Reboot Arcade & Bar Dunedin Florida!

Stingrays Arcade Bar and Grill Walkthrough Tour

 

Electric Avenue Arcade Walkthrough Tour!

Back in September I had a chance to check out the Electric Avenue Arcade located in Manchester, NH. The arcade was simply amazing. They have a great selection of classic arcade games, pinball, and craft beers.  The place is completely decorated with 80's and 90's nostalgia. They have possibly one of the coolest bathrooms where the wallpaper is made up of old comic book and video game ads. Unfortunately Electric Avenue Arcade has remained closed due to COVID-19. According to their Facebook page, they are trying to reopen and will hopefully do so within the next few weeks. I can't wait to get back there and play some more Turtles in Time once the dust settles.

John and Jay's Arcade at the Hangar Pub and Grill and Amherst Brewery Review

Say that title three times fast! I was able to check out John and Jay's Arcade way back in April. What makes this particular arcade interesting is that it is a joint effort between two dedicated arcade enthusiasts, John Jacobsen (John's Arcade on Youtube and a co-host of the Video Game Outsiders Podcast) and Jay Leone. They were able to gain some space located at the Hangar Pub and Grill and Amherst Brewery in Amherst Massachusetts to load up with arcade games. The arcade games are maintained by both John and Jay who take painstaking care to keep them up to their personal high standards.

Silverball Museum Asbury Park New Jersey Walkthrough Tour! (May 2016)

Here's a brand new video tour of the Silverball Museum in Asbury Park New Jersey! Since the last tour I did they've added in a couple of different games and a couple of other classic arcade games like Pole Position II into the mix. They're also getting ready to open a new location in Florida soon!

The museum is run on the time system. You can enter for an hourly rate or buy a full day pass for unlimited gaming! The museum has the very first Jersey Jack Hobbit machine which I also got a full video of...including the game crashing and freezing on me. I should note that yesterday Jersey Jack updated the game's code so hopefully they figured out what was wrong. Hopefully I'll be able to get a new updated look at the game with the new gameplay changes.

I wanted to get more video but since the arcade plays a mix of classic music through the PA system I decided not too. I'm actually waiting for the copyright strikes on our YouTube channel to roll in even though I don't have the video set to run with adds on it and I doubt somebody would watch my video to rip the music with me constantly talking over the music...but that's just YouTube in a nutshell. Hopefully the video will stay up, so make sure you check it out!

Modern Pinball NYC Walkthrough Tour (March 2016)

Here's an updated look at the lineup of games at Modern Pinball NYC! Sadly when I got there they had just taken out Wrestlemania so I wasn't able to get a video of the updated code, they also switched The Avengers Premium edition out as well so no updated video for that either. But...since my last visit they have changed the lineup around quite a bit. Some more classic games have been added in to go along with the newest Stern's like KISS and Game of Thrones Pro. A nice Williams Grand Prix was added in and the Gorgar machine just came in the day I filmed this too and it hopefully should be up and running now.

Just like always, Modern is run like an interactive showroom. You can pay by the hour, or now half an hour for unlimited play on all the games. If you're like me you make a day out of it and get the full day or three hour pass so you can get some videos. I was able to get a few but not as many as I wanted since a lot of folks where playing in the Super League so as much as I wanted to do a review of Star Wars Episode 1 and just see how many lines from RedLetterMedia's Mr. Plinkett review I could do in 10 minutes, I decided not too. (The one at Modern played like it was brand new, out of the box)

It's always worth the trip for some pinball at Modern, so be sure you go and check them out!

Jersey Jack Pinball's The Hobbit and Jackbar Walkthrough Tour!

Hey folks. Nick here. Sorry I've lazy with updating the site. Gerard's been keeping up to date with the podcast episodes and I've been working on the other social media sites as well as making new videos with the brand new camera. So to make up for it, every other day this week I'll have an update with the videos over on our YouTube channel.

