Chuck E. Cheese — Restaurant in Chandler

First, I want to mention that I haven't been to a Chuck E Cheese in 20 years when my nieces and nephews were little. I worked at Chuck E. Cheese back then as both a cast member and as a manager, and at the time, all of the Phoenix Valley locations and the one in Tucson were owned by one franchise. Apparently now, at least at this location, they are owned by another management company. The Kid Check, which is supposed to be a security feature for CEC,had no one stationed there, and people can just walk in and out. 20 years ago, they always had someone watching it from the time the doors were unlocked until the last guests left. The Kid Check system is in place so that everyone who comes together leaves together. Basically, a random person can't just walk in, grab your kid, and leave because their number stamp doesn't match the kids. We were also told when we arrived by the person who did stamp my group that they lost the flashlight to make the ink show up in order to read the number. You also can't tell who employees are unless they were behind the counter. There was no uniform that I could tell, no name tags, nothing to differentiate them from a guest. Cast members were walking around with headphones on and would pull out their cell phones in the middle of conversations with you. Gone are the days of the pizza being brought out to you. 20 years ago, you used to receive a tall, plastic number that would stand up on your table, and the pizza would be delivered. Now, you get a buzzer, and you walk up to the window, and you can just grab whatever food was waiting there because there is no way of knowing which pizza was yours. Did you order a gluten-free crust? Good luck guessing which pepperoni pizza sitting in the window is the gluten-free one.

They've also replaced the tokens with a card system that can be loaded with either points (one point is one token) or by time in 30-minute increments, and the tickets are just automatically loaded onto the card once you're finished playing the game. This has its pros and cons. You no longer need to wait for all of your tickets to be dispensed before walking away to play another game, games can't run out of tickets so you don't need to wait for someone to come replenish the game to receive your full amount of tickets and you don't have to worry about your kids walking away forgetting to collect their tickets. A card is also less bulky than hundreds of tickets, and there is less chance of losing some of your tickets. But lose your card, and everything you had is gone. Also, there seems to be a timer built into the cards, so you can't use it too quickly. Games used to have it where you can insert multiple tokens and have multiple plays back to back without interruption. Nope, not anymore. Did you just play a game that has a "continue" countdown? Good luck beating the clock to continue. Want to go head to head on basketball, but your group only has one card? Fat chance. There were also games in very poor states of repair. One claw machine, the string was broken to raise and lower the claw, but the game was still turned on. Another claw machine, two of the 3 claw "fingers" were broken off, so it couldn't even grab anything, it was also still turned one, and another claw game had absolutely nothing in it. And guess what, it was still turned on. One of the photo machines was out of paper the entire 3 hours my group was there. I even saw an employee going around to the games that have ticket jackpots resetting the game when the jackpot got high.

Do you kids want to see Chuck E? Well, you're going to have to schedule and purchase their birthday package because that is the only time Chuck E comes out. He no longer walks through the rest of the restaurant. He comes out, "sings" happy birthday, and then disappears. Speaking of Chuck E and the program, when did CEC go from Kid friendly songs like The Wiggles and VeggieTales to KidsBop versions of adult songs? Songs like Hey Ya, or that ABCDE F you song...

