ISSUE #22 - March, 2002
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Now a lot of people ask me why I bother caring about ShowBiz and CEC, which I guess is understandable. You wouldn't think of it as something very exciting and for the most part that's a fair assumption. But every now and then something neat happens. At least that's been my experience over the past few years. For instance, one day I'm waiting for spring break so I can do some much needed website updating, and less than a week later I'm standing in the office of Chuck E. Cheese's CEO. Confused? Allow me to explain.

My out of state friends had planned another roadtrip, this time to Dallas, and knowing that I've wanted to see CEC HQ for some time, they lured me into coming along. Don't get me wrong, I was all for it, but it left me with less than a week to call and arrange for a tour. After some brainstorming, I decided that it would be best not to march in there announcing who I was (VegaNova). I guess that I just didn't want to treated any differently than anyone else just because of this site. So my girlfriend booked the tour and a day later we were off.

Unfortunately when a group of people march into a corporate office building armed with a camera and two video cameras it's hard to avoid being looked at "differently". Oh well, I guess we'll know better for next time. The head corporate guys were out of town for the week, so our tour was guided by Sue, the CEO's secretary who was extremely nice and patient with us. Of course she did try explaining several times that there wasn't much to see there except for some artwork, but just by knowing so much about CEC and ShowBiz I could read volumes into what appeared to be a normal painting or poster.

CEC's Support Center is kind of hard to describe. The halls all look the same and branch off in several directions, and the center of the building had a large staircase structure that led to the upper and lower levels of the building. It even had little fountains at the bottom of it which was pretty cool. The various hallways were adorned with paintings of the parody posters, conceptual art, photographs of past and present characters, and several wall hangings as seen in most current CEC stores. Downstairs near the elevators they had the CEC, Jasper, and Pasqually portrait mechs. Also they had monitors all over quietly playing the upcoming April '02 show.

One of the highlights of the tour was getting to visit the entertainment department. We got to meet Jeremy Blaido (the voice of Jasper) who was very nice and helpful with answering questions. I was able to learn alot just listening to him tell stories about the development of Studio C and the updated cosmetics for the 3-stage. Jeremy, if you're reading this, I just want to say thanks for lending some of your time and being so cool with us, we all really appreciate it. :) The programming room had 2 immaculately clean stages, the 3-stage and Studio C (which was the first I had ever seen in person). Also stacked on a table was a ton of April Showtapes ready to be sent out to all the stores.

We also got to see the merchandising department which was a tiny room crammed with toys of all sorts. They also had some really strange CEC plushes which were probably prototypes. The workers there explained the process of how toys are designed, chosen, and tested before they make it to the prize counter. Some pretty cool stuff. In one of the last stops we got to see the leroy Nieman painting of Chuck from 1982 which was hung in Dick Frank's office.

All in all it was a pretty nice tour, we met a lot of interesting people, learned some cool stuff, and left with a ton of pictures and homevideo. That's ends another CEC / ShowBiz roadtrip, and one more landmark that gets crossed off my list. And it was also another break spent cramped in a car rather than spent relaxing. Ah well, such is my life. :)
- VegaNova