Chuck E Cheese’s

Welcome; the host was dull and tired.
Bathrooms; very dirty, I was at the place for 2 hours and not once did somebody clean the bathrooms. Dirty-​Dirty-​Dirty!
Restaurant; We waited 45 minutes for 1 large pie.
Games; many were out of order or they didn’t have tickets available.
The Exit; we waited almost 40 minutes to exchange the tickets and it only makes kids frustrated to know they are getting really cheap prizes.
Staff– If they had 5 people for like a 250– 500 capacity, it was a lot.
Very under-​staff and poor teenagers look miserable and over worked.
First aid Kit– None. My daughter tripped on the rug and got a bad burn, when I managed to ask a waiter for a band aid, he told me they don’t have them.
It was my first time visiting a kids dome where no first aid was anywhere in site.

This is an amusement park indoors, almost like one of the indoor arcades at the Jersey Shore, without the ambiance of an ocean and sand nearby.
Rather than go into the details, let me offer a survival guide for new parents and unsuspecting aunts/​uncles/​babysitters-​returning-​a-​favor.
Come early. 9am is probably a little too late in the day to get over this in time to recover for the evening but okay, I understand the employees need to recuperate as well. 9:30am is stretching it.
Arriving early means your child) ren) get the run of the place without too much competition for the only operable skee-​ball lanes, the one or two video games they can actually play at age four, and the human-​sized Habitrail they set up in places like this (McDonald’s, Burger King, etc). I won’t even go into the scary eight-​foot tall animatronic stage characters. My kids saw it from thirty feet away and had no interest in getting closer.
It’s cheap fun, though, because all games and pseudo-​rides cost a quarter (token) each. Ten bucks will last you about as long as the kids’ attention spans, which is a pretty good deal.
Also, this place doesn’t hew as strictly to the «No Seats Without Eats» edict of other franchisees. Other locations reserve tables for people eating the awesome cuisine there, leaving a parent with coats and bags carrying them — the coat racks are for the first twenty kids and the place holds about sixty kids. So, a relaxed policy is compassionate and helpful.
By definition, a Chuck E. Cheese can only get three stars. The menu choices, ironically, do not include macaroni and cheese, which is the uranium for a kid’s nuclear reactor. However, in a nod to parents everywhere, they serve coffee, which I need if I can’t drink, which I definitely need if I come here more than once a quarter.
So, if you need to go to a Chuck E. Cheese, this is the best one of the local choices (Wayne, East Hanover, North Bergen).
If you go:
Opens 9am daily, closes 10pm Sun-​Thur and 11pm Fri-​Sat