Yes, but considering that the machines are set to give them out very very rarely, I wouldn't suggest using more than one per trip or you're going to get some funny looks...

As for the news... it's really good. I worked for Chuck E Cheese for a long time, I've been "friends" with Chuck E Cheese himself... it was my first real job, and on my first day I found employees having, uh, relations in the balls after close, so that was interesting. And that was a relatively tame day. Fascinating job. I tell stories about it from time to time, but not now...

Anyway, CEC had some really stupid management about 15 years ago. They remodeled our store and spent a TON of money doing it, and when they did they had us trash nearly all of the games that appealed to teens or older, and they replaced them with absolutely stupid stuff that even my three year old now doesn't like. One example was a game where you put in a ball, rolled it back and forth down a snake's body where IT COULDN'T FALL OFF, did that a total of three times, and then you got three tickets for the bother.

Their idea was to shoot for the 1-3 year old market, which was stupid because the majority of those kids don't beg to go to Chuck E Cheese. The older kids were the ones that begged, but I regularly heard from them comments like, "Why did you make this place for babies now?" Once that happened, things started falling off.

From the time I started in the mid-90s to the time I left in the early 00s (the remodel was right in the middle), we were selling about half as much product as we were when I started, but we were charging about 50% more for it, so we had almost the same amount of profit... but it was quite clear to me it wouldn't be sustainable.

A few years later, CEC started to add in some more adult type games again and moved everything to a quarter, specifically from what I heard to combat the 'baby' image they got. But once you get an image like that, it's hard to shake.

CEC needs a change in direction to do something that will seriously appeal to older kids again. If they can do that, their model is solid. One of the CECs in our area could turn more than $1mil in sales per quarter, even after things slowed.

They were profitable, they were just far less profitable then what they could have been.

I take my son to the one I used to work at sometimes, and it's always FAR more dead then it was when I was there. I have a friend who works there now, and he's confirmed it to me.

They paid that much because it has a lot of potential to earn money, if they don't do stupid stuff like target the games at 3 year olds, and then dumb them down so far my 3 year old thinks they are stupid.