I Remember Robots
Before Chuck-E-Cheese there was The Rock-afire Explosion.
“I started a new restaurant chain called Showbiz Pizza Place and we got singing robots in there…”
(h/t, Anna.)
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It’s Spinal Tap… with robots!
I worked at a Showbiz when I was 16.
The fun of getting behind and underneath the stage and looking at all the bits and pieces almost made up for the horror of hearing the same set of kid-friendly cover songs, every hour, on the hour.
They had a whole room full of parts, both for the animatronics and for various games (pinball, skee-ball, etc). I spent a lot of time in there just poking around.
The Showbiz Pizza in Huntsville, AL had a prototype theater (one of six nationwide, iirc) designed by Doug Trumbull that featured 70mm film at 24 fps and a very impressive sound system. The features ran around ten minutes and afterward you were asked your impression for marketing purposes.
I enjoyed it, but obviously, I was alone. It closed after only a few months of operation.