A few weeks ago my pal Craig had the week off so we went over to Brooklyn to check out the Sunshine Laundromat for some games and after that we spun over to check out our pal John's place Jackbar! He recently got in one of the very first units of Jersey Jack Pinball's brand new game, The Hobbit. He also went ahead and got a premium edition of Game of Thrones and Woah Nellie! Big Juicy Melons! If you want to hear more of what I thought be sure to check out episode 49 of our podcast for more in depth thoughts on all three new offerings from Stern and Jersey Jack.

Since thankfully the bar was quiet I went ahead and took some video of the bar's lineup as well since I didn't have to worry about the copyright gods coming down on me at YouTube for licensed music running in the background. As always John's got a lot of great stuff like Rollergames and Fish Tales!

If your in the Brooklyn area make sure to check em' out!

Sunshine Laundromat Walkthrough Tour! (Jan 2016)

For a few years now, folks have been saying to me, "Hey, Nick! You've gotta check out this place in Brooklyn, they've got a ton of pinball machines! They're in an old laundromat and sometimes the guy puts a game or two on top of the washers to get even more space for games!" It's true for a while I have been wanting to go there but due to how bad my sense of direction is in NYC I always held back on going. Well a few weeks ago I started seeing pictures of the new pinball section they added in and after talking over with my buddy Charlie I decided to make plans to finally visit the Sunshine Laundromat in Greenpoint Brooklyn. Let me tell ya somethin' folks, I wasn't expecting this.

Recently the owner Peter bought the shop next door and they converted it into a nice little coffee shop and took the games out from there and moved it into a new converted back room...which is where the magic at Sunshine lives. Behind an old pair of dryer doors is a full pinball arcade with a full service bar with drinks and snacks with tons of amazing Bally and Williams classics, new Stern games and the second ever Big Bang Bar reissued game from Pinball Manufacturing. All inside of this room are some of the best maintained machines I've played in a while, the only games that where down where Big Bang Bar and the Strikemaster bowling game at the front of the store. Every game was taken care of beautifully and played excellently.

Every pinball machine except for Big Bang Bar is 75 cents a play for three balls while BBB is a dollar. There's a couple of other games like The Chimp fortune teller machine and a fully functioning Atari Area 51/Maximum Force that Peter built inside of an old dryer...

This place differently gets The Arcade Hunters stamp of approval! Make sure you go and check them out and give them some love! Peter will be adding in a Game of Thrones Limited Edition in as well as swapping out some other games now that they're fully open!

https://www.facebook.com/sunshine.pinball


Sunshine Laundromat
860 Manhattan Ave
Brooklyn, New York

The Game Station (Summer 2015)

Almost forgot to post this one! The day I went off to check out DisneyQuest for one final run I ended up taking the better quality camera over to The Contemporary Resort to go up to the 4th floor and once again check out The Game Station!

If you've seen the video I took a few months ago you'll notice the prize counter is completely gone. For those of you who are new, recently Florida put a new law into effect to curb places where they had "Senior Gambling" where folks pretty much had speakeasy's setup to win prizes like gift cards in order to skate Florida's gambling laws. The problem in the law's language is so vague that it applies to any machine that can award a prize worth more then 75 cents. So even the little claw game over inside of a supermarket can violate the law. Many companies like Dave & Busters have gone against the law because it's a major part of their business and I have heard that some of the language of the law has been altered, but Disney just didn't want to have any part in it and pretty much shut down all prizes at all of their arcades.

So now all of the resort game rooms that had prize counters are now gone, DisneyQuest no longer has a counter for tickets and prizes and the Pizza Planet restaurant in Hollywood Studios is still there but they no longer have the claw machines that you can win the little green aliens in. Considering much of that area is going to be torn down for Star Wars Land and the food inside is awful I'm not going to miss it.

The Game Station still and always will be the best arcade on Disney property. Even though it's a far cry from the mighty arcade that used to exist on the first floor what they lack in size they make up for the quality in the games. Thankfully the pinball still has a home as well as one of my personal favorites, F-Zero AX still lives at The Game Station.

