All,

I will be making my first trip to PAPA in April. I've never been before and was hoping to get some insight from my fellow Pinsiders on what to expect, what to look for, what to do, and what not to do. Along with any other advice and suggestions you may have.

A quick background on myself, I'm new to tournament pinball. I've only played in 2 tournaments and I don't know how serious either one of those tournaments were. I played in the Allentown Pinfest 2016 tournament as my first tournament and then in September I played in the York PA show tournament (finished 3rd out of 30-40 players for what it's worth). Thanks in advance for any and all advice!

I believe the Allentown and the York show were IFPA tournaments. So does this mean I have to play in C? Not that it matters, just asking for clarification. My goal the first year is to definitely have fun first and foremost!

Thanks Levi! Division doesn't matter to me. I'm going this first time for the experience and to play pinball to the best of my ability. Everything else will fall into place if it's meant to be!

Topic fixed! Haha!

Couple of quick questions for the masses.

1. Using Division D as an example, pricing is $1 per attempt. To make sure I'm following this correctly, if I play 5 different games, it's going to cost me $5

2. Using Division D again as an example, the current game list for Division D includes Robocop. Will PAPA have 2 Robocops on location, one for practicing on, and then one in the tournament group? If the answer is no, at any time will we be able to practice on Robocop without having to pay for a ticket/entry?

Thanks for the replies!

Per IFPA site I'm ranked 5536th. Looks like C it is!

Last year was free to enter, this year is pay to enter. Below are the major changes this year:

A door fee of $20 will be required to access PAPA World Headquarters each day. Also, all games inside will now be placed on free-play. Tokens will no longer be used at future PAPA or Replay Foundation Events.

In response to consistent feedback received over the previous several years, the qualifying format of the PAPA World Championships will transition to a Modified Best Game format. This overhaul of the qualifying system, when combined with the transition to a door fee rather than tokens, have caused us to lower the guaranteed prize pool until we can assess the impact of these and other changes.

Divisions A, B, and C will now feature 12 machines that may or may not be drawn from all eras of pinball. Classics divisions will now feature 16 machines each day, rather than 12. All other divisions will feature 8 machines.

Due to reduced demand, no shuttle will be provided for PAPA 20. We have, however, made secured a discount code with Uber for this event. More details will be announced soon.

First time for me but I thought others mentioned that they have food trucks come each day. Is that accurate? If yes, any good ones?