One thing I'd like to see is a much more artistic show shirt design, rather than the crappy block logo with just the year changed. Shirts are a cool souvenir for the show and some shows do a great job of making something cool and unique each year. It'd be nice if Expo did that too.

Interesting. They aren't even trying to pretend like there's any show on Sunday this time. Wonder if the main tourney finals will still be Sunday.

Depends which countries black market you go to. Going to be rough getting them in to the country if you buy a kid outside the us though.

Just got an advert email from Expo about tournaments. OMG SO MANY TOURNAMENTS, there's like, the main one there always is, some side game tournament on Houdini and then 5 non-pinball related tournaments.

Um... Yay?

Did he say that was a local show? Or is this the weirdest stretch of reality I’ve seen all day?

Many of us travel great distance to attend quality shows with great reputations, like Allentown or TPF. The recent reputation of expo is of a show in decline, and now it’s got a major shake up surrounded by lots of dumb drama.

On the one hand; Yeah, power to the people and shit.

On the other hand; If the attendees pull together to make the show decent and the organizers could not, you're earning them money for failing to properly run a show.

Heh.

Did you see the tournament list? Trent's normal tournament, a side game on Houdini and 5 not pinball tournaments. Not solely anymore.

Antar.

Certainly seem to have quite a grudge against Rob Anthony. Damn.

Someone back a ways mentioned that the organizers were from the Ohio group that isn't attending this year for obvious reasons.

Really, the bulk only left Saturday night/Sunday morning. Now that there's no show on Sunday, it's probably mostly a non issue.

"Expo" to me always seemed like it wanted to be an 'industry' show and doesn't really fully understand the fan aspect. Doesn't surprise me at all that they would cut Sunday before a weekday.

Correct.

The fact that the old hotel was worse doesn’t make the current location any better. It’s still bad.

If you're just going to put it in the freeplay hall, it's no different than taking a game to MGC - just show up with it.

If you're hoping for more of a vendor style space in the vendor hall, then you're going to have to get in touch with the show people. The PROC custom games booth that was done for several years was done with the generosity of Multimorphic as an extension of their vendor space. Since they're not going to be at the show, that space isn't available.

Wifi has always been free for the expo show rate, despite them not listing it as such. Has been true for several years. But really, who uses hotel internet now that most cellular plans give you tons of data?

Houston and Banning?

So the Chicago PHOF is a teamup betwen pinballcompany and galloping ghost? Hopefully they'll get a new location.

/WILD SPECULATION

He says with no pictures. For shame.

I know a big batch of John's EMs are being brought this year again.

Every time the leave your keys thing gets mentioned a noisy contingent of “I don’t want nobody touching my game” sqwakers pops up.

The people going in and out the side doors of the hall (the 'old' entrance and on the far end, both) all weekend long disagree.

With the entry door on the 'front' hall and the high number of games to play in the main vendor hall (several free play banks, pin stadiums huge row, american pinball's bank, jjps bank, sterns setup, cgc) I think a good number of people never even went down the hall to the freeplay room.

I know traffic in Rob's room was down, I've heard comments that the free play hall wasn't crowded at any point and every time I was in that hallway it seemed pretty barren.

Speaking of Friday morning - I'm not sure I understand the logic of the vendor hall not opening until 6pm on Friday. It's not like that was day 1.

Yeah, it was rough to remember that the console museum is really the heart of what started that show when they were scraping a big chunk of the pin/arcade space out for it last year. heh!