Different Menus?

[YoungCaliHottie]

Ive been going to cec on a daily basis for almost a year now. and i just barely noticed something! i dont know if maybe this is a recent change... but the Cerritos, CA cec has a different menu than every other cec!

Cerritos has chicken strips. And items come with extra stuff. Like normally Hot Dogs only come with fries. But in Cerritos it comes with like fruit too or something. I dont remember all the differences. But I'll try to take a pic or jot down the info next time I go to that one.

Does anyone else have a cec in their area that has a menu like the one im talking about?

[pizzacam]

Well we had the chicken strips here for about 6 months to a year...they were great! Then one day they were up and gone like a fart in the wind. >:

[Shiney Happy Jenn]

I was wondering what ever happened to the long proposed Chicken Fingers/Strips.

So i guess this means the rollout test was'nt successful enough then?

When i was still at the Store, the most requested items we recieved were:

Chicken Fingers
Some type of Kids Meal ( like a Happy Meal, but with pizza)
Fish Sticks
Grilled Cheese Sandwich ( parents requesting this for kids)




So why did'nt CEC pursue these itmes...particually the Kids Meal idea? I know last Summer they tried something along those lines with the Super Chuck meal. But seriosuly, i am certain a lot of parents would be very interested in a CEC Meal that had a Indy Pizza, Small Kids Cup, and 5 to 10 tokens all for one price....say, $10/12.

If they wanted to go further, they could instead of tokens give away small prizes....again similar to a Happy Meal.

Maybe the fact they have'nt tried this concept after all these years is that they want to distance themselves from such a cliched "fast food" resturant item.

Funny then that they still have the Sky Tubes, which are synonimus with "fast food" resturant playground!! :b

[Lilredridinghood]

I had dinner with Jenn tonight, and even though this isn't really a menu item, I have to say try the Blue Mountain Powerade! Anything that makes my tongue blue is good. This will be a great drink for the kiddies! (They'll probably be bouncing off the walls though.)

Jenn, your right, a kids meal there would be a good idea.

[PuroMax]

Actually Powerade has half the sugar of regular soda, and no caffiene. It's BETTER for the kids to drink. Unlike fruit punch and pink lemonade, which are just loaded with fructose

[bzier]

That store must have been part of a test market. I know down here in the Orlando area they also tested that stuff. They also run a different prize setup than we do. Their newest test in Orlando is all games in the CECs are being changed over to CARD READERS!!! Yes, you read that right...NO MORE TOKENS! This means you'll be buying cards for credits on games instead of buying tokens. If all goes well, we might see tokens disappear in the next few years.

[YoungCaliHottie]

I hope not!!! I HATE places that use card readers!!! Those things are a pain in the ass!

Besides, what am I suppose to do? Collect cards? lol.

I don't like cards at all! I seriously hope they dont go that route! I kinda think that is inappropriate for kids anyways. Seems like it would be too technical for them and take away the fun of having "gold" in their hands.

Its kinda the same concept with tickets. CEC could also just add your ticket balance to the same card. But I think it would lose the effect.

The whole fun for kids is the idea that they are in possession of these items. It may sound a little materialistic, but kids don't really own much stuff (sure, some toys, but what else). Things like getting mail is exciting to them. So is having one hand full of tokens and the other full of tickets. Watch a kid who wins like 20 tickets in a single line. He won't fold them up into a stack. He'll run from the gameroom to his table waving them excitedly in the air. He'll run back to his mom and say "look at all the tickets i won!" You cant do that with a card.

Plus theyre just a pain in the ass. First you have to go get one. Then you have to charge it up. Then the store can charge however many "points" per game and you soon have no idea how much youre even spending. Then you have to swipe the card until the stupid reader accepts it. And if youre continuing a game, you have to hope you can get the card out of your pocket and the stupid reader reads it all within 10 seconds or youre going to lose your continue and have to start over. Then you have to go reload the card. And you have to carry around yet another card in your pocket. If you lose it, there goes all your money. (Ya, you can lose tokens. But its a lot easier to lose a little card.)...

...AND YOU ALWAYS SOMEHOW END UP WITH .9 OF A POINT LEFT ON YOUR FREAKIN CARD THAT YOU CANT USE CUZ THE CHEAPEST GAME IS 1 POINT AND THERES NO REFUNDS AND THEY ONLY SELL FULL POINTS SO EVEN IF YOU BUY 1 MORE POINT (AND THERES PROBABLY A MINIMUM OF LIKE 5 POINTS) YOU'LL STILL HAVE THAT DAMN .9 LEFT ANYWAY AND YOU STILL CANT USE THE FUC**R!

lol :P

[sungun12]

wow, me and my tech got in a little tiff the other day about card readers. were doing game pull and he's whining like always and saying he wished we had card readers. i told him to keep dreaming because that defeats the whole concept of cec.

granted, it will save a TON of time, especially on monday mornings, and every saturday when im out of tokens and have go run to the b/c to get more when theres a line out the door, but it defeats the whole cec concept. to kids, it IS gold. tokens mean nothing to me, if i drop one, i dont even bother to pick it up. but the only thing that beats a ticket splash is a token splash. nothing beats that sound. what are we gonna do, throw some freakin cards??? if this happens, it will be very disappointing. easier but still disappointing.

