Appalachian Pinball Museum

Just visited this gem in the mountains of North Carolina. The staff was great and I really enjoyed talking pinball with all the guys there. There is also about 15 classic arcade games on site. If you are ever near here or in Greenville SC make the drive over for a great time ina beautiful town. Thanks for the hospitality guys!

A second area of pinball machines is now open. The machines are located in a seating area next to the ramp that leads to the pay counter. These machines are included in the admission price and set on free play. The area includes a baseball game machine named World Series which was made in 1962. The Transformers machine works very well.

The crew is looking to expand the second area of machines. A few machines are being repaired to be put in use. Some other machines may come from the Asheville location to be used here, too. The crew hopes to finish the expansion soon.

Congratulations to APM for their second anniversary. Besides the pinball machines, APM has a multcade machine which has 125 games. Several of the games are virtual pinball games. You can even nudge the machine to move the ball. The Wizard of Oz apparently needs to be repaired more often than most machines, so APM charges 50 cents per game to help cover the repair costs.

I spent most of a day here in June 2023 — but I could probably spend a week a not get bored! I was glad to see plenty of folks playing pinball here. It’s a good location in a nice little town (Hendersonville). It’s only about an hour to their other location in Asheville, which is quite a bit smaller but still has a bunch of machines (all different from what I could tell).

As for machine maintenance, it’s not too bad, and to be fair, they do have a lot of machines to keep up with. Some pins like Addams Family badly needed new flipper rubbers (completely worn down on the tips when I was there), and a couple games had enough lights out to be difficult to see…. Sadly Indiana Jones was also out of commission when I was there, so you might want to call if there’s a particular game you really want to play (they said their tech was coming soon). Most of the other games I played worked well and issues were minor. I only played a few of the early 80’s and older games, and they had a lot more issues than the newer games and I wouldn’t really consider them playable at the time I was there (Xenon, Embryon, and Space Shuttle)… you can get an idea of the gameplay and playfield but various issues kept me from wanting to play more than one game. I didn’t play anything 70’s or earlier so I can’t comment on those.

That being said, it’s definitely worth the trip, especially if you can stay a couple days and visit the other locations and arcades in Asheville. There’s a breakfast/brunch place in the same building downtown, and walking distance to plenty of restaurants and ice cream shops, as well as various shopping. My whole family had a great time!