Sadly it seems that Disney has let go most of the attendants that used to work in the arcades. Over the years that my family and I have been going I actually became friends with some of the workers at The Game Station. Since the law past and they don't need people inside to award prizes you might see one worker just walking around, other then that they don't seem to have full time attendants. To make up for this they have a system using QR Codes on (almost) all of the machines. If you scan the code with your phone it'll take you to a site called Arcade Tracker. On the page you give them all your info and you can tell them what's wrong with the game. When I arrived the pinball machines look liked they had not been serviced in well over a month. Just FILTHY looking games. So I scanned one of the pins and put in a report saying they needed to be cleaned and much to my surprised...it worked! Not even a day later I walked into the arcade while we where waiting to have breakfast and all five of the pinball machines where clean! I even put in a report on my last trip at another arcade where the flight yoke on Afterburner Climax wasn't working correctly and it worked 100% when I visited!

So while the arcade is a pale shadow of what it once was it's still a great place to check out if like when I went the weather was really rainy and really hot. Now that DisneyQuest will be going the way of the dinosaur it's the arcade to visit in Disney World. But to be honest, I don't see them keeping the arcades for long. Disney has been using their new "Magic Bands" where you just scan your wristband and you can make charges on them. The arcades are still using the same machines from when I first started going back almost ten years ago. Unless I see them update the machines to take the bands I could see many of the arcades in the resorts leaving in favor of something like a quick service restaurant or someplace to get coffee.

So enjoy them while you can folks!

Modern Pinball NYC Walkthrough Tour! (Sep 2015)

Here's yet another look at Modern Pinball NYC's current lineup of games! Since I was there on a Sunday there was a lull between customers so I quickly got out my camera and took a video while it was quiet. Of course, some folks came in right as I was about to finish!

Since my last visit in July some games like Wizard of Oz and Banzai Run have been taken out. They also replaced the LE of AC/DC with a Pro model and another sleeper game from Stern, Monopoly makes a welcome appearance! The Big Buck Hunter Pro machine might be the last time you see it because of a fatal flaw with the game. The game's main toy of course is a little buck that goes on a track across the playfield that you have to shoot multiple times to get a multiball. Sadly the part that registers the hit inside of the buck broke and of course Stern doesn't make replacement parts for it anymore. So they've gotta run the game with the main feature that will never work. It's sad because the game when it's setup right is a bit of fun with a lot of funny animations and modes.

KISS got the newest update and let me tell you, like everybody's been saying they made the Starchild shot WAY too easy. The first time I played it you'd be lucky if you got Starchild Multiball once during a whole three ball game, now you can get it more then once in a single turn. Hopefully they'll find a nice middle ground on the next update so folks don't abuse the shot too much.

Walking Dead is a TOTALLY different game. I still remember a lot of people hated the game when it came out, including myself. It did a total Spider-Man where it came out with early code and people liked the way the game played, but the game itself wasn't there. Now there's a ton of combo shots, multipliers and modes! It's well worth checking out!  

DisneyQuest: The Final Video

Well folks, here it is. My biggest video ever clocking in at over 50 minutes long. It's one final look at DisneyQuest in Orlando Florida. (I look forward to hearing from trolls on YouTube that the video's too long, meanwhile they'd complain if I spit it into multiple videos to get more hits...)

As you may have heard Disney announced that the place would be closing to make room for a new NBA Experience...store? They haven't exactly stated, they also haven't exactly stated when DisneyQuest would be shutting down. I had a cast member tell me he had heard they closed up the week prior to me getting there and then finally heard they'd be closing at the end of the year...five bucks it doesn't last that long.

The place sure has seen better days. They still have the nerve to ask for full 40 dollar admission in order to enter. While they got some new games in like Jetpack Joyride and a new Skylanders game they had to do away with one of their signature games, Ride The Comix. The last few times I went they took down the units on the 4th floor and moved everything up to the 5th and now all of the units are gone. They even went as far as taking it off the leaflets they hand out as well as the maps no longer list the game. It's a real shame because I loved the game when I played it back in 1999. According to the Wikipedia entry the ride shut in September of 2014 in order to make room for more seating for the FoodQuest quick service restaurant, which you know is BS since I never see either floor packed with people eating.

