I took my two kids and my sisters kid. All had fun. The show was extremely well organized and the medic staff was top notch in keeping things running.

I attended a few talks which were nice. Next time I hope to attend more homebrew seminars.

Here’s a walkthrough video for this year. Enjoy!

Wait, isn't this the same as the one a few posts back you posted?

Yes. I posted it very early in the morning so I decided to post it again so that everybody will have a chance to see it

Thank you to all who attended the Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show 2024. Thank you to the board members and all the volunteers.

I hope everyone had a great time. Some absolutely great images and video captured by those walking the show floor. Unfortunately, I was too busy to partake in this but it's great that others share these. This year was a much longer and more taxing year than previously in some ways, but not so much in others.

Thursday

Thursday starts mid morning and involves "supervising" the loading of the games from the staging (storage) area. A friend and I provide enough games to fill a 26' truck. This year, as it was last year, my friend provided more than me. Most of these games arrived back from the show last year, sat for a whole year and went to the show (still wrapped) this year. This adds a little bit of pressure to get the games assessed, cleaned and waxed before the show opens on Friday.

This year, it was decided that we would put NVRAM in games that had "FACTORY SETTINGS RESTORED" from last year. In these cases, each day the game must be set to free play. If servicing is required then this must be reset each time. I made five NVRAMs for this purpose. Three boards required removing the SRAM. One of them didn't work (no switches) after I removed the coin battery holder. There was previous alkaline damage on this board. All three boards were clean pulls. Two of them worked. The fourth NVRAM went into another board that was already previously socketed. The last NVRAM went to another friend who removed the SRAM on his Road Show. A few pads and through holes were pulled on this board so it didn't work at the end of the day.

One issue of note is that the Bram Stoker's Dracula had "Magnet Load Error". It's almost always switch 82. The long opto. I called it as electrolytic capacitor leak and sure enough, both of the electrolytic capacitors on the 24-opto board had leaked. Of course, I had just built two of these for someone but didn't bother to bring them. Why would I need one of these? The two capacitors were removed, but no 100uF@35V electrolytics available. I didn't bring any. So I robbed two 470uF@35V capacitors from some other boards I had brought and they worked perfectly fine on the board. BSD lives and works. Operator mentality at its finest.

Friday

The show hours 12:00pm to 11:30pm. A shorter day. Still long since we start early in the morning to make sure things are good. This year, the cleaning tasks were all completed prior to Friday so it wasn't too bad. I spent the morning getting the Road Show board working. I fixed it up and got it working. I brought a spare CPU board and put it in the machine with the failed board to keep it running throughout the show. In hindsight, I probably should have brought more NVRAMs. The great thing for me is that I tested my "smart" security PIC in the Road Show and it doesn't work in game mode. It works in switch edge test but not with a whole bunch of switches. I probably need to change the code to respond in a slightly different way. I'll need to find an available and set up WPC-S machine to fix this.

Having got all that completed, I had to get over my nerves for the upcoming talks. Two of them. Back to back (30 minute break between them). I have done public speaking before but I still get the Willies when presenting. That's the autonomic response kicking in. I hope all those who attended or viewed the stream found something useful.

Saturday

Show hours are 10:00am to 11:30pm. Just a long day. I spend most of my time just hanging around the central desk helping out wherever I can. I like to let the "junior medics" or those with less experience to tackle the issues. I've seen a lot of them before and I fix the issues then they don't learn. I do like to take care of my own machines. Fortunately, this year, there was very little wrong with them for the duration of the show. Most of them have been rebuilt (mostly restored with the exception of the cabinet). Most of them. A few are polished container games that have held up. I went to watch Brian Eddy's talk and managed to snag two signatures from him on my Indiana Jones and Attack from Mars translites. I almost fell asleep during Brian's talk. Not from boredom. Just from slowing down and tiredness catching up.

Sunday

Show hours are 9:00am to 3:00pm. The shorter day is required because load out must complete by 12:00am. The venue has this requirement. The machines were on one of the first trucks to go so they needed to be packed and wrapped as a priority. The venue cuts the power at 3:00pm otherwise the general public simply won't leave. I try hard to make sure that any staged balls (Twilight Zone and Star Trek TNG) are removed before they cut power. I don't like to interrupt the public while they are playing so I wait until they are done. I often don't time this right so I don't always get the ending count of games played. Incomplete statistics. I prioritize the staged ball games. It's impossible to get people off the Safe Cracker. I like to get the tokens out of the token tubes to see how many tokens were dispensed. I use simple subtraction. I put 70 tokens in and I ended up with about 10-15 tokens remaining. I got two tokens back (people put them back in for Assault on the Vault).

