Review: Roanoke Pinball Museum

Update 11/9/20: We spent a couple of weeks in Roanoke again recently and revisited the Roanoke Pinball Museum. Things are a little different to before seeing as we visited during COVID, but it was still a lot of fun and we felt safe being there. I’ve added an additional section towards the end of the post sharing more about our recent visit and how the museum is dealing with the pandemic.

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Once we’d booked our tickets for the Roanoke Harry Potter Festival, I took a look on Groupon for other things to do in Roanoke VA.

I was mainly looking for a good deal at restaurants, but something different caught my eye – a listing for the Roanoke Pinball Museum. Groupon had two adult tickets for $14 which would normally cost $24.80.

I clicked through to the museum’s own website to find out a bit more about it. Figuring it’d just be a small building with some old pinball machines, I got excited when I saw that they have over 50 machines you can play.

After checking with Shae if it was something she’d want to do too (she gave an emphatic yes), I bought our tickets through Groupon. We used some additional methods to save a total of 63% on the regular ticket costs.

Apparently the museum transformed itself into Azkaban for the Harry Potter Festival on the Saturday. We figured it’d be really busy as a result, so decided to visit the following day instead. The Roanoke Pinball Museum doesn’t open until 1pm on Sundays, so we arranged a late checkout (4pm) from the Sheraton Roanoke hotel. That way, Truffles could stay in the room at the hotel seeing as the museum’s not pet-friendly.

Review: Roanoke Pinball Museum

The Roanoke Pinball Museum is found on the second floor of Center In The Square in downtown Roanoke.

After stocking up on Curly Wurlys at The Candy Store on the first floor, we walked up the stairs to the second floor.

The Pinball Museum is on your left at the top of the stairs.

We had the Groupon app open on Shae’s phone as we arrived, so the staff member at the front desk marked it as redeemed. He let us know we could play on any of the pinball machines, unless there was a sign that advised otherwise. We were also free to stay and play for as long as we liked.

Seeing as we arrived right when they opened, we were the only people in the museum. That worked out well as it meant we could get a load of photos without looking like creepers.

Evolution Of Pinball

The Roanoke Pinball Museum has machines dating from 1932 up to 2014. It’s fascinating to walk round the museum and see the evolution of pinball machines over the years. A nice feature is that they have the machines in chronological order, so you can see the gradual changes.

Here are just some of the pinball machines you can play:

In addition to all these pinball machines, they had a couple of arcade games. In fact, they had both a Street Fighter II arcade game and pinball machine.

I tried playing the Street Fighter II arcade game and sucked as badly as I did back in the early 90s when I used to play it. Apparently playing as Blanka and electrifying your body still doesn’t win you any contests 25 years on.

One of my favorite machines there was Indiana Jones, also built in the 90s. Not only was it fun to play, but instead of pulling a lever to launch the ball, you pull a gun trigger.

From Old…

One of my other favorites was Roanoke Pinball Museum’s earliest pinball machine. It’s called Skill Score, it was built in 1932 and uses wooden balls. It’s almost more like Plinko than the pinball machines we’re used to nowadays.

Shae took this video of me playing Skill Score so you can see how it works. Apparently my Street Fighter II “abilities” carried over for this video as I got such a low score. In my defense, I did score 2,725 when I played later on 😉

…To New

You can go from the 1932 version of pinball to Mustang, Roanoke Pinball Museum’s newest machine which was built in 2014. Apparently only one company in the US makes pinball machines nowadays and this is one of theirs.

We ended up staying at the pinball museum for about 90 minutes. I could quite happily have played for much longer, but we had to get back to the hotel to finish packing and check out. By that stage, the museum had gone from just Shae and I to having about 20 other visitors.

As we went to leave, I noticed they had a scoreboard with the highest score for each machine:

Congrats to JML and Blair S who’ve both managed to score over 200 million. I think my best on one of the machines was 200 thousand.

The last thing we noticed on the way out were these awesome pinball night lights they had for sale.

Summary

The Roanoke Pinball Museum is definitely worth going to if you’re visiting Roanoke. I feel like the price is fair given that you can stay for as long as you like and you get unlimited plays. It’s even better value if you can get discounted tickets like we did through Groupon.

If you live in Roanoke and so could visit frequently, the museum sells memberships for individuals, households and students. Even if you only visit once a month, you’ll easily get your money’s worth.

You can even rent out the museum for parties, corporate functions, graduations, bachelor or bachelorette parties and more.

Update – Our Second Visit

As mentioned at the top of the post, we visited the Roanoke Pinball Museum again in October 2020. In the past, you could buy a ticket which gave you unlimited play time. You could therefore arrive when the museum opened and stay until it closed and play pinball all day if you wanted.

That’s no longer possible due to COVID. In order for them to be able to limit the number of people visiting the Roanoke Pinball Museum so that they can ensure social distancing, they now restrict entry to two hours. That’s probably disappointing for the hardcore pinball gamers in Roanoke, but two hours is still plenty of time to play pinball and get to experience a bunch of the different machines.

In order to help mitigate some of the risks from COVID, the museum has put in place additional measures for visitor safety. Everyone has to wear masks, you have to use hand sanitizer when first arriving (and can use it as much as you want during your visit) and they ask that you maintain physical distancing during your visit.

When we first visited the Roanoke Pinball Museum in 2017, we were able to take advantage of a Groupon to get cheaper tickets. Regular priced adult tickets back then were $12.40 per person; that’s increased ever-so-slightly to $12.50 since. That’s not bad considering it’s been a few years, despite the fact that the tickets don’t currently include unlimited time (which I’m assuming is only temporary due to the pandemic).

The person working at the front desk was very welcoming and she gave us each a token which could be used for the Beach Queens pinball machine. You had to try and hit at least six of the light-up bumpers to light the hula girls, but sadly the best any of us managed was four.

When we visited in 2017, the museum had a couple of arcade games, including the classic Street Fighter II. They’ve added a few more non-pinball machines now, so it was fun getting to play some other retro games which I was still just as bad at as I was when playing them in the 80s and 90s.

While Shae was wandering around, she spotted someone fixing a pinball machine and so got to see what it looks like behind the scenes.

My favorite pinball machine this time was The Munsters; I can’t remember if they had this particular machine the last time we visited, but I loved the show growing up. It originally came out in the 60s, but they showed it on British TV in the early 90s (I’m originally from the UK).

The reason I particularly liked this one is because when you hit the right combination of things (I’ve no idea what that combination was!), you activated a mini pinball game inside featuring Grandpa from the show.

As we were leaving, the person at the front desk pointed out an itty-bitty pinball machine you can play. The Flip Side is made for American Girl dolls and is a working pinball machine, so Shae channeled her inner doll.

Our two hours went by very quickly, but we had a great time and will likely return to the Roanoke Pinball Museum again the next time we’re in Roanoke.

Address

Roanoke Pinball Museum, 1 Market Square SE, Roanoke, VA 24011

Website

Roanoke VA Mini-Trip Report

• Review: Sheraton Roanoke Hotel
• Quidditch From The Pages – An Exhibition Match
• Geeking Out At The Roanoke Harry Potter Festival
• Review: Roanoke Pinball Museum
• How We Saved 63% On Roanoke Pinball Museum Tickets
• Review: Benny Marconi’s Pizza, Roanoke

We’ve been to Roanoke a couple more times since this original visit, so click here for all our Roanoke posts.