Aladdin's Magic Carpet still has a few "working" units. I say that because like the last time my headset REEKED of sweat even though you wear a "halo" to prevent your head coming into contact with anything and since we're using close to over 20 year old VR headsets the image is REALLY blurry. It actually hurts playing it. Between the horrible picture and the smell I took off my headset midgame and walked away.

I say this in the video, but I would like to ask anybody at Disney reading this, PLEASE release the source code for both Ride the Comics and Aladdin's Magic Carpet so people can bring them to new Virtual Reality headsets like the Rift. I would love to have a chance to play them again with some online gameplay!

The pinball and arcade games are totally destroyed. Most of the classics have been retrofitted to LCD monitors which look horrible. The few running on CRT's have terrible burn in and there's a lot of control issues with various games. Tetris Giant a game I was excited to play only had one working "Deka-Con" controller and it wasn't fully working because it's supposed to have force feedback when you score a double or larger. I tried to play Discs of Tron and the fire button stuck two minutes into my game.

The pinball machines are even worse. The Iron Monger in Iron Man won't even come up and the flippers don't have any power to make the combo ramps, X-Men's multiball is totally disabled, Avatar, Avengers, Transformers and Rolling Stones are all filthy and Tron...my Tron is the worst. The game is still running on the original code, it was never updated but the ball actually gets stuck on the return lanes. I actually picked the game up and shook it and the ball would not come loose. Only when the game would cycle through and the right sling shot would fire did the ball finally get loose.

The whole place was such a shame going. Over 40 dollars and they can't maintain what the have. Not just the video games and pinball but their highlight attraction games. I thought I'd be able to play Ride the Comix one last time, even with the vomit educing headsets. I left the place very disappointed. I almost wanted to ask for my money back but I bet there's a "no refund" policy on the back of the ticket. Hard to believe when I first went there back in 1999 they where taking around investors to try to franchise the place all over the country and the whole world. While Chicago saw the only other DisneyQuest that one died in 2001 due to low attendance and also the cost since people didn't feel like paying 40 dollars to get in. If for some reason you're going to be down in Florida by the end of the year, don't even waste your time going.

Nanuet Arcade Walkthrough Tour! (June 2015)

Here's a video I know A LOT of folks have been waiting for! It's an outdated look at the Nanuet Arcade in Nanuet New York! We ended up meeting the owner Vic at the Rockland Pinball Open House Party and we took a few hours to go on over to check the place out and we where happy with what they had to offer!

Vic has the place chock full of games to please just about any arcade gamer. From the classics like Toobin and Crystal Castles, beat em' ups like Michael Jackson's Moonwalker and Aliens Vs. Predator, current and classic fighting games, Japanese style racing games, lightgun shooters and a wide verity of music games.

While we where there they where just putting the finishing touches on two games from Konami's famous Bemani series, Sound Vortex III and JuBeat. (Or if you where lucky enough to play it at a US location test, UBeat) So sadly I don't have any footage of the two games actually being played. I also say the video is outdated because they altered the layout from the video above. Now they put all of the music games in the front of the arcade with the fighters in the back due to the fact they also host live concerts and the music from both the bands and the various games where bleeding into each other so they smartly moved them to the front.

They've also got a nice selection of pinball. Like the owner Vic said in the video he just picked up an Elvira's Scarred Stiff machine to add to the lineup. He's also hosting weekly pinball leagues as well so if you're in the area and looking for some folks to play make sure you check them out!

They've also got a nice snack counter with some good stuff to eat as well! We'd like to thank Vic for hosting us! Make sure you go and give them some love!

Nanuet Arcade's Website

Rockland Pinball's Open House Party!