Since the truck is one of the first loads, I left the venue early to get the staging area ready (with my friend). The truck arrived and unloaded. It was about 8:00pm by the time we were done. I then had to drive home (20 minutes) before declaring it all over. Now I have to get to processing the statistics.

Statistics

The best I could get given the circumstances. There are some Sunday numbers missing. I don't reset game counts since I use the game counts to track the number of games since rebuild. Not always true until I can get all the machines converted to NVRAM.


TZ__ 3969 4132 4323 4411 Friday=163,Saturday=191,Sunday=088,3-day=442
LotR 1192 1362 1603 1696 Friday=170,Saturday=241,Sunday=093,3-day=504
TAF_ 1856 2045 2252 2367 Friday=189,Saturday=207,Sunday=115,3-day=511
SC__ 0801 0977 1198 1265 Friday,176,Saturday=176,Sunday=067,3-day=419
BK2K 0969 1147 1411 ---- Friday=178,Saturday=264,Sunday=???,2-day=442,3-day projection ~525
DH__ 0260 0377 0541 0623 Friday=117,Saturday=164,Sunday=082,3-day=363
BSD_ 0000 0189 0490 ---- Friday=189,Saturday=301,Sunday=???,2-day=490,3-day projection ~550
AFM_ 0948 1068 1233 1302 Friday=120,Saturday=165,Sunday=069,3-day=354
IJ__ 0000 0134 0322 ---- Friday=134,Saturday=188,Sunday=???,2-day=322,3-day projection ~400


All the games except DH and AFM got lots of love. Maybe people had long games on AFM. It was placed with the Brian Eddy games. DH often gets the least love. BSD always has high game counts since they are probably short games. It's a tough game for the casual player. The enthusiast will always love to hear "30 million".

This is probably the only year that AFM will go to the show. It was a request for Brian Eddy games.

As mentioned above, 65 tokens dispensed and 2 tokens returned.

If you attended this year then please come again next year. If you haven't attended then I would encourage you to attend. Play the Safe Cracker. Try to win a token!

See you all next year! Or perhaps sooner at a repair party next year.

I think this is the first year my games didn't have any problems the whole show. I had to do some monitor adjustments on Asteroids during set up and replace a stripped leg bracket on Ripley's Believe it or Not during set up, but both were fairly easy to fix.

Get some 5/8" bolts for that BSD! I'm so worn out today, my Fitbit tells me I got 90,000 steps in over the weekend, but at least my back feels fine.

hard to believe it's already over! well, not quite over since now i have 25 games at my house, all of which either need to get moved into place or transported back to storage. but the most fun part is complete, working with a huge group of amazing enthusiasts, many of whom have become once-a-year acquaintances and others year-round good friends, and watching the public enjoy my games that i put so much time and effort to repair and fine-tune. AstroCat Amusements had 25 machines there this year, evenly split between pins and arcade games with a couple of oddballs in Ice Cold Beer and Slap Shot. hopefully i'll get shirts and hoodies done by next show so we can represent in style.

fortunately it's only three pins that need to be set up today (Stern JP, Counterforce, and Labyrinth,) and i've got tomorrow to move stuff too in between runs to a couple of my locations to service the games there. i don't officially work again until Wednesday.

notes and tidbits from the 13th show i've been involved with, of which there have now been 14 since 2008 (with two years off for the pandemic):

- Labyrinth got constant use from before doors opened until the end of day every day and ran pretty close to flawless. had a couple of resets during plays reported to me, but that was about it. the line was never-ending, usually a half-dozen folks waiting but sometimes double that. dozens and dozens of rave reviews, and David from BoF made sure i knew he appreciated our efforts to have the game there for our attendees to play. people loved the topper, so i decided i'll finally drop the coin and get one for BK:SOR while i can. final audit from Labyrinth was 331 between Thursday night and the end of the show, but i don't know how it counts multi-player games since most were 2 or more, and many were groups of 3-4 who waited together in line. to contrast, when my Ghostbusters was brand new in 2016 and so fresh that almost no-one had seen one yet, it got around 700 plays for the weekend. but there was more than one there at the time and rarely did i see large groups waiting, much less a half-hour to hour-long line form to check it out.

