Park Arcades Question

In the claw games thread I explained my activity of spending $20 a visit in the Hi-Test arcade at VF. My hopes were to save all the ticket receipts accumulated for the end of the season to get something big. So far I'm $120 into it .

This started because there wasn't much at the begining of the season so I decided to hold out in case something better showed up. Then it became this wait until the year end decision.

So the situation and question are these:

I was at VF yesterday and noticed that alot of the bigger prizes were missing since my last visit about 3 weeks ago. I asked one of the staff if they restock the shelves or do they stock everything at the front end of the season and just let the shelves go empty.

The idiot shrugged his shoulders and told me he was going on break, and walked away. Someting else happened with the crappy attendants there but I don't want to make this a trip report.

Does anyone here have an answer to my question?

I don't want to dump over 9000 points (hit a few jackpots) on a ton of small junk and candy because someone managed to pull 5000 points in one visit. The prizes did get better until now. Should I continue or cash out next time I'm at VF?

At Dorney I have noticed they have not restocked prizes since the beginning of the season. Worse is there are no big prizes, last year they had a slot machine for 25,000 tickets that I wanted and was a few thousand away from it. It was there at the end of the season but was gone on opening weeking this season.

There is also the possibility that anything good will be at an unreachable amount of tickets if they do add more prizes. The big prize this year at Dorney is Rockband for Playstation 2. They wanted 250,000 tickets for it! It isn't an arcade where tickets have multiple values, each ticket is worth 1 point. They lowered it to 75,000 but it's still impossible (and a PSP system was 25,000 in 2006).

I am holding out for next year but am worried my vouchers might start to fade to the point where they are unreadable.

Wouldn't this be a customer service issue that should be handled by the park?

I always thought that no one ever gets the big prises at a park arcade. Aren't they just for show?

Yoshi,

They haven't had anything THAT big at VF. The high end yesterday was some neon lamps and R/C cars. Earlier there was a rather interesting home casino set. I forget what else was there but I know what was is no longer. I should look harder next time. I think they used to have these suitcase bicycles. There was no one prize I had a goal for.

As for the staff. They're just completely apathetic to help in any way. Besides the forementioned issue, I had a game run out of tickets in mid play. It took a while to alert them and refill the machine. I just stood there waving my arms like a dork with a pile of tickets already at my feet. I did not want to leave the machine. Someone finally clued the sole attendant there (who did replace the other one on break). Which then I had to wait for another guy to come out and putz his way over to fix the problem. It took about 10 minutes before I could continue. I know it's not putting out a fire or anything but c'mon! Get your thumbs out of your A$$ and do your job. And without the attitude that I'm ruining your day.

*** Edited 8/25/2008 2:27:26 AM UTC by WildThingNative***

^ Wow, I thought all parks has really large prizes to try to entice people to play. It sounds like Valleyfair has a way worse selection of prizes than Dorney

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LostKause said:
Wouldn't this be a customer service issue that should be handled by the park?

I always thought that no one ever gets the big prises at a park arcade. Aren't they just for show?

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Usually they aren't that easy to obtain especially since most people aren't going to save their tickets when they only visit once a season. I know someone did get a slot machine at Dorney last year for the 25,000 tickets since they had 1 style earlier in the season and got a different one later in the season.

Hard Rock Park had Rock Bands, PS2's, 360's Guitars, and Guitar Heros as prizes in this game. You had to catch one of those water jugs which had a note in it telling you what you won, if anything.

I was tempted. ;)

-Tina

*** Edited 8/27/2008 11:29:33 AM UTC by coasterqueenTRN***

As former manager/buyer for Skeeball and the arcades at Kings Island from the 1990's I can fill you in on how we operated.

At the beginning of the year we would purchase much, if not all of our stock at the beginning of the season including the large prizes. Unless we were completely out of the high end prizes at the middle of the season, we did not reorder. Of course you could save your tickets for the next season.

Majority of people saving tickets were passholders who collected through the year if not multiple years. We even redeemed tickets from the old Coney Island, which was rare, but did happen.

We worked on prize values at a penny a point. So if something cost us $100 its ticket value was 10,000 points. If it cost us a quarter, 25 points. Not all items worked exactly that way, but the majority did. If we had something there for a few years, the ticket value went down.

Honestly, from someone who used to work in a regular arcade (the type you would see in shopping malls) it would be a LOT easier to just save your money playing the actual arcade or midway games, and steering away from all of the redemption games. Redemption games in general are crappy unless you visit a Dave & Buster's, but in an amusement park - not so much.

I don't do either. I just stick to the good, old-fashioned arcade games, as well as skeeball and pinball. :)

Cedar Point's main arcade has the BEST games, especially the old-school stuff in the back. ;)

I WISH we had a D&B's here! I love them! :)

-Tina *** Edited 8/28/2008 10:32:05 AM UTC by coasterqueenTRN***

Definitely! If I find a Galaga or Pac Man anywhere, I'm in love with that place *laughs*. I'm more of a Dance Dance Revolution, Beatmania, Para Para, or Pump It Up arcade goer, so when I find any of those, it makes me happy as well.

Oh, and drunks flopping around on Pump It Up at a Dave & Busters = priceless. *grin*

Para Para Paradise machines are very diffiuclt to find. I have seen 1 in the past 5 years and it only lasted at the arcade for a few months. Same with Beatmania and all the other non DDR Bemani games, they just don't seem to exist in my area. Thankfully I have them all for PS2.