In Chuck E. Cheese near Pineville, the animatronic show will go on
The Chuck E. Cheese on Pineville-Matthews Road in south Charlotte will soon be one of only 5 Chuck E. Cheese locations in the U.S. where visitors will be able to watch Munch’s Make Believe Band
The following article appeared in the May 29, 2024, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with smart and original local news for Charlotte. We offer free and paid subscription plans. More info here.
Chuck E. Cheese fans rushed to defend its animatronic bands from extinction. Now, the Pineville-area ensemble is one of the few that’s been spared — and a memorabilia collection is coming, too.
TOUR EXTENDED: The Chuck E. Cheese on Pineville-Matthews Road in south Charlotte will soon be one of only five Chuck E. Cheese locations in the U.S. where visitors will be able to watch the 5-member Munch’s Make Believe Band perform.
by Cristina Bolling
They could be the most prolific performers in Charlotte show biz — multiple times an hour, seven days a week going on decades now, five members of “Munch’s Make Believe Band” come to life and give it their animatronic all in the back of the Chuck E. Cheese family entertainment center near Pineville, riffing on everything from a veterinary hairdresser named “Barbara the Barnyard Barber” to a rousing prehistoric “Disco Dancing Dinosaur Party.”
And to think that the stage almost went dark.
Last November, Texas-based CEC Entertainment Inc. announced that the company was retiring its robotic musicians in an effort to modernize the fun centers, and would add dance floors and video hubs instead.
(The company made the announcement in a video “press conference” with a clever spin: Munch’s Make Believe Band would be doing a “residency” at the Chuck E. Cheese in the Los Angeles suburb of Northridge. The news in fact was that the bands would be disappearing everywhere else.)
But as happens when you tinker with cultural touchstones like Chuck E. Cheese, the news of the disbanding did not land well — in Charlotte or beyond:
Almost immediately after November’s announcement, a change.org petition titled Save Pineville, NC Chuck E Cheese Animatronics from Being Destroyed was started. It accumulated 454 signatures.
A YouTuber named Chris Bower — who has a travel and “retro-archeology vlog” where he travels through the U.S. searching for artifacts from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s — put the plight of the Pineville Chuck E. Cheese on his Sets, Streets & Eats YouTube channel with a post titled “Let’s Try to Save The 3 Stage And Make the Pineville NC CEC A Hybrid Store!” (The video has had 14,000 views.)
And in a January news report, WSOC reporter Joe Bruno talked to Chuck E. Cheese animatronic superfans, who were desperate to save the quintets. [Edited 8:10am on 5/29/04 to correct TV station]
Finally last Thursday, some news broke that was worth singing about: Chuck E. Cheese officials told the New York Times that the company would keep five of the 30-some animatronic bands that still exist, including the one on Pineville-Matthews Road in south Charlotte, which sits just across the town line from Pineville.
On Friday, there was even more good news, this time reported by the Washington Post: As part of upcoming renovations, the south Charlotte location will get “an exclusive collection of memorabilia, including artifacts, paintings and old decorative pieces.”
CEC Entertainment officials didn’t respond to The Ledger’s inquiries Tuesday, but the Washington Post article said the company was seeking memorabilia from the public.
Fan websites and corporate partnerships: Since the company’s launch in 1977, Chuck E. Cheese has been engrained in childhood and parenthood memories spanning at least three generations.
(So rabid is the fan base that there’s even a “Cheeseepedia” website with facts about various locations, including the Pineville-Matthews Chuck E. Cheese’s enviable “3-stage” setup: lead singer Chuck E., Mr. Munch the keyboard-playing monster, Helen Henny the chicken guitar-vocalist, Jasper T. Jowels the guitarist hound dog and Pasqually P. Pieplate the drum-playing chef perform on three side-by-side stages with lights and curtains.)
The company is intertwined with Charlotte’s corporate culture in some interesting ways as well. In May 2023, Chuck E. Cheese entered into a 2-year partnership with Concord-based Hendrick Motorsports, which includes videos about racing that play inside Chuck E. Cheese locations and a “Chuck E. Cheese Racing World” mobile video game.
(The press release announcing the partnership included a quote from NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon saying, “Like so many others, I grew up looking forward to every trip to Chuck E. Cheese.”)
Party time: On a recent warm spring weekend afternoon, the band drew little attention from the 50 or so customers in the Pineville-area Chuck E. Cheese as they roamed between video games and ate pizza. The anthropomorphic animals and humanoid Pasqually intermittently came to life in song and then would go into something of a rest period for a while, occasionally turning their heads and opening and closing their eyes, or strumming their guitars and tinkering on the keyboard.
A birthday party for a boy named Jonah took place at a party table just in front of the band, and when staff gathered and announced was time for Jonah’s “Birthday Star Extravaganza” celebration, a costumed live Chuck E. Cheese walked out from the back and strolled in front of the animatronic band to applause and cheers. No one seemed to wonder why there were two Chuck E. mice within view.
Once Jonah’s cake was cut and he’d had his traditional birthday turn in the “ticket blaster,” it was time for Chuck E. Cheese and his band to kick back up with the chipper and heartfelt song “My Family” — a fitting tribute by the musical robotic family that nearly disappeared.
Cristina Bolling is managing editor of the Ledger: cristina@cltledger.com
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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Staff writer: Lindsey Banks; Business manager: Brie Chrisman