I've been helping out at Arcade Expo/Museum of Pinball since it was basically an empty building and man, it sure has grown by leaps and bounds.

While still not 100% bulletproof and tuned to CFH perfection, the pin "room", was the best it's ever been! At least 40 techs were in attendance kicking downed-game-clipboard-ass and hopefully (possibly?) having some fun as well.

The success of this year's show is proof that if you get enough passionate people that want pinball and arcade games to survive, you'll eventually get just that!

I'm sure it's not just me but, seeing/hearing all those games up and running at one time is still a special treat.

I'm really glad John is doubling down and pushing the facility into the future.

Also,
Having more shows throughout the year is a GOOD thing and this NEXT October show (20th-22nd) entitled "Pinball Madness", should be pretty awesome since it'll be Halloween themed.

Sure there are still so many games to rebuild and hopefully people can respect the time and $$$ needed to actually pull that off, but I think it'll be possible sooner than later if Chuck keeps up the stellar work.
This man has really gone above and beyond the average person's facility and it was a shame to not have him there all three days.

John, Kenny and Co. still managed to pull everything off at the end of the day, but Chuck was the real reason we had such a great team on hand.

Huge thanks to all the veteran techs and new techs that helped this year and special shout outs to the guys that pulled all nighters and made real progress on some of the more "temperamental" machines.

It was also nice to see Blownfuse's mug around people's neck during the show. (Thanks Practicalsteve) He will be sorely missed.

On the bright side, it was awesome seeing Azmodeus out and about playing pinball again!
(Wearing a Saxon t-shirt no less!)
Here's to your future-full recovery buddy.
All the best in 2017.

Thanks again to ALL the attendees who braved the various gimped freeways in order to play in the middle of nowhere and of course, all the folks that make Arcade Expo happen year after year!!!

Now,
Time to get some rest before Texas!
Fingers crossed we get a sneak peek of Elvira 3!

Lol, that would be a very generous assumption!

Pretty much every old SS game on the floor needs at bare minimum an EOS rebuild, coil sleeve, bushing, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's all those pesky worn links too!

I agree the ol' "clipboard on the service door" isn't cutting it since most people don't bother to go over and write what went wrong. Some did which was helpful when you told them it actually existed but, it's still just a temporary solution to managing all the downed games.

Drawers full of new parts that actually match what we're trying to fix, and of course lots of time to bulletproof said fixes properly is what we really need.

I'd say we're hovering around mile 2 of a full marathon in the games "completed" part.
Err,
Maybe make that 1-1/2.

Haha, yup!
Heaven forbid you don't see your 3 or 4 light on a row of 10. lol

Switching over to LED's on the 80's and up crowd would definitely make things better in the long run.
I also agree that blanketing cool white everything in the building would be a major travesty; especially on the EM's... (*cough* PHOF)
If one of the major LED suppliers want to step in to help, be my guest. Having a single LED supplier like Comet or Cointaker with a multitude of bulb choices would be sweet to see in Banning.
Heck, I'd even try to get Herg involved (LED OCD) for the DMD rows to keep both camps happy that crave the original lightshows.
Energy/heat savings aside, those poor boards aren't getting any younger.

Added over 7 years ago: I forgot to add Nifty LED to the list too. Sorry!