Fantastic! Thanks.

Bumping this thread. Just announced Alice Cooper will be playing right across the street from MGC the same weekend at the Miller high life theather. The show is sat April 4th!

Well that's going to make parking and hotels more annoying.

Looking forward to MGC 2020!

Yeah, within 45 minutes of hearing this we were talking with the venue and different people about potential cross over

It really shouldn't. Parking changes timing later in the day, so unless you're showing up around 5pm for MGC, it shouldn't be much of a change. Hotels we have booked more than 1000 rooms at our rates already, which are better than you can otherwise get, so unless we manage to fill all of those it won't affect hotels in any way. Beyond that, there are regularly concerts and events downtown, and there is enough hotel space to manage everyone.

Had a big week with what felt like a dam bursting in a good way where everything is moving so much faster and better now. Expecting significant updates in the next few weeks

For both you and trilogy, I would absolutely LOVE it if you would help if that hasn't been mentioned before. We've been looking for a few extra hands, and would love to have you guys on board!!

Sorry for writing three in a row, I'm all over the place right now! I know I'm late to this response, but...

Yup, correct on all accounts!

VIG was a Friday thing specifically and that name confused the heck out of people, and it was nearly impossible to explain to them what it was without spending a bunch of time. We renamed it "preview night" because on the news, for instance, it's a lot easier for me to say, "Our preview night tonight is sold out, but doors open at 10am tomorrow!" without having to explain what the heck a VIG is and how no, tomorrow we won't sell out.

A lot of people really enjoyed the VIG name and some of the goodies - which we also took away from the Friday night package to hold the price at the same level that it traditionally was - so we decided to roll it into a special, "do all the things" package. VIG gets you full weekend passes, a bunch of swag, and a ticket to the not-arcade after party next door. That party was made to target those people who had complained we close to early on Saturday night for people from out of town, and while they have a point we didn't want to be like, okay, let's make the arcade hall run to 11pm to satisfy those people. The other shows we know of that open their halls afterward do not have as popular of after parties for their game bringers, and we want to keep that.

So the off site one features music, various industry professionals doing stuff outside their regular zone (like the voice of NBA Jam, Tim Kitzrow, live calling people playing basketball, or Ted DiBiase giving you your drink ticket to "buy" you the first drink), but it's a completely different experience than the arcade after party. It costs us a bunch to put on, and we're very capacity limited there, so we can't let game bringers in without buying a ticket - but we absolutely do not and will not let VIG ticket holders into the arcade after party on Saturday. If you are someone that want's to "party hop", we can figure out a discount on the VIG ticket, which would be around $115 if it includes bringing a machine.

By the way, attendance caps are that on Friday night, we allow in about 10% of the attendance that we host on Saturday, although more halls are open on Saturday so it might feel like 20%. Still very low. Saturday night's after party does include the people who spend all year planning and setting up the museum, so including them tickets are limited to about half of what Friday night is, if that. And, as many can attest, if you stay for a few hours a lot of people start leaving by 10pm-11pm ish.

Hope that all helps. If you are someone thinking about going to Tom's, you should get tickets sooner than later as those do sell out. Last year they sold out in February which was really late. Every other year has been December. Tickets at https://www.midwestgamingclassic.com/buy-tickets/

Have we had any word yet on discounted show games through vendors? (Marco / Kingpin)

I am working with Kingpin again this year. We hope to win best vendor again!! We will be announcing specials a little later, you are welcome to contact me now if you like. As of right now we will be again doing Chicago Gaming, JJP, American Pinball (we should have game 3 in our booth) and im sure we will have some Spooky games, although no spooky games will be available for sale that I know of

Yes, I am sure we will have something available. Generally, the "new" games are not available for a discount as we don't have extras to sell. here is a general plan (but not for sure)

JJP

Wonka
Dialed in
Woz YBR

Spooky

Alice Cooper (if there are any left)

Chicago Gaming

Monster Bash

American Pinball

Houdini
Oktoberfest

Thanks guys. Bought a monster bash from you guys last year and we still love it! Maybe this year it’ll be a dialed in.

How are ticket sales progressing? Just bought our fri night tics.

You need extra people to help out Friday? Count me in. I just need time to bring 2 games. One for the free play hall and one for rob Anthony to fix. If he is going to be there this year. Send me a pm. Jeremy

Sorry, swamped with stuff. Absolutely, PM incoming. And Rob is going to be here!

And more news to come soon, my life is just crazy behind the scenes. Like, I can see all the work I need to accomplish, but then whenever I try doing it, something crazy happens and I end up having to do something else. Like a 40ish foot tall tree feel down in my yard earlier this week (didn't hit the house or people!) but that takes time.... YARG!

