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Trip Report update!

Don's Pinball Podcast (patreon feed)·podcast_episode·16m 10s·analyzed·Jul 18, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.024

TL;DR

Don's road trip to Southern Fried Gaming Expo with theme park and pinball venue stops.

Summary

Don records a bonus Patreon episode during a road trip to the Southern Fried Gaming Expo in Atlanta, documenting stops at Holiday World (Indiana), Pigeon Forge/Dollywood (Tennessee), and local pinball venues. He discusses theme park experiences, plays WWE WrestleMania Pro at Big Daddy's Pizzeria, and previews coverage plans for the upcoming expo.

Key Claims

  • Holiday World in Santa Claus, Indiana predated Disneyland by one year (opened 1954) and would technically be the first theme park

    medium confidence · Don discussing Holiday World's history; verifiable but Don's 'technically' qualifier suggests some nuance

  • Holiday World offers free parking, free soft drinks throughout the park, free sunscreen stations, and includes water park with admission at ~$60 entry

    high confidence · Don detailing Holiday World's amenities during his visit

  • Dollywood experienced a water main break and full park closure during Don's visit

    high confidence · Don describing in-person experience at Dollywood on day of visit

  • Don recently acquired WWE WrestleMania Limited Edition (gold version with Hulk Hogan autograph)

    high confidence · Don explaining motivation for playing WWE WrestleMania Pro at Big Daddy's Pizzeria

  • WWE WrestleMania Limited Edition includes additional classic wrestlers (Hulk Hogan, Undertaker), extra ramps, extra flipper, spinning disc, and LCD screen/Jumbotron that Standard Pro version lacks

    high confidence · Don comparing Standard vs LE versions based on recent hands-on experience

  • WrestleMania's LCD screen was Stern's first instance of an LCD screen in a game

    medium confidence · Don's assertion; would require historical verification of Stern's release timeline

  • Marco Specialties will bring Godzilla 70th to Southern Fried Gaming Expo on-site, as they did with Venom last year

    high confidence · Don citing Marco Specialties announcement regarding expo logistics

Notable Quotes

  • “For some reason there is exactly one in Champaign, Illinois...somebody put down a little cloning ray and took a wiener stencil and put it in a portal and just got shat out into the middle of Illinois for no reason.”

    Don@ 1:32 — Humorous anecdote establishing casual, conversational tone of the episode

  • “You can walk around a Universal Park, and it's nothing but themes that have also been used in pinball for the same reason, because it's just fun to play in these themed environments.”

    Don@ 5:34 — Connects theme park design philosophy to pinball game design, showing thematic overlap in entertainment

  • “Free parking, free soft drinks, free sunscreen...imagine that you fill a park full of happy people and they tend to spend more and buy more merchandise and buy more food.”

    Don@ 7:13 — Don advocating for consumer-friendly venue model, suggesting this approach increases spending

  • “The whole park's closed. We were there about a half hour...and then boom, everything shuts. So that's a raw deal, man.”

    Don@ 9:46 — Documenting unexpected operational failure at major theme park venue during visit

  • “If you like [WWE wrestling] on the level that I do, then that's super fun...this game is super fun. Not a game for everybody, and that's totally okay.”

    Don@ 13:36 — Acknowledging niche appeal of WrestleMania while defending its value to enthusiasts

  • “I want to get a topper together where I can find a way to tie into that signal from that LCD screen and put another big Jumbotron up on the top as a topper.”

    Don@ 13:28 — Indicating design/modification plans for his WrestleMania machine, showing collector customization motivation

Entities

DonpersonZachpersonMarco SpecialtiescompanyHoliday WorldvenueDollywoodvenueSouthern Fried Gaming ExpoeventWWE WrestleManiagameBig Daddy's Pizzeriavenue

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Southern Fried Gaming Expo in Atlanta starting Friday; Don planning daily live stream coverage; Marco Specialties confirming Godzilla 70th will be on-site

    high · Don stating 'there'll be live streams...they'll be hopefully daily' and discussing Marco Specialties bringing Godzilla 70th

  • ?

    venue_signal: Big Daddy's Pizzeria in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee confirmed to have WWE WrestleMania Pro Standard version available for play

    high · Don playing the machine at this location and providing detailed comparison to his LE version

  • ?

    venue_signal: Holiday World (Santa Claus, Indiana) receiving strong promotion for consumer-friendly pricing model (free parking, free soft drinks, free sunscreen, water park included)

    high · Extended segment detailing amenities and Don encouraging listeners to visit

  • ?

    collector_signal: Don recently acquired WWE WrestleMania Limited Edition (gold version with Hulk Hogan autograph) and is investing time in learning the game and planning modifications

    high · Don comparing LE to Pro version and discussing plans for LCD screen topper modification

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: WWE WrestleMania shows significant differences between Pro and Limited Edition versions: additional classic wrestlers, extra ramps, extra flipper, spinning disc, and LCD Jumbotron screen

    high · Don detailing feature differences based on hands-on experience with both versions

Topics

Theme park experiences and venue qualityprimarySouthern Fried Gaming Expo coverage and logisticsprimaryWWE WrestleMania Pro vs Limited Edition comparisonprimaryHoliday World (Indiana) recommendation and promotionprimaryPinball venue hunting during road tripsecondaryCollector customization and modification planssecondaryTheme park design philosophy and themed entertainmentsecondaryPatreon community engagement and bonus contentmentioned