FINALLY!! Welcome to a new era for the Arcade Hunters! I finally got my new computer, new editing software and now I can finally process all these HD videos I've been recording on the high quality camera correctly! So first up we've got a very special tour for you!

Over on Pinside we saw the folks from Rockland Pinball where going to be hosting an open house party. They had a list of a bunch of great games they where going to have out and they also said they'd be having a BBQ as well, so we pretty much had to go!

They had a tent set up with a bunch of great games including for the very first time for me playing it a "Vault Edition" of Stern's Iron Man. It was put next to an original classic version so you could see the difference with the new LED lights they added in. It really brightens up the game quite a bit. They also had a Limited Edition of Star Trek which my friend Brendan destroyed and a really odd version of High Speed that has a little bit of history behind it.

As you might see in the video for some reason this High Speed has a totally different playfiled then the one's you may have seen. For some reason it's got Robocop, Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd from Dragnet are on there. That's because this game is only one of 100 conversion units for High Speed that where made for Italy where Dragnet and Robocop where big hit movies. So to make some extra money Williams printed up 100 new playfields, backglass and sling shots and made High Speed conversion kits. Even though it's Italian the game still plays all in English and it's the same exact game as the original. They called the game "La Retata" or The Raid and the one you see in the video might be the only one of it's kind in the United States. Sadly the owner told me when the game was being shipped back to the states the backglass broke and they had to replace it with an original one.

One other thing I want to correct in the video is what I said about the Cactus Canyon: Continued. It's not the same machine that I played at Pinfest in Allentown, but it's actually the owner's own personal game he brought to the party. He told me he liked the demo of Continued he went out and got the P-ROC board as well as the Color DMD and he loves it.

Sadly the place was REALLY crowded and it also started to rain so I wasn't able to get any gameplay videos, just the tour. Hope you enjoyed this special look at the open house party! We'd like to thank everybody for having us out!

Make sure you tune in next time, all you Bemani fans will want to check out our next tour of the Nanuet Arcade!

The King of Kong Arcade Walkthough Tour (April 2015)

FINALLY!! I'm done with the videos I shot back in APRIL!! With the new computer here I can finally move onto new tours I've had cooking! So here's the last video I took while I was in Florida at the Orlando International Airport, of the King Of Kong Arcade....or what happened to it...

A few months ago the announcement was made that the arcade was going to be shutting down and since I had over an hour and a half to kill before my flight home to New York, I thought I'd venture down to see what exactly happened to it. Would there be a new arcade in it's place or a new shop? Well..it turns out it's none of that.

Now the place is simply called, "Relax and Recharge" and it consists of a room full power outlets to charge your phones, benches and televisions and a small corner for the kids with cartoons and some toys. That's it. They even went and taped over the old sign that used to say "Arcade".

I'm not shocked to see the place go. Whenever I visited there was barley any people in there and I don't think with the new TSA regulations you couldn't even bring home any bottles of Ricky's Hot Sauce, which is a shame because it's delicious. For me other then the decor there really wasn't anything to the arcade. The prize counter took up the most space and they had shirts, sauce and Twin Galaxies trading cards. Which I think they let you buy, I never really did ask. First time I went there the woman working behind the counter was yelling at somebody on her cell phone in Spanish and the second time I went there the girl working the counter just simply up and walked out leaving me in the arcade alone.

Of course the biggest thing I didn't like was the fact they didn't offer the game that the arcade was named on. When I met Billy himself at the first ever Kong Off I asked him about it and he told me it wouldn't make any money and people would rather play racing or shooting games or basketball instead. I did see in another video they had one of the "Triple Play" Nintendo cabs and one time I went I saw one of the Kong Off units but it wasn't turned on to play and was decorated for Halloween.

So I hope you enjoyed the last batch of videos from Florida. I will be going down again at the end of August. Since SO many people have asked...YES. I will be going to Disney Quest one final time...IF it's open. When they made the announcement that they where shuttering they didn't mention exactly when they'd be closing so I'll have to just go and find out for myself while I wear my original Polo shirt I got when they USED to sell Disney Quest related products in the store.

