WhiteWater for sure!

White Water is probably the winner, but I'm surprised not to see Jokerz! listed. That game is utter madness to shop if you want to do it properly... Three ramps, an upper PF all with tons of switches and lights attached to them; countless posts, 3 banks of drop targets, several saucers, several spinners... I know it's not the most popular game in the world, but sure is a bitch to shop

Games I found surprisingly difficult to shop were:

Scared Stiff
BSD
TAF
CFTBL

Pretty easy:

TZ
NGG

Never shopped but heard were difficult:

Safe Cracker
Banzai Run

White Water was the biggest pain in the ass for me. I would imagine Banzai would be more work.

I haven't done many, but the toughest ones for me so far have been Simpson's and Elvis.

I have an Addams family coming up. Sucks to see it on the difficult list! LOL. Not that I didn't expect it

Forgot Capcom.
Airborne is up there on the shit list.
Pinball Magic is a bitch, damn you Matra Magna.
But, White Water is in the top 1 or 2 for sure.

Wh20 and bsd were not fun lol.

It helps a person understand why some rubbers are as hard as a forgotten McDonalds french fry. Some machines are just downright ridiculous for rubber locations.

Under the ramp rubbers are the worst part of it. I'll still take it over The Hobbit anyday. Gawd that machine is the worst!

Demolition man for sure , White water is not that hard

Any JJP game

top of the playfield? Baywatch was so annoying I wrote a guide for it http://pinballnovice.blogspot.com/2014/12/baywatch-how-to-tear-down-playfield.html
Bottom of the playfield? the Apollo 13 subway... http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6m66CvnCQCg/Vl6AJZJj_PI/AAAAAAAAXPc/YUWV1b8W1zE/s1600/IMG_20151129_221502.jpg

Blackwater 100. Complete PITA. You drop one screw or nut, and it dissapears easily....

Later,
EV

Demolition Man was a bitch to shop. I'd rather do 4 early Bally SS games than 1 Demo Man.

Had a helleva time on my Nip It.

Though WCS was no walk in the park, I'll also throw out there BF and RBION as royal pains in the ass.

I honestly didn’t have a problem with my White Water. Everything seemed intuitive. You just need to be cognizant of the layers, that’s all.

Earthshaker was an absolute bear to strip down, and it gets my vote. Overlapping ramps, no “real” way to pull the playfield forward in the cabinet, and tons of hard to reach things.

I feel like Williams was building playfields with the complexity of WPC then, but didn’t have the experience yet to make things very serviceable.

Whitewater not much of a problem for me either. There's a lot of stuff but it's amazingly not as intertwined as you'd think.
I put TZ from the list, but for me DH was the worst.

I'm working on one right now and it doesn't look that bad. Lots of ramps but just take one off at a time, take pics, and keep hardware in bags with notes on where they go. That said, I've haven't actually dug deep into it yet. Cool thing is it looks like you don't even have to remove upper pf to replace bulbs and rebuild flipper. Although it was a newer game, ST pro was the worse to work on for me. That had stacks of plastic and ramps which was difficult to figure out how things should come apart and go back together.

Capcoms are easy. I'd vote dr who because pulling and repulling the mini pf.

WWF Royal Rumble was a big pain with the mini playfield. The way the vuk and playfield are mounted sucks.

Didn't have much issue on my DM or BW. Did DM with a 6 month break in between, BW with no pictures or anything.

Tales of the Arabian Nights - TOTAN

So many hex posts to keep in order for all of the ramps. Lots of documentation made just for the hex posts alone.

TAF is a pain to work on. The mechs are hardwired to the harness without connectors in the necessary places, and the playfield just tilts up and does not slide out, although you can pull the playfield off the hinge to move it forward.

Bally learned and TZ does not have those two issues, but it has a lot to do and the clock is complicated.

The worst for me was a SF2. That one has some parts in the back that require you to remove the upper playfield to get to.

WOZ - especially underneath the castle playfield.

I have to vote STTNG. The cannons, subways and general weight of the playfield were a challenge. I still have WH2O, WCS, CFTBL, and TZ as they are easier and I typically tear everything down at least once a year. I do wish that the mini playfield on TZ was like the one on Shadow as its so convenient, one screw and you swing it up and out of the way.

