Showbiz Pizza (East and West Cybersland)/Stage Formats

Classic Mini-Stage
The classic Rock-afire Explosion Mini-Stage is designed for small town ShowBiz Pizza restaurants. It contains only four characters. A few non-small town locations have also used the Mini-Stage.

1-Stage
The 1-Stage is a traditional RAE Stage, that, like it's name suggests, is a compact show that is restricted to the size of...one stage. The animatronic arrangement here is not unlike the other RAE Stages; Rolfe and Earl, Dook, Fatz, Beach Bear, Mitzi, Billy Bob, and Looney Bird all lined up together, in that order, in front of a basic backdrop. The size of the show itself, stage and all, takes up very little of the Showroom floor, creating a simple, and yet effective form of animatronic entertainment. An interesting thing to note with this stage, is that, some, not all, 1-stages have a very unique feature... wheels on two lines beneath the Billy Bob robot, that moves Billy into Smitty's Super Service Station, causing a prop "garage door" to come down, when the walkaround Billy Bob comes out for live shows, or to mingle with the young guests. The feature was meant to avoid the often inevitable confusion that comes when a child sees two Billy Bob's or Chuck E's...one on stage and one on the floor, thus creating the illusion that the animatronic Billy Bob came off the stage to hang out in the store...and I can't help but be reminded about how much this reminds me of something that Milli Vanilli would do...

2-Stage
The 2-Stage is very similar to the 1-Stage; the only real difference being that, here, rather than all 5 band members sharing the floor, Billy Bob is off to the other side on his own stage, with his own curtains, and dramatic lighting. And on the main stage, where Billy usually stands, there is a large-screen TV, that plays the current showtape, beneath an LED lights display that reads 'Showbiz Pizza: Where a Kid Can Be a Kid' in color changing lights. Everything else here is basically the same...

3-Stage
The 3-Stage (also known as the Classic RAE stage) is the main RAE stage. Like the first three (or four) stages, it is made by Creative Engineering.

The Rock-afire Explosion used a combination of three separate stages which gave it a unique range of flexibility in the presentation of shows. One of the side stages might perform an individual show, or maybe just the center stage depending on which characters were required for the particular show.

Center Stage - this was the largest and main stage that was used. Located on center stage were Dook LaRue, Fatz Geronimo, Beach Bear, and Mitzi Mozzarela. Also to be found were the "prop-characters" - Baby Bear Choo-choo, Antioch, Frog, Sun, and Moon (and the Owl in the very earliest stages). Surrounding the characters was a forest scene, complete with assorted types of trees, grass, rocks, stumps, and a background sky. At the heart of center stage is the Rock-afire Explosion lighted sign behind Fatz. His keyboard, the Magical Tune Machine, also has the words "Rock-afire" printed across it. It was quite a brilliant design, as the rest of the show appears to radiate out from this focal center point.

Stage Left - this was Billy Bob's stage, and included with him was his sidekick the Looney Bird and the "prop-character" Birthday Bird who was seated atop Billy Bob's guitar. Smitty's Super Service Station was the stage setting, and everything took place outside of Smitty's. The scene was that of a distilling operation - aside from moonshine jugs scattered about, there was a campfire that heated a still, which had a winding tube leading to Looney Bird's economy-sized Easy-Flow Oil barrel. In the late 1980s, ShowBiz altered the Smitty's backdrop to become the "ShowBiz Pizza Campground".

Stage Right - this was Rolfe and Earl's stage. It was quite difference in appearance from the other two stages, as this one looked to be inside a lounge or club. The ground was carpeted, and there were only a few decorations, a multicolored rain curtain, a half-rainbow in the background, an applause sign, and a cymbal that Rolfe was able to hit to accentuate a bad joke.

Road Stage
The Road Stage is perhaps the most uncommon of the previously described stages. A drastic change is appearant, the show is set up just like a 2-stage, but with one major difference. All of the robots, except Rolfe and Earl, are divided into halves! Half-bodied animatronic versions of Dook, Fatz, Beach Bear, Mitzi, Billy Bob, and Looney Bird all propped onto colorful, painted boxes with their names displayed on them. Interestingly enough, the names on the boxes alert guests of the character's names, so rather than identifying them as "that dog guy" or "the freakishly giant mouse lady" (or even worse, "the extremely fat gorilla"), children are more likley to call the characters by their names...such as "Dook" or "Mitzi". Also practical to note is the fact that half bodied characters are nothing new to Showbiz or CEC...Balcony Stages and House Stages at CEC also used the upper halves of the characters rather than the full-bodied ones. So there you have it folks! A basic introduction to the road stage...and now you'll know not to freak out when you see your first Road Stage like I did... "Where the heck are Mitzi's legs?!"

Fact: Creative Engineering had trouble making road stages, as they had never done other half-bodied characters (except for Looney Bird) before.

House Stage
This stage is of a house theme. The characters (except for Beach Bear and Mitzi) are all in the same order as the 3-Stage of which it replaces at some locations.

The characters on the stage are full bodied exept Billy Bob, Looney Bird, and Rolfe and Earl.

Moon Rockers
The Moon Rockers is a stage show, which is an alternate version of the RAE that Creative Engineering produced in the late 80s / early 90s. The stage is basically a Rock-afire center stage with alien cosmetics. Two characters include Princess Haylee (a retrofit of Mitzi), and Queezer (a retrofit of Beach Bear).