Pinball Tournament in Göteborg!

Tonight we went to RedStone Pinball here in Göteborg. It's the premier public (more on this qualifier later) pinball place here. They are open Wednesday through Saturday and they have a weekly IFPA tournament on Wednesdays. The tournament is included in your entry fee with no money going to a prize pool. The winner gets a giant bottle of non-alcoholic cider and free entry the following week. 

Donna and I took the trolly for about 25 minutes and found RedStone in an old Sugar Factory that is now converted to mixed use including art studios and an awesome pinball location. 

The arcade is a pay a flate rate and play all night model. We tried to pay with our Visa but it was having issues so David, one of the owners, volunteered to pay and have us transfer money to him via PayPal. That worked great and we really appreciated the favor. 

There are 3 rooms with pinball and arcade games. The first room is a coat rack room with Alien Remake and Metallica Remastered. The middle room, seen above, is a really cool looking room with classic Solid State Machines. 

I got to play Cosmic Gunfight for the first time. One of the owners came by while I was playing and said it was their newest addition to the arcade. 

I also got to play Dragon, which I had played before, but not often. Many of the classics were set to 5 ball. It made sense once the tournament started because it made the classics play about as long as the moderns. 

The main room is also cool. The machines were all in great condition and playing well.  They were fixing and working on machines the whole time we were there. 

Donna and I got to play ABBA, a machine you mostly see in Europe. In fact, one of the players I played with did voice over for the machine. 

We got there at about 5:30 and the tournament started at 7pm so I got some practice in and also talked to a journalism student about pinball. He was writing an article and trying to find the story he wanted to tell. 

I also took the opportunity to have another delicious Swedish beer. 

Why so serious?  Well the tournament was starting soon so we all got serious!

At 7pm a horn honked and everyone gathered around the monitor showing the tournament info. The tournament director was kind enough to go over everything in English for the 1 person that was there that didn't speak any other languages. 

27 players showed up to play in the tournament. There was only 3 hours to play so things went fast. The rounds went up and we were off and playing. 

For round 1 I played with 3 other players in 3 different machines. 

Hot Doggin' was set to 5 balls and my ball 2 was amazing. Your bonus carries over ball to ball in Hotdoggin' so my good ball 2 led to the rest of the balls being good and I took first place without having to play my last ball. 

Kiss went well too. I had a good game and came in 2nd and then Medieval Madness went fantastic. Again, balls 1 and 2 were enough to take 1st place. I didn't need my last ball. 

Round 1 was almost a perfect round for me so round 2 was going to be tougher because I would be matched with other players that played well. 

TMNT isn't my jam. Somehow I eeked out a 3rd with almost no points but, I I believe the game malfunctioned. I chose Donatello and his perk is a multiball ready to go, all you need to do is hit the right ramp. I did that instantly and multiball didn't start. And then things didn't go well after that. 

I had a good Roadshow game and came in 2nd. This left Bally Kiss, which is one of my faves. I crapped the bed. :( Luckily my first round had me in position for making finals. I had to sweat 2 2 groups but the players that could have moved me out of a finals spot didn't. 

The goal is always to make finals and then do my best. 

The first round of finals, or semifinals if you will, I was paired with Karyn, one of the top players in the world. 

I was also on TMNT again. I had an even worse game than I had in qualifying. And finished last, but...

my Stranger Things game was great and I finished 1st and I had a good Mandalorian game finishing 2nd. This gave me enough points for 2nd in my group and I was moving on to the finals. 

The finals round didn't go well for me. I had bad games on Star Trek, Kiss, and Pokemon. I ended up in 4th which is great, but I feel I had the skills for 2nd but it didn't work out. 

(Insert podium photo from RedStones Facebook page when it's available)

It was a super fun time and I met some great people that hopefully, I will run into in the future. 

While I was messing around in the tournament, Donna was playing all of the machines. She put up a GC (Grand Champion) score on Grand Prix!

The Complex Relationship between Sweden and Pinball 

I'm not able to find any good links about Swedish Pinball Laws so I will recite what I remember from my talks;

Pinball was classified the same as slot machines here in Sweden until about 2 years ago. Up until recently, most of the pinball has been in private collections and private invite only clubs. 

RedStone doesn't take coin drop so it is harder to call it gambling. You pay to get in and then games,. including arcade games are free. I do see places with 1 or 2 machines around, but I didn't check to see if they are coin drop. 

One of the people I played with said that the law said or maybe still says that you need to provide a receipt for every credit of pinball played, like the slot machine requirement. Again I can't find any info online in English so that's the best I can do. 

Walking a Scandinavian Mile

Göteborgs botaniska trädgård (no affiliation with Trogdor the Burniator)

Today we went to The Göteborg Botanical Gardens, which for me, replaced The Phoenix Botanical Gardens as the best botanical gardens I have ever been to. It's huge and there are accessable trails next to more adventurous trails. At times I felt like we were walking in the woods. 