Disney's Boardwalk Resort Mini-Arcade

Hey folks! Got one more video after this to finish off the Florida videos before I can FINALLY get into posting the new stuff I've been working on since I've got a new PC to finally edit stuff!

Here's a quick look at the mini arcade in Disney's Boardwalk Resort. They took out the one machine that used to give out keychain prizes and in it's place is one of the "Triple Play" classic Nintendo cabs. With that and Pac-Man's Arcade Party I love it because it's small, hardly anybody goes inside and I can play the hell out of Pac-Mania and Mario Brothers! Kinda wish they had a different racing game other then Grid. Still don't care for the more realistic "sim" racers. Thankfully Hummer Extreme Edition is good.

For those of you in the NYC area I'll be at Modern Pinball NYC tomorrow for Project Pinball's event they're hosting. Project Pinball is going around the United States this summer raising money to help put pinball machines into children's hospitals all over the US. So be sure to check them out over at Project Pinball and help them out!

I'll have a video of the event as well as my final Florida video where I show off what happened to the fabled, King of Kong Arcade!

Lafferty Place Arcade Walkthough Tour (April 2015)

Hey folks Nick here with a bit of news! FINALLY after months of waiting I'm happy to say I'm having a new PC custom built and it should be here in another week! So be on the look out for some new tour videos and I plan on finishing up any other older videos I never had the chance to upload and I also have a Disney arcade video I have to piece together because a phone call cut it off halfway through.

Here's a new look at the Yacht and Beach Club's arcade Lafferty Place. I stayed here one of the first years the arcade opened in the early 1990's and the place was heaven with stuff like the TMNT arcade game and a lineup of amazing Bally/Williams pinball machines. Now they've only got one Pirates of The Caribbean machine that just doesn't work, even though they actually cleaned it and due to the new Florida law they had to get rid of the giant prize machine you could cash your tickets in with.

The one thing they've done with the resort arcades I like is almost every game now has a QR code made just for that game. If you've got a problem with the game you can scan the code on your phone and it will take you to a website. The website will have the game listed and the arcade your in. When your on the site you can write up what's wrong with the machine and they'll send a tech out to fix it...or so they say. After I finished the video I went to play Afterburner Climax and the joystick only half worked. During the game it moved fine, but you couldn't do stuff like barrel rolls and quickly turn left or right and also the joystick would not move to the right on the plane selection screen. So I fired up my QR scanner app and reported the problem...and I also chewed them out for how disgusting the PoTC pinball machine was because none of the pinball machines I saw in the resorts had QR codes to scan.

When I go back later this summer I plan on checking out the arcade again. I wonder if the game will still be there or did they ever bother to open up the control panel to actually fix what was wrong with it? We'll have to wait and see to find out! 

North Conway Grand Hotel Arcade Walkthrough

While on vacation I managed to stumble upon a decent arcade in my hotel. Check out the video to see what they have, including the copyright nightmare that is Toy Taxi!

The Frontierland Shootin' Arcade!

When I was going through the comments on the closing of the Tomorrowland arcade I saw a few folks mention to me if they had gotten rid of the famous "Shootin' Arcade" and if it was there they'd like to see a video of it. Since the last time I had visited the attraction was down for refurbishment so it was my first time playing it since they updated it!

As you can see everything is still present and accounted for. Nothing's been altered, and since they refurbished the whole thing it looks really nice. Sadly they've adjusted the pricing so now it's a dollar for a game. Some of the guns had problems but thankfully the attendant was there and quickly put the gun out of order and gave me a credit on another gun that did work.

One of the cool bits of trivia I heard about this game was from fellow Disney fans, Hoot Gibson and his pal Chief. Who we've mentioned before during a few of our Drunk on Disney outings. Hoot and Chief both worked at a number of Disney parks around Florida and because of that they had a lot of great photos of the inside of the Shootin' Arcade including some really cool closeups of some of the stuff in the game. One thing that Hoot said is the attraction actually has a full day to night cycle that takes a few hours to go through. So depending on when you go to play it might be the morning or night. There's also a full sunrise and sunset too. They also change up the background sounds, so in the morning you'll hear birds chirping and at night it'll be crickets.

