince my reader that a place like a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant could actually be a destination. To save time in the future, I think I will refer to these out of the way spots as "non-destinations".
So who will enjoy Chuck E. Cheese? Those with children: parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, godparents, etc. If you have an afternoon to spend with young children, consider making a family outing of it at your local Chuck E. Cheese. Each restaurant offers pizza, wings, and salad bar and is separated into three areas: Toddler Zone, Kiddie Area, and Skill Games and Arcades. There are video games, toddler rides, and entertainment. All of the games are only 1 token. There is also a stage area with big screens with music videos with Chuck E. and his friends singing kid’s versions of popular songs. Chuck E. himself comes out and interacts with the crowd several times a day. He usually gives out extra tickets to the children. We have never done a birthday party there, because it is an hour away, but I imagine they would do a very professional job.
You have the opportunity to earn tickets with many of the games. The tickets can then be traded for small prizes. One thing I like better than other non-Chuck E. Cheese’s type establishments is that you can “add” tickets to your ticket amount for $.01 per ticket. I also like that each game or ride is one token. Tokens can be purchased either with the meal, out of a machine, with a coupon, or at the counter, separately. Another cool thing that Chuck E. Cheese does is, when you arrive they stamp the arm of each person in your party with a number. This number can only be seen with a black light. At the exit of the restaurant is an employee who checks each person to verify that the child/children you are leaving with are, indeed, yours
Is the food any good, though? I think the food is good if you put it in the context of the entire experience. Would I travel there just for the food? No. However, it is TRULY better than most child-geared restaurants. The pizza is good. Not GREAT, but I would compare it to pizza at a lot of amusement parks. Everything seems to taste better when you are having a good time. The hot wings are MUCH better than I thought they would be. The salad bar looked really fresh and nicely presented. I overheard one of the skinnier people there claiming that it was, "really good”. I took their word for it.
We always use a coupon(s) when we go to Chuck E. Cheese. You can print coupons directly off the Chuck E. Cheese website or, your local Sunday paper has them every few weeks. We had a coupon that, for 39 dollars, got us a pizza, drinks, and 125 tokens. As the day went on we added a dessert pizza (cinnamon and sugar with icing) and bought additional tokens. To be honest, I didn't keep a running tally of the actual dollar amount we spent, but I feel safe in saying we spent under 75 dollars. We are a family of five, but my son brought a friend, so we were six, today. Seventy-five dollars for lunch AND about fours hours of entertainment is not so bad.
As for the kids, they had a blast. They ate pizza and played about three hour’s worth of video games, all the while, laughing, dancing, cheering, and chasing each other. We had fun visiting with family and friends that came along with us.
We left Bloomington around noon and returned home at about 6:30 pm. I guess the slogan, "Where a kid can be a kid!" was true for us, today. We all got to be a kid for a few hours.
See you on our next Hoosier Day Trip.
Andrew
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