ISSUE #49 - November, 2004
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We were originally planning on driving out there from Colorado, but ended up flying out after finding a reasonably priced package. That had it's ups and downs but gave us more time to hang out in the area and allowed us to visit the restaurant more than once. One nice perk was that we went from having to scrape frost off our windsheilds here in Colorado the morning we left, to getting to stay in 80 degree weather out in Cali just a few hours later. My girlfriend and I got to meet up with Jasper our first day out which was awesome despite being jetlagged and tired from being up all night. We met up with him and his friend CEC3207 at our hotel room and quickly headed out to visit the restaurant.

As mentioned before, Rock-afire Pizza is located inside of a giant castle, which is quite daunting when walking up to it in person. One thing that should be pointed out is that Rock-afire Pizza isn't the entire castle, there are other segments to it with their own entrances. The Pizza side however is still pretty large with plenty of seating.

Sicne we were all there to check out the show, we all proceeded straight into the showroom. It had a large open entrance and overall I loved the way it was set up. It had long picnic style tables that extended from the stage all the way to the back (similar to Pizza Time Theatre). Then along the side and back of the room was even more seating. The room was adorned with 2 giant logos (of Jenn's Billy Bob art). Next to the stage was a little picture of Billy Bob holding a sign to start the show, which was placed above a button on the wall.

The show unfortunately wasn't aired up when we arrived, so we went and placed an order and upon returning to the showroom we caught up with Mr. Hirschfield. While he was getting the show turned on we got a chance to talk with him a little bit. He explained his concept and where he wanted to go with it. He explained how everything was still being prepared for the 'grand' opening (which was true, the seats were actually re-upholstered in new colors between our visits). We were also informed how this restaurant was aimed to be a little different from Chuck E. Cheese's... that one of the goals was to please children but also to appease older people and adults. One distinction was the dual-logos which are used. There's the artwork by Jenn which is done completely in illustration, including the type, which is used more as the children's logo. This is prominently placed in the showroom and on tokens, tickets, and party balloons as well as the employee uniforms. The 'adult' logo is the one placed on the building's exterior and used on the floor mat. This logo is similar, but uses actual fonts which can be blown up indefinetely in size and have a crisp professional look to attract people passing by. Mr. Hirschfield also explained how the color scheme was used throughout the restaurant. Just about everything was yellow and red - the tables, counters, seats, carpet, floor tiles, lighting, and employee uniforms (yellow for employees, black for management).

Everything was still in flux, and as of yet, the show wasn't on before evenings on weekdays. Once the show was turned on for us though, I was pretty impressed by how it ran. There were a decent amount of movements out, and a few lights out here and there but overall it ran better than most I've seen in operation (including CEC 3-stage shows). This was partly due to the store's tech leaving. Aaron Fechter had been out a few times to train this new tech who unfortunately ended up leaving, which put a bit of a damper on things. The show had a red gaurd-rail in front of it, which is an evil necessity for having to keep kids away from the show, but it really wasn't that distracting. The show's volume was nice and loud, where you had to talk pretty loud over it... I really loved that. It helped to bring more attention to the show. That little button by the stage which I mentioned earlier was pretty neat - kinda like a consolidated show selector. When the show would stop, children could push the button if they didn't want to wait for the timed interval to pass. Using Tivo instead of the old reel system, the shows could be cued up immediately and would play nearly continuously if you had someone waiting by the button.

The Tivo system, as with anything, had good points and bad points. For one, all the shows we saw were from the 1990s, and a few reprogramed segments from the ShowBiz era. Thankfully we were saved from seeing very many of the horrid shows that used the original artists voices. I was really interested to see the Liberty show. This was a later 'cut' of the show which removed the references to the statue and added Rolfe and Earl in the programming. It also had a completely re-recorded intro by Billy Bob which wasn't as polished as the original, but very neat to hear. By the end of the medley when all 3 stages were flowing with activity was awesome. I got quite a kick out of seeing Jasper's reaction of the show, since he hadn't seen a full Rock-afire in person in years. We got to talk some between shows, but didn't get to hang out as long as I had hoped. Jasper and CEC3207 had a long drive ahead of them that night so we headed back to the hotel - a 4 minute drive which ended up being a 15 minute excursion lost in parts of Indio I could have lived without ever seeing.