- all my machines did well this year, especially the video games. i did tear down and clean the player two joystick in Mario Bros as well as the one for DK since i received complaints they were both sticky. in addition to being sticky, DK had lost all the 4-way restrictor plate screws (which were mysteriously not in the bottom of the cab so i'm pretty sure had been robbed to be resold by the Arcade Gnomes for a hefty profit,) and i spent about a half-hour with JP outside the show at his van digging through his tackle box of random fasteners, finally coming up with four that fit the tiny, fine threads on the base plate. i doubt he'll see it here, but thanks so much again JP! he's one of Seattle's few old-school remaining operators and i hope he gets re-involved more with the show next year.

- very minor issues on my pins. Police Force blew a flipper coil fuse on day three, but the new X-Pin aux driver board with the fancy LEDs behind the fuses clearly displayed the problem. the flippers are due for a rebuild and both coils are a little swollen so who know why it went, but a new fuse carried it through until the end. also received new red and blue displays and a power supply board, all courtesy of Brett at X-Pin. in return, i picked up LED displays and a power supply board from him for Counterforce which i'll be installing later this week.

- the Scorpion which i pulled out of it's decade-long slumber a month ago and got going in time for the show was as much of a "problem child" as i had all weekend. one wire broke off a flipper coil making it weak, and another one started binding and needed adjustment on the shaft height. i did have several folks tell me how much they enjoyed it, including Erika of Erika's Pinball Journey fame https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgE9Ystg-wyCpiD9V02x41g who was working with Marco. she said she had a great time at our event, and would be posting a walk-through of the show soon!

- i received two offers of trades for Labyrinth [Elton John and Aliens,] an offer to buy Cirqus Voltaire via FB Messenger [sorry, NFS,] and the head of parts for Stern stopped by while we were wrapping up to hand me his card and ask if i'm ever interested in selling Slap Shot to please let him know. i also bought more stuff than in past years, including the aforementioned new displays/boards for Counterforce, a NOS playfield for NBA:FB for $250, and three sheets of standard glass for $15/each at the end of the show, priced low so the vendor wouldn't have to haul them home.

- i made a deal to sell Street Fighter 2 to 100 Yen Life. i'll be sad to see it go but i know it's going to a good home, and they're excited to start expanding their impressive collection to include some video-game and Japanese culture-related pinball machines.

- i did fewer repairs on other folks' games this year than in the past, but there also was a larger crew of Medics than i remember, and an impressive cadre of Jr's to take care of smaller stuff. i walked a few of the Jr's through some of my fixes, including the Police Force flipper issue and Lefty's Ice Cold Beer, which was saved by Jeff Stern of Stern Amusements / Classic Amusements having a random bell-ringer plunger for an early Bally machine in his stock.

ok, i need to grab another cup off coffee, get off the socials, and go move some games. but i'll do it while reminiscing about what a great time i had and scheming ahead for what i'll contribute next year.

Great work by everybody that helped put the show on. This is the second year I’ve made it and I immediately noticed some good modifications from last year… the floor layout was great, I liked the emphasis put on homebrew games and how the EMs got their own area. Spreading the pins out a bit seemed to keep the volume more reasonable? And maybe I'm misremembering but I think the lighting was dimmer than last year... that may be wrong, but either way just nice to not have super bright OH lighting blasting the glass, the thought put into that is appreciated. Really impressive all around and hopefully I’m able to spend a full weekend next year and bring a game or two up. Here’s a quick photo dump of some of the games that stood out to me, for anyone that wasn’t able to attend.

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You and I must've been standing next to each other in the EM section!

Likely I was just there for one day, but I realized when I left that I didn't play a single DMD or LCD pin other than the homebrews. Having so many great-playing woodrails + EMs was a treat, big thanks to the techs keeping those games happy all weekend.

Love the fact that the EMs and woodrails have it's own section. I'm very impressed with this year's map layout. So much different compared to the all the years that the show has been to the convention center.

you can thank James Edes for a lot of those! we used to have a larger selection of EMs but many of those were housed at the Machine Shop on Whidbey Island which has sadly been closed and most of those sold or passed off to other collections.

