I've never run across that page before. It's a much better list than Stern-flavor-of-the-week shooting straight to the top of the Pinside 100 list as "OMG it's the greatest ever made".

I was lucky, and managed to get a room for Friday and Saturday night.

I'm planning to bring either my Buckley Hop Scotch or Stoner Mad Cap for free play (and maybe for sale), but if anyone is interested and it's pre-sold, I can bring a Williams Fun Fest.

One of Gabe's earlier posts in the thread says that we have the whole hotel reserved this time.

This year was a mixed bag for me...

The positive:
1) The selection of games was pretty decent, though there were certainly less games than in prior years.

2) The seminar schedule was fantastic-- I spent most of yesterday in that room. Congrats to Dave M. and anyone else who had a hand in making this schedule.

3) And due to unfortunate circumstance, I learned how excellent and responsive the tech team is (see the neutral).

The neutral:
1) The game I brought was badly damaged sometime between 1am Friday and 10:30am Friday. I brought a really old game with me, the type that uses a lever to push a metal plate under the playfield to drop the balls from the top of the playfield back into the trough. Someone pushed on the coin slide so violently that it broke that metal level in half. It's fixable, but not something that I could repair on-site. Game sold anyway (for less than I wanted, but the new owner was willing to make the fix, and was excited about the game, so I let it go).

The bad:
1) If you bring little kids, keep an eye on them. I hurt my leg and a little kid ended up scraping his knees when he and another kid came tearing around the corner in the free play area and smashed into me. It's not the kids fault, it's the parents fault that their children are misbehaving.

2) The food situation was completely unacceptable, and had we been made aware of that, we would have prepared better. I saw a lot of people eating pop tarts and cheetos from the vending machines as meals. In the past, the hotel had two restaurants to feed us. One of those was open for breakfast-only on Friday and Saturday. We ate there friday, and I was charged $19 for a cup of coffee, a scoop of scrambled eggs, a grocery store bagel, and two tiny sausage links-- outrageous. Lunch and dinner were non-existent unless you wanted pre-packaged, paper thin burgers or steamed in the bag and a little soggy hot dogs. Just awful. If the hotel can't find staff to work, they shouldn't be taking on bookings for such big events. There's *NO* late night food options that will deliver to the hotel. The latest is Domino's which will deliver until midnight.

3) Our room was... less than sparking clean. We were all the way in the back, in the room next to @forceflow. Everything smelled a little musty, and the hallways in between the buildings smelled like someone had taken a dump in them (literally-- it was wretch inducing).

4) Just call the show closed at 2am on Sunday morning (or whatever). This morning, there was very little left in free play, and all the vendors were already gone (and a doll show was setting up). I'm kinda pinballed out by Sunday anyway, but I know of at least one person who was planning to travel to the show just for this morning. I haven't talked to him yet, but I'm sure it was a huge disappointment and a lot of wasted fuel for him.

5) With regards to the vendors... the roster was too thin. Mayfair was the only parts vendor there, and they don't really bring much in the way of parts. The rest were people with some neat mods and tchotchkeis... but not a bottle of Novus or an LED light in sight. Cointaker is listed as a sponsor, which I assumed meant they were also a vendor- that was a poor assumption on my part.

6) Either give up or try to go all-in on the outdoor flea market. Only two vendors there, one of whom I will have no dealings with.

Most of the games for sale had a price listed. I wasn't given a choice-- when I registered it as being for sale, the woman at the counter made me include a price.

Yeah, nothing on tap at all. $6.50 for a bottle of Bud Light? I don't think so. There were lots of people walking around with their own booze, and with the hotel prices, I understand why...

Agreed- I got a bunch of games in on that Aztec, and it really played nicely. If I wasn't pressed for space, I might have tried to find a way to get it home with me...

That's good to know. The person at the counter offered me Bud Light, Heineken and a third option (maybe Amstel? I don't remember). I didn't specifically say "what's on draft" which may have prompted a different answer.

