Chuck E Cheese con­tin­ues to bounce back af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, and now it is en­cour­ag­ing chil­dren to lit­er­al­ly bounce around in a brand new, in­ter­ac­tive play area known as “The Ad­ven­ture Zone,”  just in time for East­er va­ca­tion. 

Speak­ing at the open­ing on Wednes­day at the Brent­wood, Ch­agua­nas branch, Yay En­ter­tain­ment CEO Joan­na Ros­tant said the fo­cus on “ac­tive play” comes at a time when phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty is more im­por­tant than ever.

“To the par­ents, why did we do what we call ac­tive play? Ac­tive play and keep­ing kids phys­i­cal­ly ac­tive is pret­ty im­por­tant to us, es­pe­cial­ly com­ing out of COVID-19,” she said.

While the brand still of­fers video games, Ros­tant said cus­tomer feed­back showed chil­dren want­ed more hands-on, phys­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ences.

“We con­duct­ed two sur­veys of our guests … those sur­veys were, we love you, we love your place … but we’re kind of bored. So in re­sponse to the pub­lic feed­back, we want­ed to bring some­thing new and ex­cit­ing for the kids, which is why we did ac­tive play.”

She point­ed to the grow­ing in­flu­ence of screens, say­ing chil­dren now ex­pect con­stant stim­u­la­tion and nov­el­ty.

“These lit­tle kids de­mand a lot of us as par­ents, al­ways want­i­ng some­thing new, al­ways chas­ing some­thing new.”

The zone, first in­tro­duced at West Mall last year, gives chil­dren a safe space to run, climb and in­ter­act, shift­ing the fo­cus from pas­sive screen time to phys­i­cal en­gage­ment.

Ros­tant al­so re­flect­ed on the com­pa­ny’s sur­vival dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, when op­er­a­tions were halt­ed for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od.

“Boy, it was very close … 500 days with ze­ro rev­enue, we were closed. 500 days, a year and a half,” she said.

De­spite this, she said loy­al cus­tomers helped the com­pa­ny re­cov­er.

“We have a very lov­ing guest who re­al­ly en­joy what we do. We bounce back nice­ly af­ter COVID.”

She said in­no­va­tion re­mains key to keep­ing pace with chil­dren’s ex­pec­ta­tions.

“You have to in­no­vate, you have to move, you have to cre­ate new … they al­ways want some­thing new, want some­thing ex­cit­ing, and it’s a beau­ti­ful ad­di­tion for them.”

Ros­tant said chil­dren will ul­ti­mate­ly de­cide the suc­cess of the new space.

“When we do open the zone, we want to hear all about it, how good it is, what’s great, what’s not so good … so tell us all about it.”