Quoted from fnosm:New to the WW but I have read posts about how difficult it is.
My question is when commenting on difficulty is this a reference to factory settings? Or is there a 'normal' setting that is different from how it arrives from the factory?
If you are not a tournament top level type player, it's pretty difficult to get the 3rd golden ticket, very hard to get a 4th. Not necessarily a bad thing as you can keep trying different strategies and figuring things out, exploring. Once you reach the point of giving up, the programmers have given you different settings options to make it interesting again. Random ticket "reward" modes is one of them to be able to reach/play modes that you never or rarely played. We have had ours for about 21 months and we are just now looking at possibly modifying a few things to keep it interesting without nerfing the rules. Definitely a great pin and so much to learn. Pay close attention to call outs and instructions on the small screen. Look up the rules for the different tickets.
Play often to play better. 
Evansville, IN
