ITZ versus Chuck E. Cheese's

Okay - to prelude this post, I have to explain something. Chuck E. Cheese's is very effective at advertising. Too effective. They have several commercials that seem to come on every time we watch TV. As a 5 year old, you can only conclude that it is in fact the greatest place on earth and you MUST go there as soon as possible. Unfortunately, we live in southeastern Idaho. A place that brags of many wonderful things - Chuck E. Cheese's not being one of them. So, our little Bria has been waiting all year to try Chuck E. Cheese's while we visited Grandma's house.

When we got to Albuquerque, the great debate started. ITZ versus Chuck E. Cheese's. ITZ is a place similar to Chuck E. Cheese's, but at the same time quite different. Grandpa likes ITZ better, but Grandma thinks the food at Chuck E. Cheese's is better. So, since our kids have such a fun Grandpa, he thought our kids had better try both - just so they could decide for themselves.

ITZ is quite a lot bigger than Chuck E. Cheese's. The food is served kid buffet style - so hot dogs, pizza, pasta and baked potatoes. Something like that. The food part is completely separated from the game part, so it's really easy to get the kids to eat before wanting to play. They had quite a few different dining rooms - a cartoon room, a sports room, a drive-in movie room. It was fun to pick the place to eat. Of course, the kids picked the cartoon room where they had cartoons playing on huge screens for the kiddos to watch while eating.The play area is HUGE and all the games are targeted to both the young and old. I could have spent plenty of time playing myself, but of course, we were really there for the kids.

Max, Orion and Bria eating in the "Cartoon" room. It was hard to get any of them to look since they were so enthralled with the huge TVs. This is pretty much the only picture we took. I made the kids use some of their tickets in the photo booth. They had SOOOO much fun!

Chuck E. Cheese on the other hand really serves much superior pizza. It is smaller, and so are the games. But, for a little 3-year old boy, the rides were perfect. By the time we went to Chuck E. Cheese's, Bria had caught on the the whole "ticket" idea and was disappointed that most of the games were just to ride and didn't spit out tickets.

Bria found out that the Sponge Bob game gave the most tickets, so she pretty much spent her whole time trying to win more tickets.

Max LOVED the Bob the Builder ride, and took several turns until the line got so long behind him, I finally had to turn his attention somewhere else!

All in all, I think the kids got pretty spoiled going to both. It was so fun to watch their little eyes light up at all the fun going on around them. Thanks, grandpa, for being such a trooper and letting our kids have so much fun!