If I could give them a negative star I would. My Autistic son asked for one thing to happen for his birthday, he wanted his ONE friend and his cousins to join him at this 'establishment'. For weeks he talked about this, for weeks I emailed the parents of his friend (he has serious social issues so just having a friend is a big deal), arranged the time with everyone using information from the official Chuck E Cheese website,etc. Three days before I even called the location and mentioned we would be visiting Sunday morning at 10am (as stated on both corporate and local store sites as well as local store phone greetings) to ask about bringing in cupcakes.
Sunday AM arrived, my son is excited, we pull up and at 10 am an employee comes to open the door.....for another employee. She quickly tells us that they are not open. I pointed out that their information online provides their opening time for Sunday as 10am. What happens.....she ROLLED HER EYES AT ME and says 'yeah this problem happened last week as well. We are trying to change the website but it's a process' A PROCESS? I have been a webmaster. The process is usually an email and 5 minutes of time. At MOST it requires some approvals and for something this important those go quickly. If the issue was identified a week prior then the website should have been corrected (which it was still not because I screen shot it as we were standing there). She offered to have the manager come speak to me which I said would be wonderful.
25 minutes later, still no manager but an additional cast member showed up for work. (My son is being pacified in the car with his dad's phone and I am waiting by the door in case his friend's mom shows up so I can explain what is going on). When the cast member called the store so they could let her in she was directed to enter through a side or rear door.....all so I could be avoided. Had leaving and going to another location not resulted in a MAJOR Autistic meltdown I would have been long long gone at this point. I do call the customer service number for the corporate office and request a call from them (like the meeting with the manager, I am still waiting for that.....)
Finally we are able to enter at just before 11 (only because there is a large birthday party that needs to set up for 11 and the cast members are attempting to suck up to that family) . At 11:12 we ordered pizzas for the kids and let them play games while we waited for it to be delivered, and waited, and received dirty looks from staff, and waited. At an hour later my husband asked about the status of our order. 5 mins after that the 'manager' brings our pizzas out and tells us that our ticket did not print in the back. Ummm OK....so we got a receipt, and our pizza was room temperature not piping hot, and you were able to locate the order, cook it and cool it to that extent in 5 mins........sure.......
I did not say anything to the young lady who was acting as management because she obviously did not have the ability to make the situation right. I knew I wanted to talk to corporate ESPECIALLY since part of their mission statement now reflects that parents and kids will leave happy. But when corporate customer relations does not return phone calls and your call to them rolls directly to voicemail no matter what time you call, then there is an issue with the company culture from the top down. Additionally, calls to the direct corporate headquarters number in Irving TX result in a 'system error' message. CEC Entertainment (the parent company for Chuck E Cheese) reported significant reductions in first quarter earnings for 2018, partially explained to shareholders as due to 'Negative Publicity'. With experiences like ours I am not surprised. read more