On Friday Claire and I took the train from Vermont down to Washington D.C. Unfortunately the National Pinball Museum has moved to Baltimore, so we couldn't play there. One of my previous students who now lives in D.C. (Josh Kramer of Cartoon Picayune fame) tracked down this pinhall in Fairfax, VA but it was pretty far out and we didn't have a car, so I wasn't able to check that out either. I kept an eye out while walking around D.C. but nothing turned up... the town was dry!
Onto Florida! I checked the arcade in the Orlando airport, which was still there and still had its Avatar machine. Then Claire and I hopped a bus to the Disney World universe. We were staying at one of the budget "All Star" hotels, which conveniently had an arcade attached to the lobby! It had a brand-new Tron:
The arcade ran on one of those card systems, which I am not a fan of. The first night we got in, the card machine was busted, so there was no way to play until the next day. The machine was in great shape (duh - it's brand new) and I had a lot of fun playing a familiar game.
The next day in Disney World I found a few different interesting things... On Main Street USA, inside a "Casey at the Bat"-themed hot dog shop, there was a 1966 Chicago Coin Big League Baseball pitch and bat game.
It was not working, and not technically pinball, but it was still cool to check out! My next find was by Space Mountain. After that roller coaster ride through the dark, I was ready to stand on my own two feet for a while, and luckily the ride let out into an arcade! Tucked away in one corner they had quite the pinball lineup!
From left to right that's Indiana Jones (2008, Stern), Elvis, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Wars: Episode I (!!?!) and Revenge From Mars. Unfortunately, this fine collection of machines needed some love. SW:E1, Pirates, and Elvis all had extremely weak flippers (preventing the simplest of ramp shots) and the sound was completely gone on Revenge From Mars. After one game on each of the beat-up machines, I focused my energy on Indiana Jones and Roller Coaster Tycoon. I had a very long game on Indy, but alas, the bar was set pretty high. I got a replay, but couldn't mark the board. I left my credit for whoever came along next. On Roller Coaster Tycoon I got the #4 score, with 10,555,420 points!
Jon and I are chipping away on Drop Target #4, and we should have some exciting Drop Target news to share later this week!
I wish I had known. I actually work at Space Mountain. I could have hooked you up with a bunch of fastpasses for the entire park. Maybe I'll put in an anonymous complaint about the machines in the arcade.
ReplyDeleteWow, that's a lot of machines.
ReplyDeleteDisneyland just has Pirates of the Caribbean, TRON, Indiana Jones, and Whirlwind.
Thanks for the offer Kyle. Maybe next time! If you can file a complaint, I'm sure they'll fix the machines. Someone has been taking care of them, otherwise they wouldn't play at all!
ReplyDelete