Not long after we arrived at the Chuck E. Cheese on Pineville-Matthews Road in Charlotte, the curtains at the back of the sprawling arcade-slash dining room spread to reveal Munch’s Make Believe Band, a five-piece animatronic group featuring a singing chicken, a guitar-playing hound dog, some kind of purple non-Grimace creature on keys, a drumming pizzaiolo, and, of course, Mr. Cheese himself.
My kids were far too preoccupied with the arcade games to even notice the band’s first few performances, which appeared to go off every half hour or so. It wasn’t until they rotated through every game on the premises, until we asked them to sit down for their first of what would be six pizzas (to be clear, we were part of a group), that they even realized the long-standing calling card of Chuck E. Cheese was performing before them.
