Last night Chuck E. Cheese’s invited a number of Las Vegas bloggers to come and try out their new menu. When I saw the invite I jumped at the chance. One of my favorite childhood memories is going to Chuck E. Cheese’s. It was the place I always wanted to go for my birthday and so I often did. So, I have some really nostalgic, fond memories of the place as a child.

Of course, with 4 Crash Kids now, we’ve spent a lot of time there as well. Turns out that I love going there as an adult nearly as much as I love it as a kid. The Crash Mom might argue that I am still a kid, but that’s a topic for another blog post. As a parent one of the best features is the person standing at the door so you can just let your kids run around and have fun without worrying if they’re going to “escape.”

The other 3 Crash Kids were busy with other activities tonight, so it was cool to just have some one on one time with myself and Crash Kid #3. Plus, one on one he is absolutely hilarious. He wouldn’t stop talking. In fact, he was telling our host all about his strategy for using his tokens to get as many tickets as possible. I think he gets all this talking from Crash Mom.

I did my best to get a good sample of the new menu, but there were a lot of changes including: a thin and crispy crust option, a Cali Alfredo and BBQ Chicken pizza, a Caesar and Club wrap, chicken wings and breadsticks, and Crash Kid #3’s favorite Dessert churros and cinnamon sticks. I was a little surprised by the wraps since I’d always seen Chuck E. Cheese’s as a pizza place. Although, I’m sure many will enjoy this added variety.

Personally I loved the soft parmesan breadsticks. They were a great pair for the pizza. What’s interesting is that I would have never had the dessert options if I didn’t attend this event. When we go, we always grab one of the coupons or buy one of their packages and the dessert is never included in the package. Now I wish that the dessert came in the package so we’d just get it as part of the overall purchase.

After we stuffed ourselves with the new menu, Crash Kid #3 had 20 more tokens (Yes, he counted). You’d think he’d want to make his way around and play a bunch of games. Maybe throw some balls or use them in the game that eats your tokens and churns out tickets. Nope. He fell in love with this fish game where you shoot a crossbow and get tickets for collecting 80 pounds of fish. So, he learned that he could put all 20 tokens in the game and just shoot away. He was nice enough to trade off with me and I did catch at least 4 sharks (which is the hard one to get), but Crash Kid #3 got the 40 ticket jelly fish. Check out his focus when playing the game:

However, this series of pictures of Micah playing skee ball (before he found the fish game) is awesome too. Is there anything better than seeing your child happy?

Actually, there might be something better. As part of the blogger event, they gave me a guest pass to give away to a lucky reader of the blog. It will give you 1 large pizza, 4 soft drinks, and 30 game tokens at Chuck E. Cheese’s. All you have to do is say something funny, interesting, insightful, crazy, or fun in the comments or on Twitter (@techguy) and I’ll choose someone in a totally non-random and bias way.