The gate is supposed to be down normally, and raises when you shoot left loop.

During multiball and other features like straight jacket, it will stay down to feed pops and also allow you to multiply bonus.

Could be something ain't working right with that gate. There's actually two identical gates up there (one for left and right loop) so you can compare them. It's kind of a weird system - a right spring holds the gate down, but when activated a solenoid pushes the spring so gate opens.

Anyway take a look back there, and test gate, and see what's up.

Also make sure the switches in the left orbit are registering. I think there are two switches up in there. First just test the gate in test mode though.

I had the same problem. The gate was working fine but it is a common problem that the ball is touching the plastic on its way up the ramp. Shaving some of the plastic off can solve the problem. Also making sure the ramp is positioned correctly can help (bend into position). It can be a very tricky problem to solve. Took me for ever and still not working 100% on mine.

I just checked and you should still spell theatre even if the ball doesn't make the ramp. If the left loop isn't spelling theatre it's probably the switch in the left loop.

We had the same problem at first. Turns out there is a spring that attaches to the gate that had been knocked off of ours during shipping. Once that was put back on, the gate worked.

Agree with tjc that if you're not spelling "theatre", you have a problem with the left loop switch.