You guys are looking at this the wrong way. You need to heavily pregame, do back flips into the ball pit, climb thru the overhead tunnels, Karaoke with Chucky and steal some little kids prize tickets when he’s not looking. You’ll have a blast!
CEC is my idea of purgatory. The noise. The flashing lights. The terrifying animals…(glad they got rid of the animals.) 1st time we went there it was my b-i-l’s idea to take his one year old and our two year old there. What was he thinking?? My kid cried–he was scared of the animals. (Like a few other posters, I did think their pizza was surprisingly good!)
I had to go back over the years for a few of my kids’ classmates’ birthday parties. But I never stayed. My youngest is 15 so it has been awhile. If I had to go, I would bring earplugs and eat pizza/drink beer. But I wouldn’t go to a kid’s party unless it was a close relative or it was my kid’s friend and the parents invited me and my kid. Otherwise I might drop a gift at their home if I felt close to the kid, or just say no thanks and forget about it.
It’s nice you and your neighbors are friendly. Go or don’t go, but don’t let it affect your friendship. We had parties at Chuck E Cheese, ice skating rink, lazer tag and other places our kids wanted. Don’t think we ever did a bowling alley. As they got older (HS), we just provided a lot of food & drinks delivered to them at school.
@coolguy40 , lol! ?
That truly made me laugh.
Haven’t read all, and I’m sure by now you’ve made a decision. Honestly, your neighbors are just being neighborly. Do they really expect a non-family member with no small kids to go to this party? No. Just drop by their home with a little gift for the birthday kid. Maybe a couple of days later. Nothing delights kids more than late presents.
Edit: I read some of these posts. Hilarious! FWIW, my sister did several parties for her kids at CEC. Terrible god awful place, but yes, young kids love it. I honestly can’t imagine your neighbors expect you to go, and in fact, they might think “Crud! Now we have to pay more for this garbage food and drink.”
We moved the summer before my son entered 5th grade. So, for his birthday that year he wanted to invite a few neighborhood boys to Chuck e cheese. We went. It didn’t take long for my son to ask if we could move it to the hooter’s across the street.
H immediately said no.
Of COURSE you should go, because…SKEEBALL!!! 
Someone at work was just talking the other day about how CEC pizza was so good.
My kids also HATED the show/characters - every time that curtain would open they would grip me!
That said, I knew CEC had gone rogue when our local one reported a domestic disturbance that started in the lobby, the arguing couple fell out the door fighting and one of them pulled a gun and fired a shot.
Talk about a mood breaker!
@bookworm I have never been in a Chuck E Cheese either. My youngest D was invited to a party there and went with one of her friends. The friend’s Mom drove them. It sounds dreadful.
It’s not that bad. Seriously.
Most little kid birthday parties are loud and chaotic. Meh.
Wow, surprised so many people like their pizza. I remember the sauce as being abnormally sweet.
My husband would give our kids a small number of tokens to play, and when they ran out, taught them to scavenge for dropped tickets and tokens… Ah, the hardscrabble life!
I’m more surprised how many people ate the pizza in the first place. The few times we’ve been in a CEC for other kids’ parties, it’s been so indescribably filthy there was no way in heck I wanted to eat anything. It was the kind of place that was so dirty you could almost see the snot, bacteria and germs teeming on every surface.
Took my kids there for a friend’s birthday party. Had to hide UNDER THE TABLE with the three year old because I forgot about his fear of people dressed as giant rats walking around… I do still have a cute picture of the boys on some ride while we were there (it’s on flimsy paper like from a photo booth).
I would give a gift and not go!
My Chuck E Cheese worst memory - taking S17 when he was 3 for a party. We had just had D21, so brought her along. We were moving to our new house and it was a bit of a good-bye for S17 and his friends.
This was in the olden days (2003) when our phones didn’t do video duty. H was taping S and his friends playing and having fun. A tiny infant; we had our hands full! Get home and realize the video camera and bag didn’t make it home. Frantic call and run back to Chuck E Cheese and it was never seen again.
Did I mention the camera still had the tape of S17 meeting his sister in the hospital for the first time in it??? We had our name and address on the bag. I’m still mad whoever stole it couldn’t have at least sent us the tape back!!
The Chuck E Cheese in Lexington, KY has done a total overhaul. Creepy animatronic band is gone, no more tickets (cards for all -you -can -play @ $10/ half hour; you can pause the timer on the card for breaks), and there’s a not-terrible salad bar and a bunch of other foods. It’s still bright & loud, but the kids I was with liked the dance floor (it lights up as you move around).
$10 a half hour seems pretty steep! You could drop $40 in an hour with 2 kids and not even buying the treasured pizza!
Yes, it’s kind of horrible, but we did our time in CEC when my daughter was between 4-7. Our local establishment is one of the few indoor places where it’s enclosed, the kids can run around on their own and play simple games, and the moms can just shelter in place with a soft drink and some of the aforementioned not so great pizza. You can’t relax there, because it’s loud and awful, but it was a little bit of a break.
We haven’t been there since S was a kid. The only redeeming aspect was they served beer.
With pizza, we paid approx. $140 for an hour for (I think) 4 cards and pizza for 9 people. Pricey, but the 5 and 9 year old love it, and our adults like the pizza. Ours is clean.
Some upthread said the guests could “drop in”. I thought ours required a child for entrance, and everyone’s hand is stamped with a matching stamp. They are checked carefully when leaving.
@Nrdsb4 Kids parties are always loud and chaotic. But, Chuck E Cheese is a different level of loud and chaotic. We went to other kid oriented places in our area when our kids were little and it was much better then Chuck E Cheese…
@bajamm haha Hooters! For a long time my S thought Hooters was a kids place. He always asked why we never took him there. haha!
@NJWrestlingmom How horrible and sad! We didn’t have our own video camera when our kids were young and we borrowed one from some friends of ours. It got stolen and we had to replace it. Luckily, none of their footage was on it. I would’ve hated it if they’d lost some of their footage. That’s why I don’t like borrowing expensive stuff…
@collegemom3717 I’ve heard they’re doing that with a lot of Chuck E Cheese places. I read they’re trying to make it a little more upscale and offering some nicer, healthier menu items. Good for them!
@Lennon good point! One of the reasons we never went there too much is that Chuck E Cheese was not super close to our house. It was about 15 mins away. There was another place closer to us, called KidsASaurous (like a dinosaur) which had a huge slide, ball pit, tons of tunnels, a rickety bridge and a fun play area for toddlers. They had good food and it was very nice. It was also huge! We usually went there, it was 2 minutes away. It also happened to be owned by a family whose kids were my students when I taught middle school later on.
Anyone who lives/used to live in Orange County, CA and remembers Monkey Bars, Planet Kids, Kidsasaurus, Fun Dazzle? None of them are still around, but boy we sure frequented them a lot. I imagine they were quite expensive to run, I can’t even imagine the insurance costs on a place like that!
Pretty sure Chuck E Cheese is described in Dante’s Inferno. I’d rather have my eyes plucked out. Just stay away.