Tasting Table recently ranked 19 popular pizza chains, and found that, unfortunately, one kid-friendly, birthday party favorite absolutely did not hold up for our adult palates. That’s right, we’re talking about Chuck E. Cheese, home of the instrument-playing animatronic animals. We found the pizza to be incredibly subpar compared to other chains, and ranked it the worst popular pizza chain of all.
While it has always been a go-to place for harried parents to host a gaggle of kids for a birthday party, it wasn’t ever renowned for its cuisine. Most of us probably remember the pizza crust being compared to soggy cardboard, or the sauce to ketchup. Though the chain underwent major rebranding efforts in 2012, 2023, and 2025, these only served to make the spot even less appealing.
In 2023, the company spent over $300 million to renovate and even introduced a new Grown-Up Menu. The chain also changed its pizza recipe in an effort to appeal to more health-conscious parents. Between 2020 and 2025, some Chuck E. Cheese locations served Pasqually’s Pizza, a name you may remember as being the ghost kitchen operating out of Chuck E. Cheese locations during the pandemic.
However, by 2025, it had removed the animatronics from all locations, which were the only real draw for nostalgic adults. In their place is Chuck’s Arcade, designed to appeal to adults and kids by featuring classic arcade games and new hits. Now, the chain has phased out the Pasqually’s and Grown-Up Menus and claims to use freshly-made dough and more premium ingredients. It even offers gluten-free pizza options. Yet those changes aren’t enough to make us revisit our opinion of this bottom-of-the-barrel pizza chain.
The new Chuck E. Cheese has mixed reviews
Chuck E. Cheese currently operates more than 500 locations around the world, and as of 2024, has been testing out a new tiered membership program. Obviously, it’s popular with kids, or at least parents who need somewhere (that isn’t their own home) to host kids’ parties. But do people actually like the branding, or the pizza?
In a post on Reddit, a senior manager at the chain asked if anyone liked the restaurant’s redesign, as they “often get complaints from guests about how Chuck e cheese [sic] used to be so much better and that it’s terrible now.” One person responded, “We do. I think the key problem is people’s anchor point. Adults have the nostalgia for the animatronics, tokens, and tickets.” They went on to say, “My son absolutely LOVES going to Chuck [E.] Cheese. He’s almost 4. He likes playing the games with mom and dad’s help.”
Reviews of the chain’s new pizza are also very mixed. In posts on the Facebook group Pizzaholics, which has over 350,000 members, the new pizza recipe gets both rave reviews and major criticism. One person posted, “Gonna get some heat, but post-pandemic revamped Chuck-E-Cheese pizza is not to be slept on,” while another said, “Chuck E cheese [sic] pizza just like when I was a kid!! Except 10x worse now as an adult!” Pizza Review Joe, who has over 15,000 subscribers on YouTube, posted a review of the chain’s new pizza in 2024. While he said the sauce definitely tasted canned, he proclaimed it was “not terrible,” and said the cheese and pepperoni were okay.
