It wasn't our intention, but the sewage spillage in the Hudson River caused our favorite bowling place not to have any water. In fact, the entire mall didn't have any water. And Ironflower had to go to the bathroom. So we started driving inland to find another bowling alley or whatever, Ironflower bravely grimacing in the back seat. And we came upon Chuck E. Cheese.
The kids were thrilled, although they were also quite happy to leave after an hour and a half. We got enough tokens that they each got to play their favorite games as many times as they wanted, though Ironflower and HugMonkey spent more time in the climbing structure than anything.
I discovered that I am very bad at games that involve shooting baskets.
And that my 6 year old is better than I am at skee-ball.
Also? Adults at Chuck E. Cheese typically cheat at skee-ball.
Instead of rolling the balls up, they lean over and drop them in the highest point sections, thus insuring their kids lots more tickets. More tickets = more plastic crap their kids can "buy". Now, I'll admit that we had Hot Guy play some games so that we could earn more tickets. And that I played the Deal or No Deal game so I could earn us some extra tickets. But I think there's a difference between adults playing the games and adults cheating at the games.
Right?
Personally, I wish they'd just skip the whole ticket thing altogether. Why not just have kids play the games for their own sake? Isn't playing the games supposed to be fun? Should we really have to reward kids for doing something fun? Ironflower and Hugmonkey had a great time riding on the rides and climbing in the tunnels. Lovebug actually enjoyed the tunnels too, but he loves video games so he had a lot of fun playing Mario Kart with an actual steering wheel and whatnot.
The kids had fun picking out their plastic crap at the end, but only one of those toys (out of 7) has actually been played with since we left Chuck E. Cheese. Of course, that may be because we didn't cheat to get them the more flashy toys. Except, as Lovebug pointed out, "They don't even have any Legos!"
Have you taken kids to Chuck E. Cheese? Do you think cheating is okay, because you know you paid way too much for those game tokens? Do you think kids would have fun there without the tickets?