Thanks. I hope my post didn't sound too Debbie-downer-- I really did have a great time.

What fridge?

I was far from FUBAR'ed, but in this day and age, I'm not going to drink a single beer and get behind the wheel. The risks are just too high. So I parked the car when I arrived on Thursday, and didn't move it until we left on Sunday morning.

That is indeed how I meant it. There's just no reason to take the risk. Of course, without food on site, it meant we went without dinner on Thursday night... the Dominos doesn't deliver very late into the evening, and there were no other late night options.

In the past, other than trying the lousy barbecue place that people who don't know barbeque rave about, I ate on site exclusively. We discovered the Thai place that was within walking distance... and for Sturbridge, it wasn't terrible. We ordered pizza from a local place the other night we were there, and that was OK at best, but again, low expectations for a small town-- so it get's a "perfectly edible" rating.

That was mine. Most unfortunate, and it happened because someone violently pushed in the coin slide. I mentioned elsewhere in the thread that I accepted an offer on the machine-- I got a note from the new owner yesterday, and he's already got it back up and running.

I love to bring my old games to shows for a couple of reasons... I've got games that literally almost no one alive has ever played... and they are a little smaller and a lot lighter-- making them easier to extricate from my basement.

Ah the Saratoga show, where a kid was trying to hang from the shooter rod and bent it. Then his father yelled at me because he was "a potential customer". I was not nice in my response to him.

It's endemic. I know a guy who owns a very high grade restoration 16 cylinder Cadillac. A couple of years ago, a father picked up his kid, plopped the kid down on a fender, and wanted to take a picture. The father couldn't understand why my friend went ballistic on him for assuming it was ok to do this to his $250,000+ car. The father's response "what's the big deal? It's just an old car". Dad is lucky he left with all of his teeth.

The bathroom was pretty rancid by mid-morning Friday. People don't want to sit on a filthy toilet, but get desperate, so they hover... and make a mess in the process.

Honestly, the hotel is for the most part fine. I had a pretty gross room this year (smelled like mold, and the AC didn't work very well) but my rooms the other years have been fine. I'm there to do pinball stuff, not to take a luxury vacation, so if the AC works and the room doesn't stink, I can make due with it... I'm only in the room to sleep anyways.

My biggest beef with the hotel was the food amenities. Almost nothing was open, and the breakfast at the restaurant was horrible and expensive.

If we don't end up staying at Sturbridge, please make sure we land somewhere with a full complement of food options. I want to arrive on Thursday and not move the car until I pack up on Sunday morning.

If the hotel can't provide fully staffed restaurants with enough for for full menu options for 3 days, who cares if they will allow it or not?

The hotel lost out on a fortune in sales by not having food.

This. I'd probably go either way, but only because I'm close enough to the Mass border... but I can see a lot of folks not wanting to add another hour + to the trip.

Some of us won't have a single drink with dinner and drive. If I've had even one, I'm done driving until the next morning.

I'd bet that a huge proportion-- maybe half-- are coming from the mid-Atlantic. The further the show gets from the Mass Pike, and the further east it goes, it will become harder and harder to draw those people in. Putting it in a state where there might be as many moose as people will kill it for sure.

I'm about the same distance as you are from the current location.

Desperate? I'm not even sure what you're talking about. Allentown and York are both further for me... but I still go. Flea market aside, Pintastic is a *much* better show than either of those.

We aren't New England... but there are several locations that might be suitable. There's also the casino in Saratoga.

Or have out of state plates and don't want to be a target.

I tried to host a convention for one of my professional organizations in Albany. The convention center is in a not-great neighborhood and the only hotel nearby is pretty expensive. The convention center on Wolf Road is ABSURDLY priced.

We ended up hosting that convention at the casino in Saratoga... but I don't think they would have the do-whatever-you-want attitude that Sturbridge does.