ShowBiz Pizza (revived)

ShowBiz Pizza is a chain of family entertainment centres owned by ArgosyMTM Group. Apart from the name and the Rock-afire Explosion characters, it has no connection to the original ShowBiz chain, which was folded into Chuck E. Cheese.

Unlike the original ShowBiz Pizza, and their main rival Chuck E. Cheese, they are a seasonal operation (like Spirit Halloween), that usually runs from Memorial Day (US)/Victoria Day (Canada) until Labo(u)r Day (around the timeframe of Summer Break in most school districts), and they do not offer birthday parties.

ShowBiz is almost entirely franchised.

History
After "Concept Unification", Aaron Fechter's Creative Engineering Inc. (CEI) retained the rights to the Rock-afire Explosion characters, but ShowBiz Pizza Time (now CEC Entertainment) retained all other ShowBiz trademarks.

In 1995, International Family Entertainment Inc. (now ArgosyMTM Group) acquired CEI from Fechter for an undisclosed sum.

In 2006, long after the ShowBiz trademarks had been abandoned by CEC Entertainment, Argosy Media registered "ShowBiz Pizza" as a trademark.

Between 2006 and 2007, the Modern Rock-afire animatronics were worked on by both Aaron Fechter and Ellen Peck.

In Summer 2009, at the height of the Great Recession, the new ShowBiz launched as a seasonal operation over the summer, using abandoned "big-box" stores. The animatronics use the Rock-afire characters, but are much more advanced than the primitive (by comparison) 1980s bots.

In 2013, the Rock-afire Explosion YouTube channel launched, with animatronic footage from both incarnations of ShowBiz Pizza, as well as a webseries with the RAE characters.

Like fellow seasonal shop Spirit Halloween (which it shares some abandoned stores with), ShowBiz continued operating in 2020, even during the COVID-19 pandemic. They even launched a fleet of ShowBiz Pizza Food Trucks, taking the Rock-afire to the road, and to your door for birthdays and other special events (even though the ShowBiz popup restaurants don't do birthday parties).

Later in 2020, ArgosyMTM Group bought out CEC Entertainment. However, ShowBiz and CEC continue to operate separately.

Types of ShowBiz Pizza

 * Big Box: The typical ShowBiz Pizza, occupying a bankrupted "big-box" store like Circuit City, KMart, or (more recently) Toys-R-Us. Contains multiple Modern Rock-afire animatronic shows in different parts of the restaurant, as well as multiple pizza and salad bars; tons of arcade games and pinball tables; indoor play equipment a la the defunct Discovery Zone; and (in some instances) licensed restaurants like McDonalds, Burger King, or Subway. There are even walk-arounds. May or may not be inside a mall.
 * Little Box: Occupies smaller stores (mainly former video stores like Blockbuster). Not as big as the Big Box, but bigger than the In-Mall and Restaurant versions.
 * In-Mall: Occupies spaces in malls vacated by non-big-box stores. Has only 1 Rock-afire show.
 * Restaurant: Occupies buildings vacated by other fast-food restaurants like McDonald's and Pizza Hut. Has only 1 Rock-afire show.
 * Mall Takeover: Introduced during the 2018 season, this format utilizes an entire "dead mall". The mall's remaining tenant stores are maintained, but the rest of the mall is "taken over" by the ShowBiz experience, creating a similar feel to the Big Box locations.
 * Cinema Takeover: New for the 2021 season, using cinemas that closed permanently during the pandemic. Announced in April 2021 on ShowBiz's social media pages. Similar to the Mall Takeover, but on a smaller scale.

Trivia

 * Tokens can be reused from year to year, and across different locations.