A garage in Hermitage's Stone Hall neighborhood turned into a flashing, singing stage on Halloween night, as Gene Howell and his daughter Ally debuted years of restoration work on vintage ShowBiz Pizza Place animatronic characters for a crowd Gene estimated could run between 2,000 and 3,000 people. The five-minute show has become an annual tradition for the father-daughter team, who say they expected an even bigger turnout this year after word of the project spread.
A Years-Long Restoration Project Comes Together
Gene and Ally Howell have spent years tracking down and restoring the old ShowBiz Pizza characters, according to WKRN News 2. Gene said the Halloween night turnout typically falls between 2,000 and 3,000 visitors, telling the station, “We have anywhere between 2 and 3,000 people come to this garage on Halloween night to see it.” He added that this year's show had generated enough buzz that he expected the crowd to be even larger than usual.
The duo's fascination with ShowBiz Pizza traces back to Ally's childhood. She acquired her first animatronic three years before this year's show, a milestone the station described as the moment she “finally got her chance” after years of wanting one. Gene, who said he works as a hardware and software engineer, has put those skills to use helping Ally bring the aging robots back to life.
Beach Bear and Fatz Geronimo Headline the Collection
Restoring the characters has meant traveling widely to find hard-to-find parts and sinking countless hours into repairs, per the same WKRN report. Beach Bear holds a special place in the collection as the Howells' first animatronic and, fittingly, their last one completed. “He was our first bot and our last completed one,” Ally said. “It took us forever to get the fur and the cosmetics.”
Fatz Geronimo, meanwhile, is the oldest character in the Howells' collection and the only one that actually performed inside a real ShowBiz Pizza location. “Our oldest character from 1981, Indianapolis Showbiz,” Ally said of the character, which traditionally performed as part of a trio alongside Billy Bob and Looney Bird. Ally has said that seeing the restored characters perform again can be an emotional experience for visitors who remember them from childhood.
Thriller, Ghostbusters and a Show Years in the Making
This year's performance leaned into the Halloween spirit, with the Howells cueing up songs including “Thriller” and the theme from “Ghostbusters.” The duo described the result as a lot of lights, a lot of noise and a lot of music, and Gene said 2026 marked the first year the show reached roughly 90 percent completion. Some visitors have driven as far as an hour just to catch the five-minute performance, the station reported.
For anyone who misses the Halloween night show, the Howells have said they also offer private performances so people can still see the restored animatronics in action. Gene Howell's hunt for vintage animatronic hardware extends beyond ShowBiz Pizza characters, too — a recent post on Reddit's r/Animatronics community announced that he had purchased the Spreepark Wolf Pack 5 animatronic show, another sign of just how deep the collecting hobby runs for the family.
ShowBiz Pizza's Place in Family Entertainment History
ShowBiz Pizza was a fixture of family entertainment in the 1980s, known for its pizza, arcade games and animatronic performers. The chain's first location opened to the public in Kansas City, Missouri, on March 3, 1980, according to Wikipedia, after it was founded that year by Robert L. Brock and Aaron Fechter of Creative Engineering. Restaurants featured arcade games, coin-operated rides and the company's signature animatronic stage show, The Rock-afire Explosion, produced by Creative Engineering.
That era came to an end after ShowBiz severed ties with Creative Engineering in 1990, and locations were gradually rebranded as Chuck E. Cheese's, effectively retiring the ShowBiz Pizza brand. The transition played out location by location into the early 1990s, according to a history compiled on showbizpizza.webador.com, which also credits a growing online Rock-afire fan community with reviving interest in the characters and encouraging owners to program new routines for them decades later — the same wave of enthusiasm that has fueled hobbyist restorations like the Howells'.
