What's going on with all these fights at Chuck E. Cheese's lately?
The WSJ has a lengthy feature story analyzing the trend of police getting called to local Chuck E. Cheese's franchises to break up fights.
Who would have thought a child-oriented birthday party location with pizza, ball pits, and arcade games would cause such a ruckus? The WSJ unleashes one of the greatest paragraphs in all of news-writing history:
The biggest melee broke out in April, when an uninvited adult disrupted a child's birthday party. Seven officers arrived and found as many as 40 people knocking over chairs and yelling in front of the restaurant's music stage, where a robotic singing chicken and the chain's namesake mouse perform.
Apparently when you add a liquor license to sell wine and beer in a place where over-protective parents meet 'the high emotions of a kid's birthday party', it's all a recipe for disaster.
At the request of local police many of Chuck's 538 national locations have stopped serving alcohol and even added security personnel carrying pistols. Are you friggin' kidding me?
All of these startling new revelations about a place I used to love to go as a kid are kind of making me want to stop by again and spend an afternoon playing games, getting drunk, eating pizza, and getting in a good old fashioned brawl. Maybe it's all just a clever reverse marketing campaign? I mean, you never would have thought nude photos and sex tapes would help a celebrity's public image, but it has. Perhaps, CEC is following the Paris Hilton school of marketing the best it can?
Check out these disturbing stats here from the WSJ piece:
The full article is definitely worth a read, but if you only have a few seconds I've decided to sum it all up for you in one short poignant video representation:
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