Shaping up to be one hell of a year!

This is a painful post for me to make, but I will not be attending this year. Too many obligations during the show timeframe for me to be able to attend.
I just e-mailed Gary to let him know.

I enjoy the hell out of MGC but sometimes things just don't work out.

-Hans

I'll be excited to see you again in 2021!

Hey everyone,

Super good news that I can't wait to share, so you're getting it here now. After much back and forth, it appears we have worked out a method for load-out with the Wisconsin Center that will result in significantly reduced pack out time. As a number of people are aware of, we had major weather impacts the past two years as snow moved in and made things difficult because of how limited the ramp space was. This resulted in us essentially having a total of six pick up spots between the two halls for load out, and has made me lose more hair than I care to admit.

Earlier today, a weather contingency plan that involves the ability for us to allow vehicles to pull into the Wisconsin Center for load out has been tentatively approved.

This has been a problem that has vexed me for a long time. One of the things I discovered from notes and details is that last year, we needed approximately 36 total hours of "loading time" to have the entire hall cleared out. This took... let's just say far longer than anyone wanted due to the limited amount of space available for loading.

An extremely conservative estimate (parking spots every 15 feet - normal parking spaces are 9 feet apart) puts our new number of spaces for the load out at 14 if the weather contingency plan would need to happen. At 14 spaces, assuming the same 36 hours of "loading time" is the same, the total load out time of the MGC would be 2.57 hours.

If we used a more realistic estimate of parking spaces ever 10 feet apart, this plan puts the number of spaces for the load out at 20. The same 36 hours of "loading time" would mean load out would only take 1.8 hours.

I feel compelled to note the above times include both the vendor hall and the game center. Arcade picking up moves a lot quicker than vendors though, so the line should move very fast for everyone on here.

Assume that we will need an extra 30 minutes to prep to start bringing cars in, but I believe that this will result in an extremely fast load out time for this coming year no matter what the weather. Three hours of load out time would be comparable to arcade load out times at the Sheraton. Two hours of load out time would be equal to the best years.

By the way, if the weather is fine, we can park on the West side of the dock and load out to vehicles that way, which allows over 30 spots at any given point in time to be loading. Our total "loading time" would probably go up slightly due to the slightly longer walk to load cars, but even if we assume a 25% penalty for slightly longer walk, the "not a snowpacolypse" plan would allow everyone to load and leave within 1.5 hours of the show ending, without any prep time to bring cars in.

I know people have been asking about how we intend to handle that this year. I wanted to tell you this here because quite frankly, I'm super excited about this as it gives us the options we didn't have in the past few years to handle this properly.

Tons of new stuff coming soon. I can't wait to tell you all what is up our sleeves this year. And then I can't wait for you all to GTFO on Sunday night in half the time or less

YAY!

Just curious how you factor in stupidity. I know last year, there was a vendor that had a bunch of totes. He unloaded his car three or four time, taking up almost an hour, to figure out how to get everything in his car. I literally loaded up my entire trailer of pins in less time than he loaded up ten totes

So, the short answer is by having a lot more spaces.

The longer answer (for anyone who cares!) is as some people know, I used to be a capacity expert for themed entertainment. The way to look at capacity is to break down things in averages as best as possible. I broke down numbers for pick up last year based on documents I had (vendor count, different game bringer count, etc) and then worked backwards from knowing how long the total move out took and estimating how long it would take for different groups to pack and leave.

This is where I got the break down that includes 36 hours of "loading time" (if we were loading everything out on a single dock only). Including stupidity, this is about the total time because ultimately, based on the spots we had and when they finally opened, this was how long it should take.

My estimated times for each group may not be perfect, but they are relatively correct. In that case, if we have 10 vendors in at a time and one takes four hours doing something stupid (or someone shows up in the wrong spot and refuses to move, maybe the same guy), then he or she is blocking one of those 10 spots, which *does* reduce the capacity some, however the model essentially takes that into account with the averages. I believe the average vendor load up time was calculated at 20 minutes last year when I did this. Many were under this time. A few, the one you are thinking of in particular, were far over. But, in the end, it evens out.

Additionally, the next positive thing is that people like that which take longer will take longer to get their "pass" to leave and come up the dock, meaning the faster, quicker people will be able to jump the line and be - well, faster and quicker first. As material leaves, we can break down the halls further allowing more space for loading, which means that if that guy shows up at, say, 6pm to spend his three hours loading or whatever nonsense, then we will have additional space for him to do so there.

Even better, this year I will not have my movers on hand trying to help as I remember him vividly since he had multiple movers I was paying help him monkey with his car for the majority of that time.

