Animatronic Robots Make Their Last Stand at Atari Founder's 'Chuck E. Cheese' (msn.com) 28
Five years after founding Atari in 1972, Nolan Bushnell started work on a chain of pizza restaurants with singing animatronic robots and videogames — called Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre. While 600 of the restaurants still operate today, "the company is in the process of remodeling its more than 400 U.S. locations," reports the Los Angeles Times, "and the last 30 or so remaining animatronic bands are being shown the door in favor of interactive dance floors and large screens that feature Chuck E. and pals in animated form."
That is, they're being evicted everywhere but Northridge, Los Angeles... The goal — or hope — for the company is to have at least one location that can serve both new generations as well as nostalgia hunters, especially fans of animatronic figures.
Animatronics have long been the stars of themed entertainment, at least as long as Disneyland has been putting mechanical creatures in its rides and shows. In the '80s and '90s, theme parks began switching to screen-based entertainment to mirror blockbuster movies, but today animatronics have been making a comeback. The recent makeover, for instance, of Disneyland's Adventureland Treehouse came with the addition of multiple animatronic figures, and Universal Studios' Super Nintendo World is full of mechanical kinetic energy from an assortment of characters. Additionally, this year's video game-inspired movie "Five Nights at Freddy's" is centered on a haunted pizzeria where the animatronics become sentient. The film is indicative of the cult fandom that has long existed around Chuck E. Cheese and its former competitor Showbizz Pizza Place, as evidenced by the documentary "The Rock-afire Explosion," which charts the pizza and animatronic band wars of the '80s...
Restaurant franchise's CEO David McKillips says the company is acknowledging not just changing technological tastes but the realities of maintaining animatronic groups, which are programmed in Texas but maintained locally. "These are decades old, and we have a dedicated technician at every single location who spends a fair amount of time making sure the animatronics are working properly," McKillips says, adding that "it's a fairly complex issue" to keep the bands up and running.
The animatronic band's final restaurant hopes to become a tourist destination offering "retro glory," according to the article. (The robots are still powered by floppy disks.) And there are fans who still fondly remember the singing robots, judging by an episode of the Simpsons where Homer hunts down the last animatronic robots that sang in a 1970s chain of pizza parlors — titled "Do Pizza Bots Dream of Electric Guitars"
Unfortunately, in the episode Homer has to compete with a reboot-minded J. J. Abrams...
Animatronics have long been the stars of themed entertainment, at least as long as Disneyland has been putting mechanical creatures in its rides and shows. In the '80s and '90s, theme parks began switching to screen-based entertainment to mirror blockbuster movies, but today animatronics have been making a comeback. The recent makeover, for instance, of Disneyland's Adventureland Treehouse came with the addition of multiple animatronic figures, and Universal Studios' Super Nintendo World is full of mechanical kinetic energy from an assortment of characters. Additionally, this year's video game-inspired movie "Five Nights at Freddy's" is centered on a haunted pizzeria where the animatronics become sentient. The film is indicative of the cult fandom that has long existed around Chuck E. Cheese and its former competitor Showbizz Pizza Place, as evidenced by the documentary "The Rock-afire Explosion," which charts the pizza and animatronic band wars of the '80s...
Restaurant franchise's CEO David McKillips says the company is acknowledging not just changing technological tastes but the realities of maintaining animatronic groups, which are programmed in Texas but maintained locally. "These are decades old, and we have a dedicated technician at every single location who spends a fair amount of time making sure the animatronics are working properly," McKillips says, adding that "it's a fairly complex issue" to keep the bands up and running.
The animatronic band's final restaurant hopes to become a tourist destination offering "retro glory," according to the article. (The robots are still powered by floppy disks.) And there are fans who still fondly remember the singing robots, judging by an episode of the Simpsons where Homer hunts down the last animatronic robots that sang in a 1970s chain of pizza parlors — titled "Do Pizza Bots Dream of Electric Guitars"
Unfortunately, in the episode Homer has to compete with a reboot-minded J. J. Abrams...
Willy's Wonderland was better (Score:2)
As well as the Banana Splits film, but I suppose that's neither here nor there.
Mooby Corp. Strikes Back (Score:2)
Oh, boy - they smash up Chuck and Friends and piss on their graves so nobody can preserve them:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Petit... [reddit.com]
Their pizza is crap so get rid of the atnosphere? None of those kids ever asked for an electronic dance floor.
Sigh - my kids will tell their kids about how there used to be this awesome place called Chuck E. Cheese.
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If these animatronics are actually so awesome, then this shut-down will leave a significant market underserved.
That would present an excellent opportunity for an entrepreneur to slide in and stand up an awesome animatronic restaurant of his own.
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If these animatronics are actually so awesome, then this shut-down will leave a significant market underserved.
That would present an excellent opportunity for an entrepreneur to slide in and stand up an awesome animatronic restaurant of his own.
