Checking in from FV/Huntington Beach area, just found this thread. My son and I can be found at Mission Control on the weekends, Nickel Nickel (I think it's in Garden Grove), and Glowzone HB (machines in bad shape at the moment). Looking forward to following along and learning more about pinball in OC.

Just looked up Retrovolt online, looks like a great place . Don't get too excited about Nickel Nickel. They have 4-5 machines, as of a couple of months ago, but it's a small noisy arcade, no ambience whatsoever, nowhere to sit, no food, no alcohol, and it's noisy to the point where it's difficult to hear the sound of the pins. The positives are the cost, $2 entry/.20 cents per play, and the machines are in good working order. Last I went they had a StarWars (2017), Ghostbusters, Aerosmith, and Deadpool. If you do go, there's a Round Table Pizza next door, which may be convenient if you have kids or are just stopping by on a road trip, etc.

Pinball Madness tomorrow in Banning. I'm sure you guys know, but just in case...
http://pinballmadness.com/

Catching up and enjoying the discussion here. My son and I went, we started going last year and went to the 3 events. I noticed the price went up, but since I consider it quality family time for us I don't worry about it too much. I agree with reality_studio in that the wait times being lower and less heat turned out to be a positive. I appreciated and noticed the extra security, can't be too careful nowadays... We do 90% pinball, but I still like a few of the video games that I can't play nearby. No Atari Football this time, and lunar lander still broken Overall had a really fun time. The drive is the only negative for me, always seems like some kind of traffic incident at the time makes things painful. I'm personally grateful that he opens the collection up, someday it may not be available and we'll all be talking about how great it was back in the day. Better to not take it for granted. I'm sure we'll both go to Indisc and Arcade Expo.
The one suggestion I have is to do early bird pricing. The people who know about it and are really into it will know the dates and buy early. I bought my ticket early at full price, only to see a $5 off coupon (per ticket) online that I had no idea how to claim after the fact. I'd rather just have straight forward early bird pricing, and then escalate as you get closer, rather than the 'wait and see' approach of online coupon codes.