We went there for a birthday party that was scheduled a week in advanced. It was for a Monday night at 5pm. Let me start by when we first got there. We waited for 15 minutes up front. No one was there. Finally, my husband went to the back and saw a group of employees eating. He asked if they could come help us. One girl came out giggling to the other girl that she didn't even know there was a party at 5pm. The other girl tried to gather the party supplies quickly. 10 minutes later another group walked in. They asked me what package we chose and what we paid for. I went ahead and told them it was the mega package and we had 7 children. I helped the girl set up the table so it would be done by 5pm for our guests. As the party went on there are many issues. The pizza was delicious and that was the highlight. The games were also in good condition and working. The trampoline park was closed. We had no hostess despite paying for the mega package. We also did not recieve goody bags. The main girl that was one of the three people working did great. She was really trying. However, it was a lot of work to do herself. Chucke came out twice to do the birthday dance. Both times he went to the other table, despite my son patiently waiting both times. When we went to redeem tickets they did not preload the bonus tickets as promised. Overall, the experience was lacking and we did not get everything we paid for. Therefore, when we went to check out I did request a refund. The young man that was the manager on duty I think his name was Justin, was upset I was asking for a discount. He told me that he was short staffed and it was corporates fault. That they send everyone home at 5pm. I said I understood they were short staffed but I did not get the host I paid for any was lacking other elements I paid for. He then continued to complain about corporate for another 15 minutes. I then said look either I can call tommorrow to work out a discount or we can work something out now. He then offered 50 percent off which was reasonable in my opinion. I told him about our experience at the beginning and how the girl that was laughing was in a purple shirt. I said I don't know if that was the manager or what but it was disrespectful. He said yeah that's my manager. I told him I felt bad that his manager was like that. Next we put everything in our car and I went back to the table with our family to clean up. I felt bad they were short staffed so I made sure to pick up all trash around the table and throw out the table cover. He then approached us again and said yeah so that was not my manager. I had to talk to her because of the discount and she said she never met you. I said okay. He said yeah so it wasn't her. My husband and I sat there kind of with a blank stare not sure what to say. He was a bit aggressive. My husband then said look we know your short staffed so we cleaned up. He just said okay and walked away. It was odd. At the end of the night, our son had no idea what was going on and he had a great time which is what mattered. We have visited the Colorado springs chuck e cheese before because my family lives up there and we love it. This chuck e cheese was definitely ran on a skeleton crew. They had no one checked hand stamps or stamping at the front. A lot of the time the front was unmanned. However, it was clean and the games were all working. The manager did tell me that he did not have the trampoline section open because he did not have the...

We celebrated our nieces birthday today. She turned 12 this year and when she said she wanted to go to Chuck-E-Cheese’s we were all shocked. She’s in that magical age of adolescence when a place like this still holds charm.

The family did everything right. Booked in advance, confirmed selections twice. Brought their own cake. Arrived on time and were greeted by nobody. Apparently the place was slammed and the kitchen was backed up. Our party time was from 12:30-2:30. All the attendees were supposed to have token cards at the reservation time. Closer to 1 than 12:30 were given cards and told pizza won’t be ready until 1:30. Kinda unacceptable, but okay, let’s just play some games.

Games are over priced and pay out low to no tickets. Games are broken. Zero attendees on the floor to fix broken games.

But here is the absolute worst part. Our niece was very excited to go into the ticket chamber [you know, it blows air upwards and tickets fly around you, you get to keep what you catch]. We were all waiting and watching for an attendant to go over to the chamber/booth/whatever, so we could let the birthday girl know. After all, the family did pay for her to go into the darn thing. Finally the moment arrived. She goes over with her friends, waits in line and is told that she already had a turn. She corrected the attendant and the attendant said something about calling a manager. We all watched as our birthday girl walked sadly to her father, the attendant not too far behind. This person says to us “nobody is allowed to go twice, she already went”. Ummm… no she didn’t, we all chimed in at once. This attendant goes on with “if you say so, I’ll take your word for it”. Honey, we can buy everything on your prize wall for what this trip cost us, but we’re here to scam you out of tickets? Get real! We’re seriously calling the sweetest girl ever a liar, ON HER BIRTHDAY? You have a dozen witnesses and store footage, if you’re that hard up, review those things BEFORE stepping to a child on their birthday. Don’t you dare accuse children of lying when you cannot back it up. What is wrong with you!?

Our niece did get her turn, after a bit of back and forth. But for me, I’ll never give Chuck-e-cheese’s another opportunity to ruin a special day. The look in our niece’s eyes as this employee decided whether or not to giver her the turn her family paid for…. I’m disgusted at how low this place has fallen.

Oh, at 2:30 we were promptly asked to move. Nevermind that our party was delayed by an hour due to whatever issues this site is experiencing. Any discount for the inconvenience, or the fact that our niece was gaslit by an employee? Nope. Just “could you move to another table, your reservation time is up”. Then we had to track someone down to pay, which was only the second time we saw an actual attendant on the floor who wasn’t dancing with Chucky or running a stack of pizzas. I understand being busy. I understand being short staffed. I do NOT understand booking back to back parties when you clearly don’t have time to run them as advertised.

Chuck-e-chess’s where a kid can get profiled and called a liar on...