Chuck+E+Cheese's

 Chuck E Cheese’s: Where a Kid Can Be a Kid  Pizza, games and prizes; all things kids love and can get at Chuck E Cheese’s. Chuck E Cheese’s was founded in 1977 by Nolan Bushnell in San Jose, California. The company’s name was actually Chuck E Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre when it was founded and it was “ labeled as the first family restaurant to integrate food, animated entertainment, and an indoor arcade”. The menu at Chuck E Cheese’s consists of more than just pizza. They also sell sandwiches, hot dogs, fries, other sides as wells as desserts. Once you enter Chuck E Cheese’s all your senses seem to tingle and become very alert. Amongst other things, there is a strong smell of pizza in the air. You are greeted by an employee at the door and get stamped on your hand with a picture of the company’s logo and the big mouse “Chuck E”. The first thing you see is the front desk. Here is where you order what you want to eat and retrieve some tokens. Once you get that done, you can proceed to find a table. Almost immediately you are overwhelmed by all the excitement. You see there are little kids running around everywhere, screaming and laughing and the parents are either right behind them or sitting at a table nearby watching them. Everything is very bright. The color scheme is mostly red, orange and yellow. The games have very loud sound effects, music, and a lot of flashing lights. This is not only very attractive to children but it gives an uplifting and cheery vibe to the place. It would be very difficult to not get distracted even if you were the parent who is sitting down. There is a play area solely for toddlers with much smaller activities that they can enjoy with no harm coming to them. There is also a separate area that can be reserved for birthday parties or other events. Right in between both of them there is an indoor jungle gym. You can see kids of all ages running around Chuck E Cheese’s. There are babies looking around with an overwhelmed expression in their face. They can sit there for hours and just stare at everything; all the games, the lights, the bigger kids playing. Keeping a baby still isn’t an easy task but in this case most of them are very still until their desire to touch the lights and go to the colors absolutely overwhelms them. It is then that they begin to fuss because they want to play as well. You also see toddlers playing on the smaller games which were designed for their height which is pretty helpful for the parents. There are even older kids that are already in school and they play with the bigger games. The parents also seem to be enjoying themselves when they see their kids enjoying themselves. The point being that Chuck E Cheese’s is a family place where everyone disregarding their age can amuse themselves somehow. We use this place as a source of entertainment and distraction. It is a place for families to go, have the children play, eat and have a good time. I feel that Chuck E Cheese’s does classify under what Glenn Reynolds’s was describing in his article “The Comfy Chair Revolution”. In it he speaks of a “third place” and according to sociologist Ray Oldenburg a third place must have the following characteristics: “it has to be free or inexpensive, offer food and drink, be accessible, draw enough people to feel social, and foster easy conversation” (pg 206). Chuck E Cheese’s isn’t too expensive, their prices vary depending on what you want and they tend to have pretty good deals. You get food and tokens all for one price. In fact, they have coupons in their website [|www.chuckecheese.com], and they have various promotions throughout the year that helps people save on their trip to Chuck E Cheese’s. As I’ve mentioned before people are always socializing there and the employees are very perky as well. The environment itself is very easy going and safe. The worst that can happen, in my opinion, is having your child trip and fall because they were running. This was something I was able to observe and even then no damage is done because the kids are just so anxious to play that they just get right up and start running again. Chuck E Cheese’s is basically a giant arcade for kids. You need tokens to play, you get tickets in return and at the end of the day you use your tickets to redeem prizes. Besides the laughter of kids, the mumbling of the parents’ conversations, all you hear are the machines going off and the background music. It can get pretty hectic especially with all the little kids running around. The reason I chose to observe Chuck E Cheese is because it is a happy place where kids go to have fun and it would be to some point entertaining to me to go with my 2 year old niece even if I am eighteen already. When we left she was happy and tired and I had fun watching her have fun.

Resource: [] Copyright 2009 by Pearson Education, Inc. Ruszkiewicz, Anderson, Friend, Second Edition, //Beyond Words: Cultural texts for Reading and Writing//