Our whole family love going to Chuck E. We don't go there a lot, maybe once every other month or so, but when we do, we all like to play. My son is of course running around playing whatever random games he likes, but my wife and I always carefully choose the machines with high return value (quick and easy, potential bonus tickets, etc)
We are actually semi-serious about it (it's silly, I know) and have our benchmark point of what we consider a 'successful' Chuck E. trip. Our average return rate is about 600 tickets per $10/$15 worth of coins (depending on what type of coupon we can get our hands on). 600 or more tickets per 90-100 coins and it's a good day for us. It's not super impressive, but remember that about half of those coins are used by my son and he doesn't really contribute much to the ticket total. We collect these tickets over time and only cash them out when they're at the 2k-3k level so my son gets to get the big prizes.
I also kind of like the chicken wings. It's not spectacular or anything like that, but I think it's pretty good. From the stories in this thread it really sounds like some brutal Chuck E.s you guys went to. Ours are actually pretty nice. Sure there are always these kids who push/bully/stalk your kid, but it's no different than pretty much any playground out there.