Which Chuck E. Cheese stores still run the band?
Five locations in the United States still had animatronics running when the removals finished at the end of 2024, and all five were still on the list in September 2026. IEEE Spectrum named them: Northridge, California; Springfield, Illinois; Hicksville, New York; Pineville, North Carolina; and Nanuet, New York.
The North Carolina store is usually listed as Charlotte, which is close enough for directions and wrong on the map. It sits in Pineville, a suburb south of the city, and WBTV confirmed in September 2026 that it is still one of five in the country with a working band.
Four of the five run Munch's Make Believe Band in full: Chuck E. Cheese, Mr. Munch, Helen Henny, Jasper T. Jowls and Pasqually. Nanuet is the odd one out. It keeps a solo Chuck E. set, so a family arriving there expecting five singing robots finds one.
Everywhere else the stage is now a wall. CEC Entertainment runs close to 700 venues worldwide in 2026, so five surviving stages works out to fewer than one store in a hundred. The rest of the chain got the same package: screens, a dance floor and a trampoline zone.
Why did CEC Entertainment pull the stages out?
The company announced the retirement of Munch's Make Believe Band in November 2023 and finished the removals by the end of 2024, as part of a rebrand that also changed the menu, the lighting and the logo.
David McKillips, then the chief executive of CEC Entertainment, put the decision down to how children spend their attention now. He told The New York Times in 2024 that kids are "consuming their entertainment on a screen," and described the overhaul as the company's "most aggressive transformation."
The replacements are physical rather than theatrical. The moving figures came out, and video screens, interactive dance floors and trampoline zones went in. A stage takes floor space that a trampoline zone can sell by the hour, and a video wall can be changed from a laptop.
There is a supply problem behind the decision as well. Nobody has built these robots for decades, and the stages still standing run on parts pulled out of the ones that came down.
Where did the retired animatronics end up?
A large number of them went to Topeka, Kansas. Fortune reported in November 2023 that dozens of Chuck E. Cheese robots, in various states of disrepair, sit in a warehouse there and serve as the parts bin for the bands still performing.
Others went to private collectors. Complete stages and single characters move through hobbyist groups and private sales rather than any retail channel, which is why there is no published price for one.
The company held some back for itself. Alejandra Brady, a CEC Entertainment spokesperson, told Fortune in 2023, "We have preserved some for our 50th anniversary, but we have yet to announce what we're going to be doing." That anniversary lands in 2027, fifty years after the first store opened.
A few survivors are back in public view. Chuck's Arcade, the spin-off aimed at adults rather than at eight-year-olds, began opening in shopping malls in 2025 with a retired character standing in each one as a display piece instead of a performer. That is the same nostalgia trade running through the return of the coin-op arcade, aimed at the people who were children the first time around.
Where to find one today
Complete stages almost never reach a storefront, and the ones that do change hands privately between collectors, with no published price to work from. The affordable end of this hobby is the small stuff: arcade tokens stamped with the year, prize-counter toys, birthday badges, cups and show tapes, which turn up in quantity on Etsy's vintage Chuck E. Cheese listings. Tokens are the usual starting point, and the common years are still easy to find.
How one surviving store turned into five
The original plan was a single exception. Fortune reported in November 2023 that the band would play on in Northridge, California, and nowhere else in the chain. By the spring of 2024 Nanuet, New York had been added, and The New York Times put the count at two.
That still went badly. Adults who had spent birthdays in front of the stage wrote, emailed and called, and The New York Times reported in 2024 that fans were ringing McKillips on his personal phone to argue for keeping Pasqually behind the drums.
At the end of May 2024 the company added three more stores: Springfield, Hicksville and Pineville. None of it was a restoration. Nothing was rebuilt or trucked back from the warehouse. The company simply stopped removing stages that were already standing and designated those stores as the places where the show continues.
Nothing protects the five beyond company policy. There is no trust, no landmark status and no contract, which is why fans track these stores the way collectors track a discontinued format.
Who owns Chuck E. Cheese in 2026?
CEC Entertainment owns the chain, and CEC Entertainment is owned by the investors who held its debt. The company filed for Chapter 11 protection in June 2020 after the pandemic closed its dining rooms, and came out at the end of that year with its creditors in control.
By 2026 that had hardened into private equity ownership. D Magazine reported in August 2026 that six private equity groups together hold about 90 percent of CEC Entertainment, and that the company is not publicly traded.
The leadership turned over as well. Scott Drake, who joined as chief financial officer in 2024, became president and chief executive in February 2026. Under him the company counts nearly 700 venues across 47 states, is opening its first Chuck E. Cheese in the United Kingdom, and is pushing the larger Adventure World format.
The business that started all of this was a side project of the arcade trade. Chuck E. Cheese was founded in 1977 by Nolan Bushnell, the co-founder of Atari, as a room where a family could eat pizza while the machines paid the rent. The chain outlived the 1983 video game crash that took most of that industry down with it, and the robots outlived the arcade cabinets by forty years.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Chuck E. Cheese still have animatronics in 2026?
Yes, but only at five Chuck E. Cheese locations in the United States: Northridge, California; Springfield, Illinois; Hicksville, New York; Pineville, North Carolina; and Nanuet, New York. Every other store lost its stage by the end of 2024, when CEC Entertainment finished the removal it announced in November 2023.
Where did the Chuck E. Cheese animatronics go?
Dozens of retired Chuck E. Cheese robots went to a warehouse in Topeka, Kansas, where Fortune reported in November 2023 that they supply spare parts for the five stages still running. Others went to private collectors, and CEC Entertainment preserved a set for the chain's 50th anniversary in 2027.
Why did Chuck E. Cheese get rid of Munch's Make Believe Band?
CEC Entertainment retired Munch's Make Believe Band as part of a rebrand completed at the end of 2024, replacing the stages with video screens, dance floors and trampoline zones. Chief executive David McKillips told The New York Times in 2024 that children now take their entertainment from a screen.