The floor layout changes were all Carrie, who has been learning under Lou for the past few years and took over the role this year. It had better flow and I think worked better walking right into open rows of pins, rather than the prize desk and a row of vendors and having to snake your way around the ends to enter. And opening more of the wall and leaving a gap in the center made the other side where the tournaments, more vendors and games are way more visible. And having the prize desk up front in the lobby made it easier to talk at and the announcements were clearer. We had more games than ever, great attendance, a new layout and almost zero drama, this was probably my favorite show yet and I've been helping put it on since the beginning.

Someone mentioned this weekend, maybe Bill, that Tim Leonard kept some of the games from the Machine Shop and might be back contributing next year. It's been great that as we lost a couple of the people that bring EMs, that some other EM collectors connected with the show and brought their collections. I also like that Matt's 70s arcade games were put at the end of the EM rows, their cabinet colors and styles fit in well with the EMs and that era.

This game was so much fun. My kids and I couldn’t stop talking about it. I hope the builder starts a thread or youtube channel.

I wish I had taken a video of gameplay.

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I really liked Genco's Springtime machine. I played that one a bunch. Just one more game factor there for sure.

Flesh + Blood was built by Tanner Petch, he's got a build thread on here. He's made a few unconventional homebrews, all very cool.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-land-of-flesh-and-blood-a-very-small-horror-game

Great job to everyone that made the show possible, the layout was excellent! My Jaws premium ended up with 459 plays on it and seemed to always have a line going.

I also really liked Bad Cats. I'm a fan of System 11 and finally got to play this one. I wouldn't mind one in my collection eventually!

Baaaaaaaaaaaad Caaaaaaaaaats! Doesn't Add-A-Ball have one? I know I've played it on location somewhere in Seattle.

i had two of my three System 11's there: Space Station, and Police Force was over in the X-Pin booth getting a few upgrades. back in 2009 or so, some of the collectors at the show put together the entire run of System 11 games, from High Speed through Bugs Bunny. at the time i didn't understand how cool that was but now i'd be all over it if we ever do it again.

That was Rod. He spent months trying to track down the last ones, I think Millionaire was the hardest one to find.

Four women won Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show tournaments this year, which was fantastic. Jackie Olson won the Classics, Anna Wolk won the Women's, Jane Verwys won the Open B Division, and Leslie Ruckman won the biggie, the Open Championship. This is a first time a woman has won the Open since the show started. Huge thanks to Babes in Pinland, Belles and local arcades for hosting women's tournaments and helping make the pinball community more accessible, diverse and fun! We have some of the top women players in the US in the Northwest and players from around states fly to Seattle to compete in these tournaments. We will post a full breakdown of the tournaments soon.

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I don't know. I don't get out much from the north end. I'll have to make a point of visiting some locations.

Space Station! I had a great time on that one also! Another I had never played in the wild. Has to be the first game where the color changes when you hit multiball!

I believe I met him recently. Picked up a few games from him.

I've only ever seen/played a Millionaire in the wild once.

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Once.

Within about 8 blocks in the Ballard/Fremont area, or Freelard as some people call it, is Add-A-Ball, the 4Bs and the Ice Box. All have a ton of games and a good mix of old and new. The 4Bs is owned by Alex from the Ice Box and generally has all the latest pins (Elton John, Galactic Tank Force, John Wick). Totally worth a day/evening trip. The 4Bs has pretty decent food too.

when i was there a month or so ago, Germaine had a bunch of awesome early SS games split between 4Bs and Icebox, though i imagine a few migrated to the show and may not have made it back. Lights, Camera, Action! for a quarter got as much of my money as Elton John at $1 and i think i had more fun.

My friend and I picked up the Hot Shot Basketball case machine that nobody wanted. It was destined to become firewood.

Got it set up for assessment.

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• No boards.
• No display.
• No transformer.

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No boards? No problem.

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No display? No problem.

The game works but the transformer will need to be sorted out as well as a few mechanical things. Hopefully, this will be in the kids section next year. Shame we didn't get it going for the Brian Eddy machine bank.

Another one saved from the dump!

glad to see it going! if anyone had spare WPC parts boards laying around, it would be you.