So yeah, with any luck, other than the striking of the staging, this plan is relatively stupidity proof, and we will have professionals to do that.

Got my Friday and Saturday tickets for the family! Looking forward to it again!

+1 family booked VIG. Can't wait!!

Texas Pinball Festival and Midwest Gaming Classic current show pricing available.

$500 of on games that are on the shows till close on sunday of the event

Monster Bash Classic Show Price 5500

Monster Bash Special Edition 6800

Dialed In Limited Edition 9000

Willy Wonka Standard Edition 7000

Willy Wonka Limited Edition 9000

Willy Wonka Collector Edition 12,000

Wizard of Oz Yellow Brick Road 11000

Will soon be adding American Pinballs games Houdini and Oktoberfest once price is confirmed

Games must be paid for in advance, with each purchase you will receive an entry into the show for the entire weekend.

As always, I will take trade-ins on any of these models. Please message me with any questions.

Once again, in collaboration with Kingpin games, we will be having booths at both shows and give the great customer service that we always do. As last years Best booth in show at Midwest Gaming Classic, and runner up at Pinball Expo, we always try to have a large amount of games in our booth.

I created the bringing / selling / trading thread for this years MGC. As a reminder, this does not register your game; please still do that through the MGC website.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/midwest-gaming-classic-mgc-2020-bringing-selling-trading-list

Thinking of bringing my whole family this year, but the only day that works for us is Sunday.

Is it worth it to go on Sunday?

Not usually. My experience with shows on Sunday is half empty floors and games headed out the door.

please dont generalize MGC with other shows.

The vast majority of stuff will be there until the show closes (assuming it is like the past 2 years)

100% worth going on Sunday. Pre-buy your tickets to save time. Go early to get in line before doors open.

have a blast!

I wasnt, i've been to and brought games to almost every one. Sundays are generally move 'em out and get back home day. Not talking smack about the show. Sunday at any show is the same way.

IMO the “early tear down“ on Sunday has drastically diminished, all but vanished, since the event moved to the Wisconsin Center. I’d say 90% of the show was still there all day until close on Sunday. Maybe in the last 30-40min vendors slowly start to pack away.

Agree with other posts... MGC is generally still going very strong on Sunday until close. 80-90% machines/vendors/displays still running.
(unlike Chicago Expo, who've changed their hours to officially end on Sat night)

Also, Sunday is generally more of the "family day" as they have specific family event type stuff going on. Dan can probably add more here about this, but Sunday is a great day to bring the whole family.

NIB show deals stay through EOD Sunday, and if you're selling a game you should be making "stays powered on" part of the terms of sale. Last time I sold a game the guy wanted to take it right away on Saturday.

I dug through my archived footage from MGC 2019 to put together this look at the games that so many generous people brought to share. It's a strange coincidence that Whysnow appears 4 times in this video

Just bought my VIG tickets!! Very excited to attend this will be my 2nd year. Last year unfortunately the snow kept me out of day 2 attendance since I drive up from Chicago.

To the pinball competitors - any word on tournaments being held this year?

To me the VIG tix are worth it just to get 30 min of relative alone time with the new Rick & Morty pinball machine

Tournaments very soon will be up. Waiting on the go ahead on one thing. The preview is we will have a changed format that will make the tournament more competitive and potentially handle 300+ people in the main tournament!

For the questions about the Sunday, I completely disagree with pinzrfun's statement that things aren't going on Sunday.

In a lot of shows, they are a full three or more days. The MGC is really two. Because of that, a lot more stays. Additionally, it's very difficult to pull early at the Wisconsin Center. I really believe we solved move out, so that shouldn't be an issue.

The only stuff though that left early was stuff that was individual collectors machines, and even that was low. The rooms are all guaranteed to run until close. The vendor hall is only open Saturday and Sunday, and they have an agreement to not tear down until close. The museum is open until close. All of the new opened machines are there until close.

Last year according to records, we had five people pull anything early. We have more than 1000 volunteers who bring stuff.

It's not like other shows in that way. And yeah, we do family day on Sunday. It's a bit shorter, but we have special events for families, and admission is cheaper.

While I'm here posting...

A few tickets somehow remain for Toms Open House on Friday! Snap those up!

Should have nailed down most show game specials soon.

It's looking like a good year. Seems there is a lot of interesting stuff going on behind the scenes...

Anyone recall the times the Midwest Pinball tournament qualifying runs on Saturday? I’m volunteering at the Hak4Kidz event on Saturday and don’t want to miss qualifying.

Qualifying will be Friday 6-Midnight & Saturday 10am-8pm for the Main Tournament

Couple problems with this - when a game changes ownership, it doesn't "belong" to the show any more, does it? If Joe Public buys a game, they aren't going to want to leave it there/powered on for everyone else to play - and if they're only there for one day, then they can't, period.

