I have owned one for about 4 years and it has never been set up or turned on. I bought it to fix up and then a guy that was buying a couple other machines from me saw it and wanted it. I offered it to him for $50 more than I paid for it (to cover my fuel for picking it up) and he asked me to hold it for a few months for him. I never have a problem doing that for someone because I have plenty of other stuff to work on.
Long story short - about a year later he came to pick it up and spotted an Earth-Wind & Fire I had sitting in the garage and took that instead. Then somehow the Circus got buried and I never dug it out since.
Seeing this post reminded me about to so maybe this Winter I'll dig it out and do something with it. That and an Amazing Spiderman I bought around the same time are the two project machines I have had sitting around the longest without doing anything with them. Maybe I'll just set them up side by side and deal with the typical System 80 issues on both at once. At the same time I should get my Black Hole & Haunted House up and running and put a row of System 80's in the gameroom for a change. Guess time will tell.
Thanks to original poster on this machine - it kind of got me interested in digging it out to do something with it. Maybe it will end up at Allentown this Spring for sale. I don't have room for all the machines I have in the gameroom so I don't want to get too heavy on System 80 stuff. Black Hole & Haunted House are going to stay for a while but the other System 80's need to get fixed up and sold one of these days.
Anyway - one more Circus accounted for. Since it was a fairly low production game (under 2000 if I remember correctly) you don't see it too often.