You don’t need to have ever stepped foot in a Chuck E. Cheese’s in your life to know what the iconic business is all about, or that it has been revived since its parent company, CEC Entertainment, filed for bankruptcy over the pandemic.
The chain of mechanical rat pizza and child casinos, in the words of online jokesters, is actually doing quite phenomenally, all things considered: it saw a $288 million jump in revenue from 2019 to 2023, remains a common subject of cultural reference 48 years after its founding, and still boasts a whopping 482 locations across the U.S. and Canada.
Even though only 11 of these are north of the border, one local outpost of the kids’ party place is allegedly on track to achieve legendary status, reserved for only a handful of Chuck E. Cheeses in the world. (Whether the restaurant still technically has or doesn’t have an apostrophe ‘s’ at the end of its name is up for debate.)
There are what CEC Entertainment calls “legacy stores,” which are venues that have been modernized since their ’80s and ’90s prime, but that still retain the features most characteristic to Charles Entertainment Cheese’s establishments: stages that offer live performances from Chuck and his cast of animatronic buddies known as Munch’s Make Believe Band.
The stages and their shows were actually due to be phased out last year, but after some public backlash, a select few were preserved or brought back. At the time of writing, there are only five of these legacy Chuck E. Cheeses in existence, two of them in New York state (in Hicksville and Nanuet); one in Northridge, California; one in Charlotte, North Carolina, and one in Springfield, Illinois.
And, rumour has it that a sixth is on the way, slated for right here in Ontario.
Fans in the surprisingly devout Chuck E. Cheese subreddit have been claiming that the location at 4141 Dixie Road in Mississauga is next on the list to become a legacy and/or “retro” store — apparently two separate things — per the mouth of CEC Entertainment’s CEO himself, David McKillips.
The outpost is the only one that still has a Road Stage, a type of Chuck E. Cheese stage created in the early ’90s that was the first to have cyberamic mechanical effects specifically.
BREAKING NEWS: Chuck E Cheese to add an additional legacy location, in Mississauga, Canada! 🇨🇦
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As one of hundreds of Reddit comments on a thread on the subject states, “Fans love the Road Stage, and they want it saved — they don’t want it to be extinct. They wanted Mississauga to be the last public viewing place for a Road Stage.”
In the same conversation, many have this month expressed excitement at the news, supposing that it will mean a proper restoration of the Dixie location’s existing stage and props, as well as its guaranteed protection for many years to come.
Unfortunately, despite mass speculation, CEC Entertainment would not confirm the new legacy store to blogTO, telling us last week “We do not have any news to share right now,” but assuring that its team will provide an update “as soon as we have more information.”
Similarly, management at the location itself said over the phone that they are not able to comment at the moment — but, they did not outright deny the rumours either, nor did they seem surprised by their existence. They also advised we call back in May or June for more information.
But, screenshots included in a new YouTube video about the Mississauga store from self-proclaimed Chuck E. Cheese expert “That Columbus Guy” show CEC Entertainment Marketing Officer Mark Kupferman essentially validating the claims through Discord messages, writing that theMcKillips “thought it was important to have a legacy store in Canada and keep the last Road Stage.”
McKillips himself also seemed to suggest as much on Reddit in a response to a user who asked if the company would consider keeping the Dixie Road establishment as a legacy store. “We are keeping it,” he wrote.
Lester Balajadia/Shutterstock.com at the Vaughan, Ontario location. For illustrative purposes only.
