Chuck E. Cheese’s (Portage)
6175 S. Westnedge AvenueStop me if you’ve seen this one. I know, I know. It wasn’t too long ago that I took my daughter to Chuck E. Cheese’s for the first time and let you know all about via a blog post. And by not too long ago, I mean three years.
Here’s the change. It’s changed quite a bit since then. The food is a little different. The gaming area is definitely different as is the birthday party area. It’s time for an update.
The Kalamazoo area has one Chuck E. Cheese’s. It’s on South Westnedge right next to what used to be Toys R Us. We went on a Thursday night because L’s school was having a fundraiser.
Listen….Chuck E. Cheese’s isn’t that bad…but it is loud and it’s hard to chase the kids around. We take them every so often as a treat but it’s been a while since we’ve been.
You essentially check in right as you walk in the door. There’s a person standing at a counter that lets you in and out. Everyone is marked with a stamp that shows up under a black light so kids can only go out with the adults they came in with.
Chuck E. Cheese’s is counter service and that really hasn’t changed. There’s an order counter with a menu board behind it kind of in the middle of the space. Sure, pizza is the big thing but there are also other options. They also bundle packages of pizza and game play tokens to try and make that part a little bit easier. We ended up ordering a package that got us a large pizza, two drinks, and 45 minutes of unlimited play for L. We added on an order of Buffalo wings, two more drinks, and 45 credits of game play for B. The bigger kids get more out of the 45 minutes than they would the 45 credits and vice versa for the little ones. All of that set us back almost $75.
The restaurant layout has changed a little bit with more booths in the gaming area and less in the birthday area. We actually picked one on the outside aisle not far from the salad bar that L somehow didn’t see or at least didn’t ask to get.
That salad bar is always pretty tempting. That’s pretty much L’s go-to right now but dinner was the furthest thing from her mind. She wanted to play.
The gaming floor looks a little bit different than it used. The big, glaring difference is the lack of play structure. There used to be a structure with tubes that weaved through the ceiling. That’s gone and surprisingly, my kids didn’t notice or didn’t care.
The birthday area is also quite different as well. The tables now run perpendicular to the gaming area and all of the animatronics are gone. They do a lot more with video now.
We started to make the kids wait to play until after we had eaten. The 45 minutes on L’s card could be paused once but J didn’t know where to do that. I saw a button on the kiosk to reload cards that said “pause.” I told L, who was actually waiting pretty patiently, she could go start playing while we waited. Of course, B wanted to go to so I followed him
I didn’t really notice any new games. B found one that gave you a token when you swiped your card so you could feed that token into the machine and watch it roll for tickets. I think he spent at least 25 of his 45 credits on this machine but he was having fun.
The one we all played at one time or another was skee-ball. Still my favorite game in the arcade…..even if it doesn’t give you very many tickets.
While the ordering is counter service, the food is brought out from the kitchen by a server. They give you a number to put on your table. We played for about ten minutes before J texted me. I paused L’s card and we all went and ate.
The pizza at Chuck E. Cheese’s……isn’t bad….and let’s not get into the BS about recycling pizza…you know that’s not true. We went with the thin crust which comes out cut in squares. We only got one pizza so it was plain cheese. I mean, honestly, this is a pizza I don’t mind eating. The first time I went to Chuck E.’s, I expected a bland, cardboard pizza but that’s not the case. It’s not the best pizza in the world but it’s pretty tasty.
I missed lunch that day so I knew a large pizza to share wasn’t going to be enough. I added on an order of traditional Buffalo wings. They were quite tasty but probably baked. The breading was pretty soft but the wings were nice and juicy.
We let the kids play for a little while longer then J went up and got dessert. She got the Giant Warm Cookie and that name is spot on. The cookie had a lot of chocolate in it that melted all over everything. There’s more than enough to share so we called the kids back and let them have a slice or two as well.
My absolute least favorite part of Chuck E. Cheese’s is the tickets. L did amazingly well collecting over 500 between hers and the handful of tickets, J, B, and I won. Putting them into the ticket machine is agonizingly slow. The ticket slot is pretty low to the ground to where even L has to bend over. She eventually sat on the floor and I just started handing them to her. Why Chuck E. Cheese’s has switched to virtual tickets on the play cards?
Once the tickets are in, it’s time for the second worse part…picking out the “prizes.” The prizes are crap and even with 500+ tickets she really couldn’t get anything good. The only choices were still in the glass counter. Nothing on the wall. We let B have a hundred of them and he got an Airhead and a sucker. He was happy. L got an Airhead, a sucker, some kind of dart shooting thing, and something else. I’m not sure if any of it made it home.
I don’t hate going to Chuck E. Cheese’s. It’s not my favorite place in the world but the kids love and the food is pretty decent. I’m not going to take them every weekend but it is a nice rainy day treat. The renovated store is nice but not much different. It’s the same experience. My kids both missed the climbing structure but after a few minutes, they totally forgot about it and were having a blast spending their tokens
SW Michigan Dining 