The next stop of the college road trip lead us to James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA. I did manage to find a few pins there that I can talk about later, but nothing major. So on the way to the next school, Virginia Tech, we stopped off at the renowned Roanoke Pinball Museum, which resides in the city with the same name.
The museum is located in a really cool building called Market Square, which contains several other paid attractions. To go to the pinball museum, you buy a ticket(s) in a main lobby that houses all sorts of amazing fish tanks. We’re huge fans of aquariums so we got a kick out of that.
With your paid ticket, you walk up a set of stairs to the pinball entrance. The museum contains a great variety of machines. It has more electromechanical aka EM machines than one would normally see at an arcade, which is a really fun change of pace. There’s also a number of less common solid state pins, such as Paragon (which I love) and Bally Medusa, with its amazing art.
Next up were heavy hitters from the early DMD era, such as The Addams Family and Creature from the Black Lagoon. Finally a number of modern Sterns, including a beautiful Lord of the Rings with a Color DMD and a gorgeous Star Trek.
One of our personal favorites was the amazing and uncommon Banzai Run with its vertical playfield in the head. So cool. There was two other Williams games at the museum that people go wild for, the horseshoe tossing game Ringer and the neat EM pin Doodle Bug.
All of the games that were turned on were in fantastic working order, though I was a little surprised by the number of pins that were turned off likely awaiting repair. All of the games were set to free play. Admission to the museum was $11/person. We actually bought a combo ticket to the Pinball Museum and a place that I had never heard of but wanted to check out called Starcade that resides in the same building for $18. The city of Roanoke had a number of great restaurants that you can hit on your visit to make a fun day of it
🎶 “In my mind I'm going to Carolina” 🎶 for the next leg of our trip. Stay tuned and thanks for reading.