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Weston Super Mare - Operators must do better

ianw

ianw

Site Supporter
Joined
Jul 6, 2012
Messages
3,086
Location
Devon
Alias
cityexile
Spent yesterday afternoon hunting pins in weston.

Grand Pier....

Spiderman - very dirty and slow
Shrek - dirty and missing a few parts
Buck Hunter - again very dirty and the buck shot not registering!

Arcade closest to pier.....

Xmen.... on dear! 20140407_174432.jpg

The arcade next door....

An AC/DC pro in great condition and the volume turned up high and a low replay of 16m ... great stuff.
20140407_181751.jpg
 
Sad to hear, WSM is the closest place to me with real pins. I take it the Stern Batman is gone from the pier then?
 
I had a few days holiday down in WSM last week. Batman TDK was still there, although several of the positions of the crane won't register when hit so you cannot complete the multiball. Shrek had the centre post missing between the flippers so that the ball got stuck in the hole :(

Did you manage to get a ball stuck behind the rubber bands on the sling of X-Men? :p
 
abaxas said:
Surely, it's us who are being cruel? Taking pinball out of it's natural habitat and keeping them as pets. To make matters worse, we never feed them there favorite food, coins. :(
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Yes very true, without pins on site, its us who will be an endangered species, pins NEED NEED NEED to go onsite for the younger generation to fall in love with them. Without new blood, this hobby and pinball in just a piece of history....
 
philpalmer said:
Yes very true, without pins on site, its us who will be an endangered species, pins NEED NEED NEED to go onsite for the younger generation to fall in love with them. Without new blood, this hobby and pinball in just a piece of history....
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At the same time, knackered pinballs aren't exactly a great first impression.
 
Shrek had the centre post missing between the flippers so that the ball got stuck in the hole :(

That is outrageous. How do they expect punters to put money in for such shoddiness?
 
Pinballs do need to be onsite.

I just cannot believe the difference between the USA and the UK in terms of pins on sites. You are practically tripping over them in the states and they generally at least mostly working over there.

In the UK, every time I see a pin on site it is filthy and barely working. If a kid plays a pinball machine for the first time and the machine looks like ****, the GI is all out and one of the flippers is limp then they will get a band impression of pinball and probably never play again. We all know how different playing a good and bad condition pin is so why FFS can pinball operators not give them a quick clean once a month and make sure they are working? I'm absolutely certain that a shiny fully working pin takes 2, 3, 4? times the month of a half dead filthy one?

If we want to revive pinball in the UK then we need to have some more decent operators, as the ones that maintain them properly are very scarce these days. Just look at the likes of pinformer, where the comments on the pins are usually about how dirty and broken they are. Very few of the comments mention how well maintained they are.

As we saw from my recent trip report to St Annes pier, the machines have NEVER been cleaned as far as I can see and I've been going there since I was a kid. (I've even offered to fix easy faults for them for free before now just because I wanted to play the damn game working properly)
 
lukewells said:
If we want to revive pinball in the UK then we need to have some more decent operators, as the ones that maintain them properly are very scarce these days. Just look at the likes of pinformer, where the comments on the pins are usually about how dirty and broken they are. Very few of the comments mention how well maintained they are.
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The other problem being, where do you site them? As space is a premium in most establishments, the ones I approached would rather have another couple of tables in the space a pinball takes up even if they are empty.

I'd love nothing more than to start up my own (b)arcade but you'd never make a living from it over here :(
 
I left my card at St Annes Pier before now, not even a call. Why have equipment worth so much money if its not working properly? You can't get through to some of these idiots though, most of the time the "arcade manager" is just a bloody moron with the brain of a fish so trying to explain things like working pinball machines take more money is a little beyond their mental capacity, unfortunately.

I always ask for feedback on how pins I have sold into sites are doing, both working/earning wise.

You can take a horse to water........
 
philpalmer said:
I left my card at St Annes Pier before now, not even a call. Why have equipment worth so much money if its not working properly? You can't get through to some of these idiots though, most of the time the "arcade manager" is just a bloody moron with the brain of a fish so trying to explain things like working pinball machines take more money is a little beyond their mental capacity, unfortunately.

I always ask for feedback on how pins I have sold into sites are doing, both working/earning wise.

You can take a horse to water........
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Yeah sadly Phil, they technically do all their own maintenance on site, just what they consider maintenance is the bare minimum
 
All the technical technicians have gone now, they are replaced with people just able to unblock a coin from a pusher etc.... anything more than that is a "send it away job". The days of people who can fix stuff are over, which isn't a great combination with pinball machines.
 
Carl Spiby said:
The other problem being, where do you site them? As space is a premium in most establishments, the ones I approached would rather have another couple of tables in the space a pinball takes up even if they are empty.

I'd love nothing more than to start up my own (b)arcade but you'd never make a living from it over here :(
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It's weird that though. People say that pins don't make money to justify they space, but why do I see so many pins on the used market with 100-200K on the coin counters (as in 200k x 10p = £20K) I ever had a Nightmare on Elm Street with over a million on the counter and was being operated up until I bought it.
 
I supplied machines to an arcade on a campsite that used to be very profitable - but then they got a new manager who didn't care how much the machines took. Everytime a kid complained he would stick an out of order sign on the machine and switch it off. He wouldn't bother ringing us, just waited until we next came to empty where we would find that half of the arcade was out of order. Then he decided it was easier if he didn't open up the arcade until someone wanted to use it, so put a sign on the door saying "please ask at reception if you would like to use the arcade and we will unlock it for you". Not surprisingly the takings dropped massively. Next the campite owner contacts us to say: "we're shutting the arcade down - it's just not worth it anymore for the amount we make from it".
 
