Our state governments have no problem if we go out amongst thousands to protest, but god forbid should we go to an arcade with dozens of other people.

That is honestly sad and odd to hear. Every inch and piece of equipment in a gym is Covered in body fluids with ever visitor exhaling double time yet a few finger prints on a flipper button is ground zero? Odd how these rules are picked. Do hope you and all operators pull through this.

Maybe Gyms are different where you are but the one that I go to, it is considered proper Gym Etiquette to wipe the machines down after you use them and people do.

Do they wipe down dumbbell handles and all the 45lb plates? I have never seen anyone do that before. I agree with you about the different weight and cardio machines but never in the free weight section.

Did you go next door and get happy ending massages? That’s the best part of the PHOF!! Pinball and relaxation...in the same parking lot!

Lol. Smearing sweat off a metal machine with a dry towel is Not disinfecting! Dry yes, virus protected no chance. How many people have you ever seen walking around a gym with a bottle of alcohol spray or wipes while working out? If all you need is a dry towel etiquette to open this arcades should be ready to go then lol.

Unfortunately, they do wipe the dumbbell handles. The disinfectant builds up in the knurling and makes them hard to hang on to. You're right about the plates, I've never seen a plate get wiped down. Personally I would take my chances at the gym over most places.

Back on topic. I just got word that my largest locations (around 60 games) won't be opening till July and it is a summer seasonal location. Most of their business there is from renting their hall out and they don't have any bookings for the rest of the summer yet.

Umm, I'd take my chances at almost any other indoor business, where people aren't huffing & puffing, touching all the same sweaty stuff, and sharing locker rooms. But then, my lazy ass wasn't at the gym even before all this.

Yep... can't believe we aren't in Phase 2 when small rooms with sweaty people violently inhaling and exhaling made the cut.

The science does not follow.

Regardless, we are now as safe as any indoor place can possibly be. Masks for everyone, sanitizer, limited attendance, and six exterior shuttered fans around the perimeter will ensure continuous one-way airflow which is the primary COVID risk factor by far.

Fingers crossed. I worry as the numbers continue to spike, we won't get to Phase 3 at all. Or, that we open for a week before everything closes again like in South Korea. One infected person spread it to 50 others in a single bar. Again, airflow airflow airflow.

You should ask some of the arcade lobbyists to talk with the fitness lobbyists to see how they got fitness centers included... oh wait there is not an arcade lobby group. That is that.

"We just really lucked out and were able to get our message into a couple of the right people's hands," said Meredith Poppler, a top official at the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association, the industry's main trade group.

Poppler told CNN that in recent weeks IHRSA, which receives funding from many of the brand-name gym companies, began a full-court press to deal with the economic fallout hitting gyms and fitness clubs. That included hiring more lobbyists and aggressively pressing its message about the importance of physical fitness during a pandemic to lawmakers in Washington as well as officials in the Trump administration.

The messaging worked even better than they'd hoped.

"We were as surprised as anyone when we saw President Trump announce the three phases and that gyms were in the first phase," said Poppler."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/23/politics/gyms-reopening-lobbying-coronavirus-trump-phase-one/index.html

Most places around here in texas are relaxing their mask requirements. And along with that lots of people are not wearing masks now

You should ask some of the arcade lobbyists to talk with the fitness lobbyists to see how they got fitness centers included... oh wait there is not an arcade lobby group. That is that.

There is one the AAMA and there's one for the amusement parks that FECs can also join. There are also State level organizations. The one in PA has been fighting with the state about the Skill games.

The gyms can't open soon enough for me. I go to the gym almost daily to keep some auto accident induced chronic pain in check and well it has been a living hell without being able to go.

Did you set the 10 person number or do you fall into a category that is still “no more than groups of 10”? Is your stuff mixed, or is it pins in one area and arcades in another that you could do a lon group of 10 and an arcade group of 10 and prevent mixing?

The AMOA used the services of a multi-purpose lobbyist. Not sure if they still do as I am no longer a member. How many distributors and small ops are in this or their state associations these days?

It's times like these when a strong, well-funded organization comes in handy.

I’m a gym owner, and here in Massachusetts, we’re phase three. We won’t be open any time soon. I would guess mid-July at the earliest, and it would be at a limited capacity.

I can reopen SS Billiards next week Wednesday June 10th with precautions most of which are already in place.

LTG : )

Cidercade in Dallas is back open. 50% capacity and some machines off for distancing.

Excellent! Things were getting desperate here and I was about to start looking at buying a Dialed In. I'm gonna come play yours instead!!!

Lot of employees are staying on unemployment, rather than coming back. I know we lost about 4 out of 30ish, heard of a few places that had 90% turn over.

A bunch of workers tried that where my wife works. It's Job abandonment. No unemployment insurance payments for several weeks. Once eligible, the $600.00/week bonus ends (maybe it gets renewed though) and they are quite behind money-wise.

