Here's another installment of Surviving Your Child's Summer Vacation For Pennies A Day (Should that have been …Vacation On Pennies A Day? Oh well, too late now.). It's my little experiment where I try to find fun and cheap things for my daughter and I to do this summer.
After reading this tip, you will probably wander around dumbstruck for a few moments. After you gain your senses, there's a good chance you will say, "Chag, you're a genius." It's okay. You guys should probably be uttering that phrase more often anyway.
Lesson Two: Take Your Kids To Chuck E. Cheese's
Wait! Don't leave yet!Look, I know every parent hates Chuck E. Cheese's. The noise! The expensive pizza! The bratty kids! In fact, every parent blogger must have at least one post in his or her archives that bashes Chuck E. Cheese's. It's like an Internet Law or something.
But what if I said you could have a good time at Chuck E. Cheese's and it wouldn't cost you much money? Think I'm crazy? Read on.
There are two caveats, however:
- You cannot eat at Chuck E. Cheese's. It will totally break your budget. Pack a lunch to eat it at the mall instead.
- You must arrive at Chuck E. Cheese's when it opens. I'm not talking sixty or even thirty minutes after they open. When they unlock the doors, you're greeting them with a smile on your face. Got it?
Free Credits
When the employees turn on the machines in the morning, some of the machines have credits in them. Credits = free games! On our last visit, we found three video games that were already credited with tokens.
Free Tokens
Look around and you'll find tokens lying on the ground. On our last visit, we found two tokens. But to really take advantage of this, find out which days the employees open the video games to remove and count the tokens. I do not know how often they perform this ritual at Chuck E. Cheese's; I've only seen it once. But on that day, we snagged eight tokens!
Free Tickets
When the employees turn on the machines in the morning, they also make sure the ticket feeders on all the games are operational. If you're the first one there, you'll find that all of the games have tickets sticking out of them: some have only one but some have many more. Once we're inside Chuck E. Cheese's, I tell my daughter, "Go get the tickets!" She bounces back and forth between the machines, yelling "I found one!" or "This one has A LOT of tickets!" It's like The World's Loneliest Easter Egg Hunt.
On our last trip, she found 259 tickets.
Two hundred and fifty-nine tickets.
Do you know how much plastic crap you can get for 259 tickets? A lot.
Plus, you can have your child count the tickets and calculate how many she'll have left when she selects the trinket of her choice. It's an educational outing, too!
On our last trip to Chuck E. Cheese's, we lasted forty-five minutes, only spent a buck, and had a great time. When was the last time you said that about a trip to Chuck E. Cheese's?
Song of the day: Romeo And Juliet by Dire Straits
