Welcome to Chuck e Cheese, Now Gimme All Yer Money

I love my kids. How much do I love my kids? Enough to grant my daughter's greatest birthday wish, a visit to Chuck E Cheese. (On a Saturday!) Chuck E Cheese has been carefully designed to become too expensive as soon as children become old enough to really enjoy it.

(7! How did she get to be 7?)

There's a reason we don't go too often. That reason has nothing to do with how much fun the kids have. They freakin love the place. No, that would have more to do with spending $65 in an hour and a half, and not even eating a complete meal.

(Someday, I'd like to write my own sort of "What to Expect" book -- by the time your child is 7, she will have learned which machine produces the maximum number of tickets per play.)

Here's how it broke down:

$65=

195 Tokens

Teeniest personal size cheese pizza ever

Extremely Uninspired Salad Bar

2 Kid Drinks

2 Adult Drinks

The tokens were consumed by 2 kids and one adult and many beeping, moving machines, in an hour and a half. I didn't play. (OK I did have to test my strength once and kill the guardians of the tomb of Anubis, but other than that I didn't play.)

You do see happy families at Chuck E Cheese, but mostly it's happy kids and parents looking at each other as if to say "Are you going to cut them off, or should I?" The exception would be all the parents of toddlers and babies, who take advantage of the free entry policy and have children who aren't old enough yet to understand that you're supposed to put tokens in the games. There's actually a pretty cute toddler area with a climbing structure and games that don't require any skill.

We don't have the "big birthday party" at Chuck E Cheese, because I don't feel the need to inflict that on hour friends and neighbors, but this year our little family thing felt like it was big enough for our wallets, all by itself. We usually have her birthday party for her friends toward the end of the month so it doesn't conflict with Winter break madness, but it's going to have to be super, super cheap.