Some really cool stuff you may not have noticed! Make sure you check it out on your next visit!  

The Game Station (April 2015)

Here's an updated look at the Walt Disney World Contemporary Resort's arcade, The Game Station. Since I had breakfast with my family at Chef Mickey's and it was a raging thunderstorm outside I thought I'd take a look at what happened. As you can see in the beginning the gigantic prize counter is now covered in a red shroud. I did peek and yes, everything was gone. So the giant middle row of games they had now have "FOR AMUSEMENT PLAY ONLY" written on them and when you pay for your game cards they have the same thing written on signs saying that the machines no longer award tickets and prizes. So brand new games like Pac-Man Ticket Mania have been taken out and games like Super Monkey Ball TICKET Blitz can no longer award prizes. My old game card that I had from years ago still worked and did show I had tickets on my balance. I'm wondering what will happen when I go to recharge my card on my next trip. I ended up just finishing off the few bucks I still had on the card.

The games at The Game Station are still the best kept games in all of Walt Disney World. I noticed something new on the games. All of the video games and some of the prize games now have QR Codes you can scan on them to report any issues to the techs. For some reason NONE of the pinball machines that I saw on my trip had any codes to scan...so while I was at one arcade I reported an issue I had but also put in a really nasty comment on how poorly the lone pinball machine was kept and telling them to get rid of it. (You'll see that in a future video)

I'm wondering if the Star Wars Episode 1 Pinball 2000 game is the same one they used to have in Tomorrowland. From speaking with one of the techs he told me all the games are on a route and they go around in trucks delivering them to all the game rooms on Disney property. So I wonder if many of the games inside Tomorrowland went to other resorts to fill in the void left from having to get rid of so many of the redemption machines.

Hope you liked this updated tour! Be sure to check in next week for a look at the classic Frontierland Shootin' Arcade! 

Walt Disney World Tomorrowland Arcade 2015

Well, it finally happened. The arcade in Walt Disney World is now a thing of the past. If you haven't been listening to our podcast we did a whole episode about it. Recently Florida put in a new law saying machines are not allowed to award prizes worth over 75 cents. It turns out some senior centers and VFW Halls had some illegal gambling going on and they where trying to skirt Florida's gambling laws of instead of winning money they'd give out stuff like gift cards for gas or supermarkets. The problem is the language in the bill that was passed is so vague it can apply to arcade redemption games. So places like Dave & Busters are fighting it and continuing business as usual meanwhile Disney seems to not want to take part in any of it so they just shut the whole thing down.

So when you get off of Space Mountain you're now emptied into a MUCH smaller gift shop.  Even when you take the Walt Disney World Railroad you used to be able to see the back of the arcade with these giant bubble windows. The windows are still there but you can't see inside anymore. There's a lone door that leads inside. I'm not sure if they left the whole inside empty or even what they're planning on doing with the space. I'm kinda surprised they didn't keep it open to do some character meet and greets with characters like Buzz Lightyear and Stitch that usually hang around Tomorrowland, but for now what was the arcade is now boarded up.

This also bodes the same for the Pizza Planet restaurant in MGM Studios/Hollywood Studios. (I still refuse to call it "Hollywood Studios" when they haven't gotten rid of many of the original MGM elements in the park.)  While you can still get a bite to eat of their disgusting pizza and sit down, the arcade games are all gone, which is kind of stupid to have a place based off a Chuck-e-Cheese's/Showbiz Pizza and not have ANY games. From the rumors it sounds like the whole place is going to get shut down anyway in favor of the Mos Eisley Cantina from Episode 4, which I'd rather have anyway, so we'll just have to wait and see.

What's the future hold for arcade gaming at the other resorts? Well I checked in with a few of them so this Wednesday look for an updated look at The Game Station!