blog.grubmeyer

I’m embarrassed to admit that I go to Chuck E. Cheese way more than I probably should. I think I bring the family there about once a month. Before I learned the secrets of the intergoogles, I was spending more money than I should have and always left with a sense that I’d been taken to the cleaners.

The token system they use is very deceptive. Once you have their fancy copper coins in your hand, it’s not money anymore and you’re likely to use more then you normally would if you were required to just use quarters. It’s just shiny little pieces of nothingness that enable you to use to try and win little paper pieces of nothingness(tickets). Then once you’ve collected enough little pieces of paper you can trade them in for a toy that you likely didn’t need in the first place and that you most certainly over paid for.

Anything for the kids to have a little fun though right?

That was a bit of a tangent for what I really wanted to write about today. It’s been a very, very long time since I’ve paid full price for Chuck E. Cheese tokens and pizza. Here’s a little trick I use to ensure I get the best deal for my money.

It may sound a little funny, but the first thing I did (sometime ago) was sign up for Chuck E. Cheese spam with my real email address. I could have created an alternate permanent email address but I chose to use my own for simplicity. This may sound odd (Why would I want more spam than I already get? -and- Why would I sign up for it?!?) but hear me out.Chuck E. Cheese spams a lot! But it’s always with lots of great coupons, so even if I don’t do the next part that I’ll tell you about, at least I’ll have access to a little bit of a discount. Also it’s very easy to set up filters to keep these emails from cluttering My inbox.

The next thing I do is just before I leave for Chuck E. Cheese is register a new account at their site. The new account coupons are typically better than what they send out as the normal spam. Now they do have a policy about having only a single account per email address but that’s not to say I couldn’t sign up with an address from a temporary email service. My favorite to date is mailinator.com. It’s got a unique system that allows you to use almost any (username)@mailinator.com that you can think up without creating an account. This process is very simple and only takes a couple of minutes.

Today it took me about 5 minutes to generate a new account and receive my coupons. I was on the tablet so I imagine that it’d be a little quicker if I was using a computer. Here are some examples of the coupons I could use if I were going today.

Chuck E. Cheese Spam

Coupons sent to blogforchuckcoups@mailinator.com

The deals are very similar, but I’ve now got a much larger selection of coupons that I can use and I’m able to choose more exactly what I want without breaking the bank. Keep in mind, the deals change often and while the differences in this weeks coupons aren’t that great, in coming weeks they could be vastly different. Also even if don’t want to use this procedure every time, make sure that you at least bring some sort of coupons with you. The prices on the coupons are always much better than what you’ll actually pay in the restaurant.