With a handful of game tokens, mouthful of cheese pizza and earful of arcade sounds, people across the U.S. remember going to Chuck E. Cheese and being mesmerized by the animatronic show that Chuck E. and his friends put on.
You would get a stamp on your hand at the door, tire yourself out while trying to beat the high score in Skee-Ball and take a break to see the cheerful puppets perform a song amidst techno color lights.
Now the animatronic band at Chuck E. Cheese, called Munch’s Make Believe Band, has completely vanished from all Chuck E. Cheese locations in Massachusetts.
And it’s only a matter of time before the last two singular animatronics in the state disappear for good.
“The animatronic is moving away, [but] we are getting bigger and better things,” District Technical Manager for CEC Entertainment Dana O’Hare told MassLive at the Chuck E. Cheese in Methuen Thursday.
Chuck E. Cheese has six Massachusetts locations in Lowell, Everett, Worcester, Methuen, Attleboro and North Dartmouth. The only two that still have animatronics of just Chuck E. are Everett and Methuen. Neither store ever had a full band, but they’ve always have the single animatronic, O’Hare told MassLive. The Chuck E. Cheese in Warwick, Rhode Island also has an animatronic, so there’s only three left in New England.
The Methuen spot will have the animatronic until July 8 when the space will be renovated, according to O’Hare.
The animatronic and accompanying stage will be replaced with a full-sized video wall, which has been a common upgrade at Chuck E. Cheese locations nationwide.
Meanwhile staff at the Everett location told MassLive they have no knowledge of the animatronic being removed. The store was renovated to include trampolines in the spring.
“Chuck E. is the staple of our company, and why we are who we are, but as we move forward the company is ever-growing and bringing in new and positive things,” O’Hare said.
The animatronics are operational to an extent, with limited motions like moving side-to-side, opening their eyes and moving their mouths to music but not speaking.
Therefore, the animatronics do not talk or sing like they used to. Those functions have been removed as it became too expensive to keep them, according O’Hare, who’s been with the company for 15 years.
However, kids still have interactions with Chuck E. In recent years, the company has moved to have a staff member dressed as the mouse dance with kids on a dance floor rather than animatronic shows. This is something that O’Hare believes is more fitting.
“This new generation sees animatronics as kind of scary. Even back in the day, it was kind of scary. But they’re more game-oriented, they’re more interactive,” the manager said. “Interests have changed, but also the animatronics parts are harder to find, and it’s just not what people want to see.”
Chuck E. Cheese has plans phase to out animatronic performances at the chain’s more than 400 locations in the United States by the end of 2024, the New York Times reported.
This came after the COVID-19 pandemic closed many locations and the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the summer of 2020, according to the news outlet.
Once that happened, Chuck E. Cheese’s leadership focused on modernizing its locations by replacing animatronics with the digital walls and dance floors in the area where tables used occupy the space in front of the stage.
After getting negative feedback from nostalgic fans, Chuck E. Cheese decided to keep more animatronic bands around — just not in Massachusetts. The first two locations where the bands would remain were one in Los Angeles, California, and another in Nanuet, New York. The company later decided to keep the bands at three more locations in Pineville, North Carolina, Hicksville, New York and Springfield, Illinois.
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The decision to keep the bands around was to honor the children who remember the feeling when multi-colored lights began flashing and the animatronic band members of Chuck E. Cheese came to life.
“That’s part of our culture,” O’Hare said. “It is great and wonderful.”
Despite efforts to keep those animatronic bands, the sole remaining Chuck E. Cheese animatronics in Massachusetts are fading. But that doesn’t mean that nostalgic parents are not bringing their kids to Chuck E. Cheese, according to O’Hare who said business in Methuen has gone up after the space added trampolines.
“We’re getting more value out of guests coming back with the positive things that we are bringing on board,” she said.