You're joking, but in the late 1970s/early 1980s, people actually thought this way. Showbiz and Pizzatime were both dropping enormous sums of money into their animatronic bands because they were utterly convinced that they were some sort of killer app and to be left behind would be to "lose" the market. In hindsight, it's completely bonkers.
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You're forgetting an important part of it that is nostalgia. Namely the nostalgia the parents had for the place and dragged their kids there.
What they appear to be forgetting is that the kids only have marginal influence in the choice of the restaurant. Yes, they want pizza, but even if they don't give a hoot about the animatronics, their parents will stare with glazed eyes at the show and wistfully remember their own childhood while forgetting the overpriced crap served as food.
That doesn't work in any oth
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Their pizza is crap so get rid of the atnosphere? None of those kids ever asked for an electronic dance floor.
To be fair I never asked for the animatronics either when I was a kid. I dont think I could have cared less as a child and I dont remember any of my friends gushing about robot Chuck E Cheese after a trip. We were all there for the arcade and crappy pizza.
Given that kids nowadays are going to have higher bars for tech in the context of entertainment than I did in the 80's I think they're better off with the dance floor. Costs them far less in maintenance to boot.
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The dance floor is all about saving money. I doubt its a major draw for kids but they will go there and wear themselves out when they see it so its a major win for the parents.
>Given that kids nowadays are going to have higher bars for tech in the context of entertainment than I did in the 80's I think they're better off with the dance floor. Costs them far less in maintenance to boot.
Just like last month I was thinking how I have like 75% of a 90s arcade experience in my house right now between a multi
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Their pizza is crap so get rid of the atnosphere[sic]?
To be fair, there really isn't much atmosphere left. My oldest was obsessed with animatronics when she was six or seven, so I took her to the local Chuck-E-Cheese a few years ago and was saddened to see that the "animatronics" were nothing like they were 40 years ago. Back in the day, Pizzatime Theater and Showbiz Pizza, for better or worse, had animatronics that tried to be as "realistic" as possible. They were well articulated and programmed to lipsync, "play" their instruments in time with the beat an
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I used to visit the original Chuck E. Cheese and ShowBiz back in the 1980s when they were new and also took my own kids there in the 2000-2010s.
The reason the animatronics only do very limited movements today is because most of them are worn out and broken down after 40+ years in service and the designers and technicians had long moved on or retired.
In the old days the animatronic shows would run on regular intervals and all the kids in the place rushed to the viewing area to enjoy them. There wasn't a hum
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The reason the animatronics only do very limited movements today is because most of them are worn out and broken down after 40+ years in service and the designers and technicians had long moved on or retired.
I'm sure that's the case for any locations that existed back when they had full animatronic bands, but with regard to the newer locations (built in the 2000s), the "animatronics" seem to be built with minimal moving parts. A torso swivel, or an arm goes up or something, and that's about it. They're not broken down, they just suck.
In the old days the animatronic shows would run on regular intervals and all the kids in the place rushed to the viewing area to enjoy them.
Like you, I remember this, and my mind is boggled by the number of people who say "the bands were never that big a deal to the kids."
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In the mid-1990s I sometimes went to a supermarket in Hamilton Ohio called Jungle Jim's [junglejims.com]. While they still exist today and were (at the time at least) an excellent place to get obscure food products, one of the things they are somewhat known for is their use of animatronics.
I remember that they had a whole bunch of ex-Chuck E. Cheese animatronics in the various sections, e.g. Pasquale was singing Toreador March in the Italian section amongst other similar pieces. While it was really cool to see those repur
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Don't worry, in a couple of years it will be straightforward to buy an off-the-shelf bot from Boston Dynamics (or whomever), put it in an animal costume, and program it to give your kids the appropriate cultural experience / nightmares / whatever. :)
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Missed opportunity (Score:2)
Those animatronics are the inspiration for almost the entirety of the modern young horror genre (FNAF, Poppy Playtime, etc.)
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Exactly! This is bad timing; they could probably do better by doubling down on the animatronics and overall presentation. The last time I went to a CEC it bore very little resemblance to the stuff that inspired FNAF.
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And I always thought it was the bad pizza that would inspire horror stories.
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It does, but "Clench, Clench Revulsion" turned out to not be a great game concept.
People thought it's shit.
Or rather, they wished it was...
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I'm really surprised we haven't seen any physical Freddy's locations open up with animatronics.
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the horror (Score:3)
Food Theory covered this... (Score:3)
Did FNAF kill CEC?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
5 nights at Chuck E. Cheese (Score:2)
It's just a ploy.
They're pretending to shut them down... only to open them "one last time".. so you can spend the last 5 nights at Chuck E Cheese.
Nothing sinister going on here.. don't worry.
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Just convert them into FNAF themed escape rooms...
With animatronics.
Rat casino (Score:3)
Hi, welcome to Chuck E. Cheese! Everything is visibly dirty and our mascot is a rat, eat some pizza near a sneezing child.