Again, I'm very impressed. Thank you guys for all of this. Can't wait for next year.

i'm already queuing projects and Cosmic Gunfight is #2, right after a mod to Theatre of Magic.

What modifications are you gonna put onto your Theatre of Magic?

My friends Jess and Ken played the fuck out of your Theater of Magic and decided this weekend they need to buy one.

It was quite an event!

Even though it was a good deal of work, I thoroughly enjoyed working on other peoples' games (instead of mine!), hope to be back again next year.

Or maybe I shouldn't - I almost bought Elton John.

Anyhow, great to meet some new pin-heads and push my learning of these fantastic time wasting pinball games!

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i need to do the relay mod to lock out the trunk "hit" sensor switch when it's in motion. i didn't bring it to the show this year because last year it wrapped around beyond the limits the opto switches should have set and destroyed the wiring harness inside. it's a known software bug that was fixed in 2.0 code, but that can't be used on a routed/non-freeplay machine which mine is. i did replace the harness, so with the mod it should be good to go!

if they played one this year, it wasn't mine that they played! (see above)

Didn't make the show for the first time since 2016 but sounds like I missed an awesome time.

Definitely wish I had been able to check out some of the vendor spaces, sounds like some great deals on parts!

I think my games held up well in the tournament area, minus the roulette motor on Fan-Tas-Tic overheating. 200+ games were played on everything in the open tournament and plenty of play on the classics as well.

The Theatre of Magic that was at the show this year was donated by a local collector who lives close to me. He brought the game over to my garage (workshop - if you can call it that) early 2022. It sat there as i got distracted and pushed/pulled in all different directions. It had reset issues and some (presumably) operator had hacked up (put solder in) each and every connector in the backbox. Yuck. I re-pinned all of them. A heck of a lot of labor. I also replaced the proximity sensor boards for the outlanes. The inductor cable was soldered to the board. I finally got all that work completed but it sat for quite some time as I discovered a slight alignment issue with the trunk. Some (presumably) operator had used a metric set screw on the trunk interrupter and fashioned their own interrupter. I needed to purchase a metric Allen key set and it took me forever to remember to do that. About two weeks before the show I got it all fixed. I shimmed it. He volunteered the game so that was a hard deadline I had to meet (a forcing function). I play tested it enough to get 1.4B on it so I declared it good. He picked up and it went to the show.

This is the Leon fix. Ingo has boards that implement this fix. I wasn't aware that 2.0 is free only. That kind of sucks but I guess that's a more disclaimer since the fix hasn't been tested in an operated environment. If you're having trouble with the trunk opto board, I have a 5mm slotted opto board available. The OEM board is 3mm and the interrupter has a tight fit through the opto slot.

The show this year was fantastic! Highlights for me include:

Seeing the prototype Attack from Mars parts at the excellent Brian Eddy seminar. I had no idea the hovering saucer made it past the concept stage, so that was incredible to see. I also caught the second of the two NOS Martians he threw into the audience, and got a Venom flyer signed. I uploaded the quick display stand I designed for the Martian to Thingiverse in case anyone else would like to use one as a desk ornament or whatnot: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6658100

I didn't make it to the Dwight Sullivan seminar, but I did get to meet him and get a photo with him.

I got to try Jaws, Labyrinth, Scooby Doo, and several other games I haven't had a chance to try yet.

I finally won a token from Safe Cracker and was delighted to see the tokens were even customized for the show. What a cool touch!

#1 high score (not Grand Champion, sadly) on one of the John Wick Premiums. John Wick was a lot more fun than I expected.

Grand Champion on Junkyard.

Getting my Q*Bert Replicade signed by Warren Davis and @daudioguy, plus getting to see more flawlessly-executed close-up magic from Warren, who, as he told me, is a member of the Academy of Magical Arts/Magic Castle. That, plus 15 years of practice, would certainly explain why his technique is so good. The Us Vs. Them seminar was also great, as the Q*Bert seminar was last year.

I finally got to play Namco's Quick & Crash, and, after some practice, got highest score/rank 1/100 at the end of the day on both Friday and Sunday. Someone from 100 Yen Life, who brought the game, gave me a neat little ICEE pin as a prize. The 100 Yen Life section has definitely been one of my favorite parts of the show for the last couple years and it was fun to talk with Charlie from the company. The eccentric Japanese game (one of my favorite kinds of game!) "Cooking Master 2" was also cool to try.

