Quoted from ROMM:

Ok so I'm completely new to this scene and traveled all the way from south Louisiana just to come to this show. First time in Chicago, too. Never been to any type of pinball show ever. Definitely disappointing. I just wanted to play a variety of machines so I can choose one to purchase as a second machine. There really was not that many machines. Quite a few machines that were not working good, or set up poorly. Majority had the volume turned all the way down and you could barely hear them. One of the Baywatch machines was cranked so loud, you couldn't hear any of the machines around. Alot of EM machines that were really not much fun (to me) to play. We noticed that a vast majority of the machines were owned by one particular individual, so we googled him and found he was the chairman of the Pinball Expo. So basically one guy carried the freeplay section of this whole expo.
There was quite a few people there, and it was impossible to play some games. Several machines had crowds around them the whole time we were there, like Wizard of Oz, and GnR. Never could get any playtime on some of the newer machines for the 7 hours we were there.
The vender side was cool, but no way we could get any playtime on any of the vender machines, just too many people.
I don't think I'll be doing this show again.