I live 7 hours away in SE Michigan. When we get kicked out of our room Sunday morning, we pack up the games and leave. Staying til EOD Sunday would mean getting home at 0200e Monday, depending on weather - i still work Mondays......

Before all the downvotes start flying in, can I reiterate again that this became my favorite show years ago, and I've brought games virtually since it began - just playing devils advocate here, trying to look at it from a buyers perspective too, not necessarily a seasoned pinhead buyer either....

I'm sure it's the terms of the deal. Buy a game at a discount, leave it on until EOD Sunday, then take it home. If you can't adhere to the terms, don't buy the game.

Seems simple to me.

Yup. If you can’t do those terms then you don’t get show deal pricing. I am sure kingpin and other vendors can sell you a NIB for pick up at the show and a parking lot deal, but expect to pay regular price

Sorry, but when you buy a show game, part of the terms are that the game stays on the floor till end of the show. Now when you buy from some of us, you kinda still have the option to take the game with you if you want to leave early. Simple, just give me the $500 that I discounted the game for it to be on the floor.

If Joe Public buys a game from Joe Game Bringer, they can remove it during the hours the loading dock is open. The hours are on the website in the "Bring a Game" section, and you might loose benefits if you pull it on Saturday.

Hello everyone! Just wanted to put a post in here about the Milwaukee Show and The Stern Show models that will be available. We'll be set up in the booth with Marco and Stern as the official Stern Distributor for MGC. There will be a limited number of games available through Hemispheres/Marco/Stern at the Stern Show pricing. These will be brand new games discounted at show pricing and are to remain in the booth until show close on Sunday at 5 pm. At that point if you purchased a game you're responsible for picking it up from the booth at that time. Of course we will have help to load you. All games are prepaid in advance. Booth location will be the same as last year. Only pre-sold games will be in the booth and there will be no games available for purchase at the show like there was last year. All show pricing games are on a first-come first-serve basis. Previous years the cutoff was March 20th but this year it will be as supplies last only.

Titles available will include:

Stranger Things pro and premium
Jurassic Park pro and premium
Black Knight Pro and premium
Munsters pro and premium
Iron Maiden pro and premium
Star Wars pro movie art
Star Wars premium comic art.
Star Trek pro
Iron Man vault

We will also have a limited supply of stern accessories and brand new in the box play field glass (glass is boxed for shipping or carry away) $25 a sheet. Will also have a limited amount of HD glass at regular price. Perfect opportunity to grab your glass and not pay shipping or risk it being broken. You can pre-order and prepay for your glass in advance we have a very limited supply that will be boxed up.

Call Kurt at 630-792-8910 for pricing or to place your orders.

All games must be paid in advance and picked up at 5 pm Sunday at MGC.

Thanks and we look forward to seeing everyone there! Enjoy the show!
4a2faaf56d1e818101600bb298b4b8893c59b38e0230b49facbf6a81c5cebaa0f061c91f2c3d66ec8e113502c7ea4e40e386ddaef9d2de4825e07244f2a99fa0

No Elvira from Stern, for show pricing?

Details on the main tournament at MGC:

https://www.midwestgamingclassic.com/midwest-pinball-championship-rules/

Hey everyone,

A few updates...

First, at the moment, collector games being brought appear to be pretty light. I highly encourage you to bring a machine if you haven't before - You get access to a bunch of great stuff, including the Game Center After Party on Saturday night where you get to hang out and play the games all night with just the people that brought them. We get food and (limited) drinks, and this year we're going to have some other events happening for people to enjoy. You also get an exclusive shirt that can only be gotten by bringing a machine, tickets for Saturday and Sunday, and the love and adoration of all of the attendees

Now, I do want to add to the above that we have been light on collector games at this point in the past too, and usually they still increase like crazy. I absolutely hope that happens again. The good news is that a few people have already stepped up and are potentially bringing a significant number of machines, but I'd rather have more games than less no matter what!

Secondly, the pinball announcements have been a bit light lately. That is, perhaps, also driving some of the above. I can't confirm anything, as there are a lot of moving pieces behind the scenes, but companies remain committed to making this the best experience possible as do I. The good news is that we have just started to have a bunch of things that are rolling out. First, our pinball tournament has been revamped and expanded. It remains free to enter with your ticket, and I believe has the capacity to be one of the largest three pinball tournaments in the country.

Expect more tournament announcements, some exciting homebrew announcements, and some other super fun stuff soon!

Just picked up my VIG and open house tickets, this'll be my first time there or at any big event

Great way to start ! Time of your life.

LTG : )