The gentlemen at Planetary Pinball gave me a nice package deal on some of the Bally/Williams rotocasting molds they were selling. The only two I missed that I would have liked to have were Thing from the Addams Family and the lamp from Tales of the Arabian Nights, but adding/substituting those probably would have exceeded my budget anyway. The phone from Whodunnit and Bride of Frankenstein from Monster Bash were also very tempting. I might have gone a bit overboard since they told me I now have more of the rotomolds than anyone except for Rick from Planetary. Thanks, guys! Something cool I noticed later: You can still see the remnants of colored PVC from production dripping down some of the molds. I'm probably going to make a single platinum silicone casting in each one to display next to the molds, and 3D-printed stands for the molds that don't stand up well on their own. If anyone ever figured out what that mysterious spaceship-looking mold was for, please let me know! My best guess was that it was half of a plane or spaceship. I just scanned through most of the Bally/Williams titles to try to identify it, but I still haven't found it. I also picked up a troll head to display with the martian.

Thanks to the organizers and staff for putting on such a great event and to everyone who loaned out their games. I particularly enjoyed the games brought by Victor Tan / @dumbass, James Edes, 100 Yen Life, Paul Swan, and Matt Griffin (I absolutely love those B/W Bronze Age video games).

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the only one i've been able to find currently available is the one from Pindorabox, and Marco (their only US distributor) doesn't seem to carry that version of the opto board. i could try to order one from overseas but since the relay was only a few $ tacked onto another order, i figured i'd try to make it work via Leon's instructions, hopefully learn a few things and save some money. i'm surprised someone hasn't made an easy add-on version with a custom small PCB and some wiring.

I can't and won't comment on the PindoraBox board.

The PindoraBox and the Ingo's board implement Leon's instructions on a PCB rather than through wiring. Ingo does (or it is did) make an add-on board for this but since the Pandemic and Ingo's storage fire, he appears to be out of the game. Add to that v2.0 of the software and the demand has dropped tremendously.

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If you have trouble getting your solution to work, or you want a board solution then just contact me and let me know. I haven't planned to make any such thing since the v2.0 software has pretty much obsolesced the need for the product.

Thank you to everyone for putting this on. This was my first year loaning a pin (my TSPP was right in front of the door, I didn't see it idle the entire time) and I had a great time with all the talks and home-brew machines. Thanks especially to DumbAss who pulled double duty walking us through intro repair as well as advanced digital logic.

Let's make it bigger next year.

<3

i'd like for my back to stop hurting before i even consider the show getting any larger than it has already

Thanks for bringing the game. I had the other TSPP. My son played yours and reported that it played "like new". He took the opportunity to set the GC for you

For me, every year adds a couple extra days to recoup, haha.

I was only able to go on friday. It seemed well attended, how were the other days?

I would have loved to, but there was always a line.

We don't have the final numbers, but they look great, it seemed very well attended. The question with a big non-profit show is always did we sell enough tickets to be able to do it again next year. And I think that's a yes from the initial data.

Because there were 20 John Wicks, games like Safecracker and Labyrinth had longer lines than the new Sterns this year. It was relatively easy to hop on a John Wick quickly.

The machine at the show this year was first volunteered to the show in 2016. She has been to every show since 2016 (obviously excluding years the show did not operate). In 2017, she was joined by her sister for the 10 year anniversary. For that year, special 10 year tokens (in brass and nickel plated) were made. Both sisters exclusively dispensed 10 year tokens. The lines on the machines were so long that year the machine placement on the show floor became a strategic factor.

In subsequent years, one sister has not been to the show since. The one doing show duty always has someone playing it during show hours. There is often a line. Sometimes one deep, sometimes more deep. I guess word got out about the show tokens. In the years since the 10 year, the machine dispenses show tokens (Safe Cracker obverse and NWPAS reverse) along with the occasional random 10 year token. Either brass or nickel plated for both types. At some stage in the future, I will run out of 10 year tokens. The percentage is less and less each year.

It's rare to see the machine without someone playing it. It's still rarer to get a token from it being around 15% of games played. There's nothing like the feeling of having that token roll down the glass to your waiting hands though. Makes waiting in line worth it.