I’m excited to see this awesome progress, but tphf should consider some of the comments in this thread.
I was so excited when my wife took me there for my birthday, but we were both completely disappointed. Almost every classic machine I wanted to play and introduce my wife to was down or did not work properly. Several machines just took the money and that was the end of it. We ended up having to play the new sterns just to get rid of the quarters.
I know it’s a charity and the guy’s done well, but that doesn’t mean the place is beyond criticism. I’ve fixed a lot of machines, and when I was there, I thought, ‘give me a 40 hour week and I could have 90% of the broken machines running like tops.’ To me, they are not getting experienced techs volunteering. I witnessed a volunteer work on a machine and cringed. Tphof just needs to pay ONE lead tech and the problem will be fixed. The lead tech can train volunteers to perform preventative maintenance on the machines and services boards, flippers and other mechs. I’ve worked with volunteers in the past, and you just can’t get consistent performance out of a rotating inexperienced group. They would make MORE by having machines in good order, which means more donations.
I fear that tphf scares people away from pinball because broken machines just cause frustration. No one wants to just throw money away, and newbs don’t know that the game sucks because it’s broken.
I’ll give it another shot, but it was really bad when we went, far worse than I could have imagined. Can we set up a tech fund? I’ll donate to both.
