BY REBECCA SHEEHAN
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Everyone has been inside one of these. The stage is set: Kids are running around in a panic, sweating trying to utilize their tokens to the max in order to win as many tickets as possible in order to cash them in for a useless and unnecessary prize. Bells and sirens are going off, cash machines are dolling out tokens and the sound of “ching, ching,” is echoing all around you. No folks we are not in an Atlantic City Casino, instead, we are talking about America’s family fun place: Chuck E. Cheese.

Although Chuck E. Cheese is supposed to be aimed at being good ole' family fun, instead it resembles all too much the sights and sounds of being on a casino floor. The only difference one can see is that in this establishment the children are doing all the gambling.

A Time article is claiming that thanks to a new legislation in Florida targeting Internet café sweepstake gambling operations, there’s an argument to be made that some Chuck E. Cheese games involve gambling and are therefore illegal. And considering the main clientele at Chuck E. Cheese are in fact children, this may be an issue to consider.

Last month, the state of Florida legislation specifically outlaws video gambling machines, as well as small coin-operated games of chance. According to the Miami Herald, with the new legislation law enforcement officers ended up "seizing dozens of machines from mom-and-pop stores and cafes and arresting their owners.”

In recent years there has been a crackdown on this type of Internet Café’s.  According to a Wall Street Journal report on the efforts in places such as Ohio, South Carolina, and Michigan to shut down — or at least regulate — these cafes, which are filled with simulated slot-machine games and often operate totally out in the open in strip mall locations. While the gambling games vary, most of the machines require the participant to add money to a plastic card and have become very popular among the elderly population.

After internet café’s started popping up all over Massachusetts with gaming machines, Attorney General Martha Coakley affirmed that these operations were illegal in the summer of 2011.

“This kind of activity, gambling, is not allowed under Massachusetts law,” Coakley said, according to the Boston Globe. “They are totally unregulated, there’s no oversight, and there is no protection for the consumer.”

This isn’t the first time that the Chuck E. Cheese chain has been discussed in the same breath as gambling. In 2011, a mom in San Diego sued the company for $5 million because the “casino-style gambling devices” could put children on the road to gambling addiction.