To hell and back

This past weekend was full of birthday parties for Little Dude. The first one wasn't so bad. The Dude went bowling. The kids, all boys, were confined to 3 lanes and 1 party room. Everything was under control and all adults knew where all the children were at any given moment. It was a thing of beauty!

Sunday's party? That was a completely different story!

Sunday's party was at Chuck E. Cheese, aka hell.


I am not a fan of that place. Rude people, rude kids, and quite frankly, I don't always do well in crowded situations.

The birthday boy was talking this party up for a good 2 weeks. The last thing I could do was tell my boy "no". I wanted him to go and have fun. It was me who didn't want to be there. Chuck E. Cheese is just far enough from where we live that it made no sense to drive back home. Have you seen the price of gas? That and there wasn't an end time on the invitation. Who does that?!

Anybacktotheparty, Little Dude spent a good 45 minutes playing in the tube things hanging from the ceiling. I could not get him out of there, even when we finally got some tokens. I got tired of trying to figure out where in the maze of tubes he was, so I started people watching. As much as I love people watching, there are just some things that you can never unsee. For example, the middle-aged woman with her boobs banging off her knees as she walked. She also didn't have any front teeth. There was also the young mother whose outfit appeared cute from the front. From the back? She bent over to help her kid with shoes. Let's just say crack kills.

Thank goodness Charlie Brown's teacher came over the intercom to announce that the pizza for our party was ready. After the kids finished their pizza, we got a lovely rendition of a Justin Beiber song, via Chuck E. himself. This was followed by the party hostesses doing some kind of crazy dance, complete with clapping and chants. Not a job for me!

Once my ears were done bleeding, it was off to the game floor once again. Chuck E. Cheese offers beer and at this point, I was seriously considering getting one. And I don't drink beer!

I successfully talked the Dude out of climbing through the maze of tubes. He had 25 tokens to spend and I wanted to get the hell out of dodge! Don't you know, as we placed our last token in a game, birthday boy's grandma drops a handful of tokens in our cup. Gee, thanks! Luckily we found some games where you could quickly drop in tokens and get a ton of tickets. Sadly (for me), birthday boy's dad dropped another handful of tokens in our cup just as we were disposing of our last from the previous handful.

At this point, I stopped making eye contact with anyone I knew to avoid being forced to spend anymore time in hell. Finally our last token was used and our tickets were counted. Incidentally, whoever invented to ticket counting machine? Genius! I was ready to pick our prizes and get back home. I did not account for the family in front of us in line for prizes that had no less than 500 tickets per kid. There were 5 kids. Forty minutes later, the boy had his 3 dinky prizes and we were out the door!

I'm so glad that he had fun. But I'm not looking forward to returning to hell any time soon!




Until next time....

10 comments:

Oka said...

I too dread Chuck E Cheese. We had our one trip there this January. The twins I baby sit invited my middle two. It is far enough away, I stayed with my other two...UGH.

Baby Girl had her bday at a arcade/play place type a thing in March. When people ask about what Magic Castle is, I say Chuck E Cheese minus the steroids. It is not my favorite place, but it is much much much better than Chuck E. Cheese.

My favorite place to hold a bday party. Our Church. We have an awesome play area and arcade (WII, Fussball, Electronic Mat) for the younger kids. For the older kids, you can get the gym. They can play basketball, dodge ball, even indoor soccer. The kids have loads of fun, and the price is so very right ;)

Kmama said...

We have a CEC close to us that I will not visit. You can't pay me to visit it.

Then we have another that is further away and it's bright (who would have thought that a CEC could be bright?) and it has a decent clientele. I will (only on occasion) go to that one.

BNM said...

yea chuck e cheese is a nightmare!!!!

Losing Brownies said...

I'm not a huge fan of those pizza places. They give me anxiety attacks.

Rachel said...

CEC is one of the few things in this life that makes me thank God I do not have kids!! The last time i entered one I swore I would never do it again! I kept losing the children I was with in those tubes and ended up watching someone else's kids and then feeling like a complete weirdo...horrible experience. Horrible place..

Claudya Martinez said...

I don't know, you are pretty funny when describing hell. Perhaps you should return just to get some more material.

Kristin said...

Chuck E. Cheese is hell. I comedian even did a song about that.

Amy said...

Sounds like an interesting weekend for you. It was a wild time for sure at Chuck E Cheese that place is wild. Have a great night..

Shell said...

Oh, I hate that place!

My boys have asked to have birthday parties there and I say NO WAY.

Claremont First Ward said...

I actually hate birthday parties where I have to stay with my child. :)