I didn't get my feet wet!

I didn't hit my head!

We have been walking a lot on our trip, but today we only walked a mile, BUT, it was a Scandinavian mile!  Scandinavian miles are 10 kilometers or 6.2 "normal" miles. Texas take note, not everything is bigger in Texas, your miles are 6x smaller.

There was a fungus among us. 

On the way home we ran into Pippi Longstocking!  The American version of the theme song ran in my head the rest of the day, or at least the way I remember it. I loved those movies as a kid. 

Tivoli Gardens, A Theme Park Masterpiece

Today we spent most of the day at Tivoli Gardens, just across the street from Copenhagen Central Station. The park opened in 1843 and was one of the places Walt was inspired by while he was planning Disneyland. 

When you visit you buy entry, and then, if you want to ride the rides, you have two options. You can buy an all day wristband that gets you on all the rides or you can purchase the rides á la carte. If you have come all this way, just get the wristband. Locals say it is expensive, but it isn't that much more expensive than Copenhagen itself whereas visiting a Disney property is WAY more expensive than the normal spend you would encounter in the cities they are in. As a comparison, our entry and rides at Tivoli Gardens was $5 more expensive than our delicious but not fancy lunch the previous day. 

Each ride has a turnstile and you scan in with your band. It's like Magic Band but it doesn't cost anything extra!

Once you enter the main gate, you are in a very European feeling theme park. It's all very clean and nothing feels cheap. It's all very well done and very well maintained. I didn't notice any custodial sweepers even though it was sparkling clean. 

When was the last time you saw someone shooting real arrows at an amusement park?

So European Oo la la!

Our first task was to ride the 2nd oldest operational rollercoaster in the world!  The Rutschebanen, which translates to Roller Coaster, was built in 1914. 

I took this photo for the sign saying, "L.A. Thompson Scenic Railways". LaMarcus Adna Thompson was an American inventer. He build rollercoasters all over America and Europe. 

Donna scans in with her wristband. 

This is the brake person. They ride in a special seat and use a hand brake to regulate the speed. The brake smells just like the cable car brake in San Francisco because it's a metal brake pad pressing on a wooden siding and the cable car is a wooden brake pad pressing on a metal track. 

The lift is actually a cable just like a Cable Car in San Francisco. 

The coaster spirals around and goes over a few camel humps. It's not that intense but it's really fun. 

This is us after the ride. 

This is us on the ride later in the evening. We rode it half a dozen times during the day. 

Next we rode this hot air balloon themed ferris wheel. 

The views from the top were great. There were taller rides with better views but those rides weren't for me. 

We rode a crazy mine ride that was also a flume ride with wand guns. You shot at lights but not much happened when you did so we just rode. 

Here is a miner

They are down in the mines with a giant dragon. 

And they are scrathing its ear with a giant backscratcher. The story is ludicrous.

But the ride is fun. 

The grounds are beautiful. We were lucky to be here during Cherry Blossom season. 

We had delicious lunch at a Mikkeller Bar and brewery there. 

and Donna got to touch a gull foot through the canvas cover. 

I pretended to be a guard. 

We got a comedically large cotton candy.

We went into a legit old fun house with all of the things you see in old movies. 

Later in the evening we bought a beer and sat down in some chairs and waited for a Pantomime show to start. 

I was really looking forward to seeing this curtain open. It opened from the top and when the feathers where unfurled, it lowered into the stage. 

I shared my beer with a giant toad. 

The show was great and very European with ballet and great music. It was all pantomiming so we didn't have problems understanding the story. 

The plastic beer cups have a 5 DKK deposit so we used the returned coin to feed the fish and ducks. 

We rode a kiddie rollercoaster that went right through the cherry blossoms. It was pretty magical. Also this coaster is built on a very small plot of land so you ride around 3 times zooming through the station. 

We went on a cool old merry-go-round (a simple version of a carousel where the animals don't go up and down). 

There was a very catchy song playing and some of the people around were singing along so I looked it up. Here it is. 

We rode these little boats which weren't on a track. 

They pushed you out and when your number lit on the board 5 minutes later, you headed back in. It was all the honor system and it just worked. 

We rode a beautiful carousel but the music was off and so was the up and down feature.  :(

We also rode Galejen, an awesome Swiss Twist style pirate ship ride. 

As the sun set the place got even more beautiful. It also started to drizzle so people began leaving. 

We rode the Hans Christian Anderson dark ride. You rode in a flying trunk and were rushed through quite a few of his stories in a short amount of time. 

Tivoli Gardens was a fantastic experience. It was a Saturday during the off season so the longest line we waited in was about 15 minutes. 

Seriously, you should go there.