View from the hotel room window. We only counted 3 bodies floating by.
Setting up cooke's pin: Stern Lightning.
Subpacket arrives:
Testing out the Lightning:
Sign over the entrance. This must be the right place:
The Incredible wall of Neon!
Some of the madness
Won't someone take this babypac home?
Lots of Pins
Pinball Tournament:
Vendors:
KingPin Whitewood Prototype:
Back at the Hotel Friday Evening...pinball & beer until 1:30AM
Saturday at the GameRoom Show
Grauwulf next to Atari Hurcules
The Wizard of Wor I saved from being converted to a 48-in-1
Some of "the gang"
I really enjoyed this trip. The games at the show were good, but the companionship, stories, playing pinball in the hotel room is what really made this a trip to remember. Thank you.
"My power comes from my boundless rage"
** Getting Out **All that's left: (Vids) Bubbles**MAKE AN OFFER!**
That's hard core... I dare you to try playing pin in your room in a motel not holding a pinball convention. Although i can imagine, die hards on the floor above and below you knocking on the door wanting to squeeze in a few games before the show opens again
"I can't believe COOKE didn't buy the PHANTOM OF THE OPERA for $800" -poolman
Hey, I didn't even see Phantom Of The Opera there! Come to think of it, I didn't see Medusa, either!
We ended up going last minute on Sunday, we arrived about noon, it seemed like alot of games had left the building ( according to the earlier photos ). Probably SOLD. Not a bad show, although I wish they had more Pin part vendors there. Illinois Pinball could teach a few of these guys how it's done! Nice selection, reasonable prices, just too bad I don't own any of those darn Williams games...ha, ha.
That's hard core... I dare you to try playing pin in your room in a motel not holding a pinball convention. Although i can imagine, die hards on the floor above and below you knocking on the door wanting to squeeze in a few games before the show opens again
The hotel wasn't the show's venue. The show was about 2 miles away.
Actually, we had two adjoining rooms and when the doors were closed, you could barely hear the machine from the other room. Besides, we only played until 1:30 (we were pretty tired by that point) - it's not like it was hammering away all night!
Monkeybug and I both tanked in the tournament. I tilted Rollergames twice (which was total crap, in my humble opinion).
Surprises of the show for me: - Silver Slugger - simple and fun. - Phantom of the Opea - fun game. The one there was unshopped and had a couple of issues (it would give an extra ball almost constantly, which made for some long games. ), but wasn't in bad shape and priced really well at $900. It sold for $800. - Super Mario Mushroom World is a super fun game. Tslam almost went home with it. The tag said $950, but the dude would have taken $850. It probably sold. - T3 didn't bother me nearly as much as I thought it would. - BBB is a neat game. I wish I could have spent more time with it. It definitely had a unique feel. - Bad Cats - why does this game get no love?
Things that bothered me: - Many of the games played like poo. Sluggish flippers, poor tilts, not level, etc. I don't understand why people can't take a few seconds to properly set-up their machines at a show. Having said that, I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to criticize, since I didn't bring any games to the show myself. I took a game to Allentown last year and had nothing but problems, so I understand the challenge involved with taking a game. Still, level and 6.5 degrees would be nice. - There weren't enough vendors. I heard that a couple of vendors backed out at the last minute. I think I spent about $40 on parts and other things. I anticipated getting much more. - Some of the pin prices were simply outrageous. The most glaring example was the beat/worn/unshopped/broken Gorgar for $1200. On the flip side, however, there were a few deals to be had (POTO and SMMW being a couple).
Overall, I had a great time. Thanks to Subpacket for driving and to Speedythepunk, Bish and Monkeybug for making the weekend a memorable one.
Terrible show, I won't be going back, but I go for diffrent reasons then everyone else, I'm there for the tournament. That had to be the most piss poor tournament I have ever attended.
I arrived there at about 10am on the Saturday, and Qualfying closed at 4pm I figured for sure I would be able to at least get in 5 or 6 qualfying attempts. Not the case, I was only allowed to get in 3 due to the horrible system that the P3 tournament uses. Wait times were over 2 hours to qualify at some times and there were times when machines were just sitting there idle with nothing to do.
I can only compare this tournament to PAPA and while I like the automation that P3 has the system sucks. At PAPA in B division there were 60 people who played and I can't think of a single time when I waited more then 10 mins at PAPA, granted they had more games but only by 3 and you had to play 5 games instead of the 3 at P3. The website for P3 only had 37 people pre-registered players I'm sure there were more at the show but it still doesn't excuse the wait times. I didn't drive 6 hours return trip to only be allowed to qualify 3 times and end up sitting around waiting for 2 hour stints between qualifying attempts, it felt like a complete waste of time. Couple that with the fact that you had to place 1 - 4 in order to be eligble for WPR points and some decent cash, was also really stupid in my opinion, for whatever reason they thought it was a good idea to take 1 - 4 and put them into an A division and take 5 - 8 and put them in a B division it made no sense what so ever to me.
The show itself wasn't bad, I was able to pickup the No Fear ramps from IPB which was great along with some plastics. But I'd have prefered to save myself the 6 hours of driving and just had them shipped.
Unless P3 decideds to make some changes to their system I won't be going back, it's not worth my time. One thing I will say is that the competition this year was much better, quite a few PAPA A players showed up and it was quite a bit more challenging to qualify. I ended up in 10th, one of the TOPL guys ended up in 8th and took "1st" in the B division, another Canadian Sean Oneal who is a very good player and a regualr at The Church of the SivlerBall tournaments took first in the "A" division beating out quite a few really good players. I know a couple of the other MAACA guys tried out but I'm not sure what place they ended up and the standings arn't avilable online yet.
The othe nice thing was to put some faces to the names of the guys here on MAACA, and thanks again to John for the help with my Fish Tales playfield.
Monkeybug
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