Once it was explained, all but one came back. There's one in every crowd. He insisted he was going to be able to continue getting his unemployment uninterrupted. Two weeks later he came Crawling Back whining and crying when his plan didn't pan out.

We are dealing with this here with all of the bars and restaurants opening back up. Bar owners and managers are calling their employees back to work and they are refusing to come back. I'm telling them to make a schedule and send it to the employees, any one who doesn't show up is terminated, bye bye free money. We've had enough permanent closures of businesses around here (some not directly covid related) that there are going to be plenty of opportunities for those who actually do want to work.

I'm not sure how strict they are with that in Texas, I know pre-covid we had 2 people that were justifiably fired ( sadly we didn't have each incident documented) and they won their case. They were working somewhere else and still getting unemployment, for the full term. Doubt they ever got in trouble for it. At any rate we reported all the names that were eligible to come back, so now its btwn. them and the Texas workforce commission.

Looks like Colorado pinball pub and Pinball Jones are starting to do hourly time slot rentals at locations this weekend. I hope this works and leads to more locations opening up. As soon as I can I plan to hit one of these up.

The last 3 weeks, since my main location has opened, things have been down 75% pre-COVID. A lot of that comes from weekly tournaments which I am not running right now.

Overall it’s not the end of the world because this is not how I feed my family. However, I still have expenses that are due regularly and those are barely covered at this pace. I’ve been paying the minimum on my monthly debt payment instead of attacking that very aggressively. People are coming to play, but not anywhere close to normal.

This was supposed to be my get out of debt year as well.

AZ has been surging for the last week. I wouldn’t be shocked if we closed down the state again. I’m not even really looking at the test results as testing has increased here a lot recently. I’m looking at the % of ICU beds available and locally we are over 80% and I think Phoenix is too. At 80% last tome is when they closed all elective surgeries and many other things.

Trying to get too far off topic, but I might be back to watching on the sidelines soon.

As it stands right now, when we open, we will be using a sign up schedule(likely Sign-Up Genius) for our club members. It will be 2 hour sessions with a very limited number of people. Masks required and players must leave two open machines between each other.

I would say currently we are down 90%. It's not what we thought however I am glad to have our staff back up and working. Some of them are glad to be back. With the precautions we are taking due to covid plus the minimized game collection, there is not really a long term plan other than to take it in the face and keep marching forward. Luckily our other revenue streams will keep us a float but I have zero foresight or projections now at this current juncture. Sad. I really used to enjoy forecasting futures and seeing if we could meet them. Good luck to everyone who is enduring this scenario. I hope your fortunes are better than mine thus far.

the whole situation screams bullshit from day 1.

Agreed with Pooks... science is not driving this, but payola certainly seems to be. Gyms should be Phase 10 based upon the amount of indoor huffing and puffing and sweating. I mean, dude, come on.

Exterior air baffles going in this week. Dual-fan with aluminum shutters and smoke-checked for airflow certainty. We'll probably be the safest joint in the state. I won't subject my guests and employees to preventable risks, period.

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Obviously Governor Northam never liked pinball.

Is Logan arcade in Chicago open?

Nope.

barcades may need to wait to PHASE 4

Hopefully they can come up with a really good treatment if not a vaccine soon, because going to the barcades a couple times a month was my one getaway from work and family for some me time. Every time I try to play my pins at home, my soon to be 3 year old son will come in and turn them off and say “no daddy”. For some reason, he doesn’t want me playing anymore.

Of course, I just heard some promising statements made about covid-19 on the news’s last night.

“It’s fading away....it’s going to fade away.”

So we got that to look forward to.

Doot de doo...

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Of course, an arcade is probably more like a bowling alley than a library... but still! Way below gyms.

Pardon... this is a stupid list. A lot of it depends upon airflow which isn’t being taken under consideration. *facemaskpalm*

Out here in Edmonton they categorized gyms/recreation center with casino's. We got the ok to open June 12 but we are officially opening up arcade today ....so we see how that goes.

"Pontoon boat rides". That's oddly specific....LOL

Cobra Arcade, a barcade brand with a location in Tucson and their first one in the Phoenix area was open for maybe 2-3 days and then closed on their own as we are in an increase in cases in AZ.

Earlier this week the governor updates some language so individual municipalities could make their own mask rules/laws. Tucson is going to require masks when in public in the next few days, and has published a list of exceptions.

My main location is a hockey rink and they have done good things with their current scheduling and cleaning cycles to mitigate what they can. Parents or significant others have lots of room to spread out so spacing isn’t an issue but I’m curious what the mask situation will be like next time I go in. The employees were the only ones wearing them recently and I would if anyone else was in the Pinball area, otherwise it’s decently secluded.

Shields up!

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(the clamps are temporary... getting better ones ASAP)

We will be opening July 1st.

With the uptick in California the last few days, It’s not looking good that I’ll be able to visit my favorite barcades anytime soon. I’m guessing our governor is going to shut things down again.