Posted by Jim at April 29th, 2004

With many apologies to Primus (whose song lyrics I just butchered), I suspect that Chuck E. Cheese may be closer to Hell than the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles).

Abby and Becca’s cousin Brandon had a birthday. Brandon’s mother decided to do something special for Brandon and invited the boys of his Kindergarten class plus Abby and Becca.

Abby and Becca spent the first half hour there clinging to my leg. Meanwhile, roughly a zillion (at least) large televisions showed Chuck E. Cheese singing rap versions of Beatles songs and dancing.

The videos also featured a grab bag of children’s characters ranging from muppets (I think) to Veggie Tales to what may have been the new Blues Clues guy.

I am leaving out the toys/attractions. These included a lot of things that moved if you put in a token (horses, cars, and a carousel), video games, various games in which you whack things with mallets, and a massive collection of tunnels with a slide that reminded me of nothing more than a habitrail.

In the 1970’s, habitrails were a collection of tunnels connected to hamster cages.

To get a feel for being there, imagine the most active children from your childhood, put them in one room, and imagine that room is full of pizza, toys and cake. Imagine that they are all running to different toys at the same time, sometimes arguing over who gets the toy. The voice of a singing rodent pervades the room.

You may also imagine that your child spilled pop all over the kid sitting next to her.

At this point you may be wondering if there’s a private room for frazzled parents. Maybe it has soft music, possibly a fountain, low light and it most definitely has sound-proofed walls.

There is no such room. On the bright side, they do sell beer.