I wonder if, as a group, we could kind of get sponsorship in the way of pinball consumable items, and then we could approach the operator and offer an hour of our time with their agreement and get them up and working as far as we could???

Pinballinfo - Giving something back to the pinball public ;)
 
Carl Spiby said:
The other problem being, where do you site them? As space is a premium in most establishments, the ones I approached would rather have another couple of tables in the space a pinball takes up even if they are empty.

I'd love nothing more than to start up my own (b)arcade but you'd never make a living from it over here :(
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This is the major difference between the US and here. In the US - independently owned bars/pubs are the norm (I believe) ......not chains or group owned as the majority are here. I'm sure that is partly why the barcade scene has taken off over there. Plus ,except in major metropolis centres ....space never seems to be so much of an issue.
 
To be honest even the respected places like pipeline are poor. I spent saturday afternoon there, down to 5 machines, wcs94 not working with 4 balls stuck in the central hole. Flintstones with a out of order label. Ac/dc premium playing ok.but balls getting stuck, TZ was really dirty.....

May be they should be pets !
 
I'm sure the arcade operators would be more interested in fixing a problem if it were preventing people feeding £20 notes into their £500 jackpot machines in the over 18's area!

Agree, it is a shame if someone's first experience of a pinball machine on site is one with lots of problems - I've been embarrassed before when I've persuaded friends to have a multi player game on an arcade pinball on site only to find weak flippers, non working features, etc - and then get "I can't see why you like them so much" from my friends, not understanding that a well maintained machine is much more fun to play

I think us pinball fans are in a tricky situation highlighting problems to operators/arcades, as if we appear too picky the site may get rid of the machine altogether, but then again serious problems do need to be highlighted, otherwise nothing will be done. I think it is commendable that people offer to fix simple faults FOC, and I would do the same if it were something within my skills, but I can also see an arcade would probably not be keen with someone messing with their machine.

I think the problem is, a faulty dirty machine probably takes similar money to a clean fully working one, as most players put in their money and don't realise how bad it is until AFTER they put them money in, at which point the money is spent. Ironically, a well maintained fully working machine might encourage longer ball times and more professional players, who also don't spent much as they win extra balls and replays etc.

If you look at Bournemouth Pier, where the pinballs are all well maintained (I think from Pinball Heaven according to the instruction cards), but even then there never seems to be many people playing them. Phil - any idea how the pins there do? Was nice to see a WoZ there last year!

Not sure what the answer is, and out of some misguided loyalty I always have a couple of credits on any machine I see on site, so I suppose I'm partly to blame for the operators complacency.

Cheers, Mark
 
ianw said:
To be honest even the respected places like pipeline are poor. I spent saturday afternoon there, down to 5 machines, wcs94 not working with 4 balls stuck in the central hole. Flintstones with a out of order label. Ac/dc premium playing ok.but balls getting stuck, TZ was really dirty.....

May be they should be pets !
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I fixed the stuck balls in WCS on Monday and TZ wasn't that dirty when I had a look at it but it does need the subways taking off and cleaning.

Where were the balls getting stuck on AC/DC? In the controlled gate? I will take a look at that later today.
 
skweek said:
I fixed the stuck balls in WCS on Monday and TZ wasn't that dirty when I had a look at it but it does need the subways taking off and cleaning.

Where were the balls getting stuck on AC/DC? In the controlled gate? I will take a look at that later today.
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Behind the bell, machine did a search, then decided it was the next players go. Also on the wire connecting the canon, but was released during the ball hunt/search.
 
Spent some time in Weston on Monday & sought out the various pins listed by @ianw & @I TiltAlot -a quick update:

Machines on the end of the pier pretty well as previously reported, with the exception that hole in the centre of Shrek is now 'fixed'......... They've put Sellotape over it to stop the ball falling into it:tut:

What has changed this year is that they're now charging £1 for all visitors to even go on the pier, which has caused a degree of local outrage and seems strange as everything to do on the pier costs so they are just deterring people from visiting their charging attractions (and the arcade/amusements/rides are pretty good including full dodgers & an indoor multilevel go kart track).

Even stranger is that they have a 4D cinema and one of the advertised shows is a ride around a pinball machine ! The pinball machines are nowhere near the cinema - you would have thought that it wouldn't take a great business or marketing genius to locate the pins nearer the cinema showing a pinball movie and people seeing the movie would want to try the pins & vice versa - obviously you'd need to maintain the pins....

image.jpg


The Batman pin at the entrance is still there - possibly not fully functioning (but didn't seem too bad to my inexpert eye), but definitely in need of a bit of TLC. I get the impression it's not being played a lot as I managed to register myself as 4th on the high score list, after my nd ever game on the machine:clap:.

AC/dC still running fine ( in an arcade with posters outside saying 'don't panic, entry is free';)
 
Paul said:
I wonder if, as a group, we could kind of get sponsorship in the way of pinball consumable items, and then we could approach the operator and offer an hour of our time with their agreement and get them up and working as far as we could???

Pinballinfo - Giving something back to the pinball public ;)
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Great idea. Sadly, I don't think the operators would be interested though
 
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