[Shiney Happy Jenn]

Well i have heard about the card tests the Company was doing years ago...way back in 2000 or so we were hearing rumours about the Ticket Card, which was to be like a credit card that would store your ticket amount on and would be used to redeem them for prizes. I thought it was a GREAT idea, as it would save the store, and no doubt the Company a ton of money. It cost big bucks to print all those tickets, distribute them, pay someone to feed them into a game ( and fix the despensers in such a game when it goes afoul..) just so little Mikey can hold them in his hand for about 20 seconds after he won them to shove into a Ticket Muncher! Seems to me the way to go...it would solve a LOT of issues and save a ton of $$ for the Company...and of course they are always anxious to do that...

As far as discontinuing tokens...well, i don't know about that one. Again, it costs the Company zillions every year to mint, distribute, and collect the coins every year. I would say about 40% of the tokens sold never make it back to a CEC once leaving the premisis...they are lost, misplaced, used as tokens at other arcades ( boy is that true...amoung other places). The loss must be incredible. Again, it all comes down to $$$ that its costing the Company. Cards would streamline things i think....quite a bit. Sure us fans will miss collecting the tokens...but in the end i think a all-card system will be the not too ditance future at CEC.

Oh, and the Powerade was pretty good.....interesting to hear it has less caffiene and sugar then the other drinks. Cool....

[YoungCaliHottie]

i really hope they dont use cards!

jenn, im very surprised to hear you say those things! it totally goes against everything you normally believe in! what happened to putting the magic and experince before money? i thought u agreed that the company was taking shortcuts to make a buck but was in the process eliminating the fun from the concept? just how studio c ruined the fun of the show, cards will ruin the fun of the games. and i dont think the company should really mess with the fun of the games, since thats where a large % of profit comes from!

anyways... back to MENUS... lol. i noticed the nutrition facts list LASAGNA?

[sungun12]

haha, yea, we had lasagna on our mainscreen up at cash for a bit, then it went away.

oh and one day someone rang up chicken fingers..but we dont have them :rolleyes

[Aaron]

I'll add my opinion, then I'll go back to my timeout corner. :b
However, I'm all for the cards. Seriously, children want to be more like their
parents, right? Well this is a fine start! It can be seen as a CEC Credit Card.
As weird as it may seem, seriously.. tokens are a blast from the past now.
What kid wouldn't want their own credit card nowadays?
Don't get me wrong, tokens are great! But so was the show.. and kids now
enjoy being on television. something they have bragging rights to.
To me, it seems cards are going to keep up with times in the modern world
of CEC. Sure, to us it's a loss but we don't know for sure until we try, right?


Just my opinion, though.

-NJ

[PuroMax]

"I swiped my card but the game didn't start!"
And the GRA goes over with his/her unlimited swipes card...

I can just picture this in the city, everyone would be trying to swipe their Metrocards seeing if it works in the games. It'd be hilarious if it worked, but charged you for a train fare.

Or better yet, since rumor has it tokens will count as quarters on the bus, everyone will be using their Chuck E. Charges at the turnstiles.

[pizzacam]

Yeah, I heard about them testing that about 2 months ago...This GM had a prototype card and was showing us. :\

[cec080]

the only difference around here is most have just saladbar and no 1 time salad and some have both salad bar and 1 time salad bar. another thing i noticed was with desert before the Toledo Ohio locations had muffins instead of brownies. i wish they would have the chicken fingers. they already have a contract with tyson food for the chicken products................

[sungun12]

i wish they got rid of the one trip salads....god that sucks.
its pointless

[pizzacam]

before the Toledo Ohio locations Wow I have the show that has a CEC News Flash that announces some new store openings and North and South Toledo are mentioned. :lol It was on the Sep 94 Show

[YoungCaliHottie]

they have the 1 trip salads here. people actually buy them! i dont see the company getting rid of them, as it caters to the cheap skates and brings in more profit since its only $1 less. i usually go to the salad bar 3 or 4 times. :) . 1 trip would never do!



another thing i noticed was with desert before the Toledo Ohio locations had muffins instead of brownies.

are you saying they still have brownies? theres nothing like that here. just the dessert "pizzas".

[sungun12]

yea, we were told to get rid of our dessert displays years ago