STTNG is definitely a PITA!! Judge Dredd has some tricky bits but nothing like the first mentioned.

pinball magic is for sure a pita, batman forever even worse, tales from the crypt sucked too.

Many of the titles mentioned I've never had the (dis)pleasure of shopping.

One title of the 25 or so that I've shopped/resto'd that I really didn't enjoy was Vector. It was surprisingly crammed underneath and it's heavier than you'd expect for a machine from that era. I can see why "Pin by Committee" never caught on.

So strange. Last night I finished shopping out my sons NBAFB and after I got done this same question came to my mind.

First machine I thought of was WW.

Any bingo ever is far more of a pain in the ass than anything listed here.

Road Show is no walk in the park....

Wh20 is not a hard pin to shop, it’s a little time consuming, but pretty straight forward. I think sttng can be a pain due to cannons, I’ve done a few and all of them have cannon harness and opto problems.

The most difficult game to shop is the one you're trying to finish in time for a show or delivery, because stupid things either defy your efforts or keep cropping up!

I put LEDs in Blackwater 100 and it was awful. All the sockets are stapled, and I put lighting under all the molded plastics.

Simpsons DE was really difficult as well. All the GI sockets were stapled, so you want to take the ramp off, but that massive ramp is one continuous piece and requires removing the backpanel. The playfield tilts up but doesn’t slide forward, so you need to completely remove it from the cabinet to make this happen.

Bummer on WH20, I could have bought one totally restored years ago, but instead I didn't so I'm not looking forward to doing it!

I found whitewater easy. Once you remove the upper playfield with all the ramps - how to do it is even explained in the manual - there is not much more to it, you have access to the whole lower playfield.

Scared stiff is more difficult as you need to remove the back panel.

Most wpc games are ok (although a lot of parts like tz or sttng) as they are designed ok and you can remove layer per layer.
Sys11 games and data east I find on average more difficult to shop as you often need to remove several parts at once or have screws hidden below parts you can't remove yet, or they don't have connectors and you needto unsolder wires..

For me, I'd say WH20 and CFTBL made me the angriest.

I've shopped many of the ones in the poll: CFTBL, TSPP, STTNG, PM, BSD, TFTC, SS, JP. I'd rank them in this order from difficult to easiest:

STTNG
PM
TSPP
JP
BSD
TFTC
CFTBL
SS

So far it's Earthshaker with all it's locktited posts, a playfield that doesn't slide out, and a clusterfk of shit in the back.

Yeah but ramp 1 goes in, then 2, then 3...it's locgical. Something liek DH you have to literally flex the ramps putting pressure on them to bend them over each other; weird.

I give DH second to Earthshaker. STTNG was a piece of cake compared to both of these. I've got Dirty harry down now though. Easy one is No Fear, or I was just in a hurry to get it done.

It's been a while, but I remember not liking Maverick and Tales from the Crypt. Just much more small screws than necessary.

Now shopping an Orbitor 1, that is just an adventure that seperates the men from the boys. You can just throw 2/3 of the experience you have with shopping pinballs overboard for this one. Almost everything is radically different. Respect for the people at Stern that built this monster.

It's -so- scary to seperate the playfield from the very delicate (and unobtainable) moon surface underneath it.

Banzai Run is pretty doable. Just think of it as a pin-and-a-half.

Easiest modern-ish game to shop was Surf 'n Safari. Gottlieb assemblies from this vintage are big and very straightforward.

I have to vote for NASCAR. Next to White Water, NASCAR has the most complicated ramp installation that I've ever had to deal with. Like White Water, if you put the ramps back on NASCAR in the wrong order you are screwed and need to start over. They are all intertwined. The largest one goes out the back of the PF into the cabinet of the game and loops back in. That, and the dual magnets for the outer racetrack loop suck to take apart and put back.

I'll vote for F-14 as well. The diverter and the wire habit-trails are a bastard.

Space Jam.

Also South Park if you don't keep track of where exactly the 37 different sizes of standoff posts go.

SS