Review Visit: February 2nd, 2012…read more Where a kid can be a kid and adults can look for some ibuprofen at the ticket redemption counter. A first for this blog is having a Nostalgic Rating on top of the normal Rating. I decided to do this since, as a kid, I had been to this location for many birthday parties and such. While I wish the ratings were the same, the place just isn't what it used to be. I'm saying that without rose-tinted glasses on. Chuck E Cheese was one of the first places some friends and I visited at the beginning of my travels. All of us had been here before. Not as adults but plenty of times as kids. It was time to see if the place still had it's charm after growing up. As a kid, we would have birthday parties here and it was a great time. Running around, drinking an obnoxious amount of sodas (I even mixed different sodas together), getting pizza grease all over our hands and the games. It was always a blast. Then the animatronic band would perform at random intervals. Good times. Fast forward to when we all have jobs and can afford as many tokens as we want. There was a lot of worry that we wouldn't be able to get in since we didn't have a child between all of us. I told them that it shouldn't be a problem and it wasn't as we strolled in without issue. The first thing I noticed was that the place basically looked the same. The same layout. The same kids running around screaming about needing more tokens or how many tickets they just won. It felt familiar. We stepped up to the counter and ordered some pizza, drinks and some tokens to come with our food. We snagged at table in the dining area, where there just happened to be a birthday party going on at the same time. Luckily it was a tame party and they kept to themselves. Our pizza came out and it looked and smelled just like I remembered. Cheap and terrible for you. Not only did it look and smell the same, it tasted the same. Thin, cheap and barely scraping by with a decent flavor. This was to be expected but it still would've been nice to see The Chuck put a bit more effort in their food after so long. As I said, it was to be expected so no complaints there. We finished up our pizza, divvied our tokens and hit the gaming area. It was nice to see some old familiar machines while also exploring some new ones. They had classics like Skeeball and a really old Simpsons Arcade game that my friends and I could never beat. They had some new stuff. It was nice to see the old mixed in with the new. It is also nice they try to keep the machines somewhat new and exciting. While we were exploring and gaming, we kept having kids run in to us or be rude. That was frustrating as I know I didn't act like that when I was these kids age. Not only that, but some of the parents were the definition of rude. Cutting in front of us, giving us nasty looks, yelling directly next to us at their kids. Other parents were letting their kids run around with no control at all. This all lead to a ton of frustration as we tried to just play a few games and have fun. I know, I know. This is a place aimed at kids. There were a ton of well-behaved kids but the ones who were awful were extremely awful. At one point, we were playing around on this horse-riding machine and they had The Chuck some out and do some dancing games with the kids. During this, the person in the Chuck outfit and his dancers would throw tickets up in the air for kids to pick up. When this happened, the adults wandered in and started snatching up all the tickets in a very greedy manner. While we watched in amazement, I just thought... is this what the place is like now? Our visit probably lasted about 2 hours between pizza and trying to play games. We did manage to have fun despite the chaos of everything going on around us. The pizza was just as I remembered. The games, while some were new, were the same as when I was a kid. We managed to turn our tickets in to some cheap toys and candy, as one normally does at a place like this. Luckily, if anyone that isn't 3 feet tall needs to get their gaming itch in Peoria, there is now Round 1. If you don't have a Round 1 in your area, there is always Dave & Busters or GameWorks to check out. Save your sanity and only come to Chuck E Cheese if you have kids or are attending a child's birthday party.

Phone disappeared from game area, girl behind the counter said they didn't have it and after I rang…read moreit with my watch the cook suddenly appeared with it. Very suspicious