Sentiment

positive(0.78)— Predominantly upbeat and enthusiastic throughout. Don is excited about the road trip, speaks highly of Holiday World and regional attractions, enjoys his WrestleMania experience. Only negative note is disappointment about Dollywood closure, but he frames it constructively as an opportunity. Strong promotional tone for venues and upcoming expo.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.048

0:00
hey what's up everybody welcome patreon crew uh to a little bonus episode uh coming to you from the road currently i'm in eastern tennessee pigeon forge to be exact uh adjacent to dollywood which is currently closed and more on that in a bit i thought i'd update everybody on what i'm
0:30
doing on the road to the southern fried gaming expo super excited uh for that this is so much fun uh left the house i've got labyrinth all boxed up it's going out to a buyer in new jersey thank you sir for your purchase and you will enjoy your game because i wrapped it up exceedingly well so i finished that up on monday drove on into madison wisconsin dropped it off the terminal and it's on its way out there and then it's like vacation mode start it's monday the southern fry gaming expo starts on friday in atlanta i'm in the middle of wisconsin let's hit the road and get
1:01
down there uh so the first stop ended up being wienerschnitzel my favorite fast food hot dog restaurant it's exclusively like a west coast thing they're in the south the west as well but for whatever reason there is exactly one in champaign illinois and it's like nothing special But for some reason, this like hot dog restaurant from Los Angeles and Washington State and Arizona and parts of Texas that I really enjoy is in the middle of Illinois. It makes zero sense at all. They're not anywhere else in the Midwest.
1:32
It's just this one lone location. Like somebody put down a little cloning ray and took a wiener stencil and put it in a portal and it just got shat out into the middle of Illinois for no reason. For no reason at all. It makes no sense. I love it. So I go there. I get an all beef hot dog. I pay for the pretzel bun upgrade. and it's just like it's just perfect man man i mean i love it so we stopped by there we're having some fun i'm looking up some pinball places to go and things but it's getting a little late and so we wanted to get into our hotel uh so ended up getting into one in indianapolis uh while i
Godzilla 70th
game
Epic Universeproduct
Stern Pinballcompany
Genghisperson
?

content_signal: Don committing to daily live stream coverage from Southern Fried Gaming Expo with planned recordings and daily summaries

high · Don stating 'there'll be live streams...hopefully daily little recordings that we'll do or we'll talk about everything that we found and saw that day'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Dollywood experienced water main break and full park closure during peak hours (opening day); park promised reimbursement to affected guests

    high · Don documenting first-hand experience: muddy water percolating through concrete, emergency closure announcement, park shut off

  • ?

    business_signal: Holiday World's consumer-friendly model (free parking, free drinks, free sunscreen, bundled water park) reported to increase guest spending on food and merchandise due to extended park stay

    medium · Don citing park's reported finding: 'when they started doing this, people would stay in the park longer. They'd buy more food. The park ended up making even more money'

  • ?

    design_innovation: WWE WrestleMania credited as possibly Stern's first pinball machine with an integrated LCD screen (Jumbotron display on playfield)

    medium · Don stating 'i think this was stern's first instance of an lcd screen in a game so it's so awesome' and discussing topper plans to expand this feature

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Epic Universe (new Universal theme park area) set to open within six months; includes Super Nintendo, Universal Classic Monsters, Ministry of Magic, How to Train Your Dragon areas

    high · Don citing Zach's pinball show discussion of Epic Universe and discussing soft opening monitoring strategy

  • ?

    content_signal: Don and other pinball content creators (Zach) discussing theme park attractions and their connection to pinball game themes and design philosophy

    medium · Don noting coincidence of listening to Zach's show discussing Holiday World while driving to Holiday World; discussing thematic overlap between parks and pinball games

  • ?

    community_signal: Don providing Patreon exclusive bonus episode with extended trip coverage and planning collaborative content (WAP episode 7 with Genghis)

    high · Episode framed as 'bonus episode...coming to you from the road' for 'patreon crew' and mention of Discord engagement

    • 2:04
    was there i was talking i don't know if he's a member of the patreon so i don't know if you'll hear this or not um but the guy that's doing the uh the re-theme of whirlwind to the greatest showman uh he's making a homebrew uh he was in indianapolis and he's like how are you gonna be here and i'm like well just overnight it's 10 p.m he was heading to bed otherwise i was pretty close to getting able to play that so that would have been fun to share with everybody now he is doing a black and white version of a adam's family as well which i'm super excited i love this trend
    2:34
    of black and white machines um i've said before whoever's making the twilight zone remake uh whether it be CGC or others, they've got to do a black and white audition. Can you imagine getting that too and having the black and white monsters and the blood red kiss and Godzilla 70th in the lineup that would be fire? That's the only other thing that would make it even more awesome is a black and white Addams family. I would do the whole black and white row at that point. So we're in Indianapolis. It's late, and we're trying to think of things to do.
    3:05
    The next day, we were planning on coming through Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, which is just one of my favorite places in the country. But before that, there's a theme park in southern Indiana that we actually haven't been to in like 10 plus years. And it's like one of our favorites. So we decided to go to Holiday World. Now, if you're from the Midwest, I've talked to Jamie and them before. They've been wanting to go check it out. I want to kind of blast this out to everybody just so you're aware. In southern Indiana, there's a little amusement park called Holiday World that everybody needs to check out.
    3:36
    You guys know I come from the theme park and coaster hobby. I've known about this place. Since 2000. And we've been going out there since 2003. It is a theme park in the town of Santa Claus, Indiana. Each themed area of the park is themed after a different holiday. So it opened as a Santa Claus land in 1954. Predated Disneyland by one year. Which would technically make it the first theme park But it has a Christmas area as pretty much the entrance part And then they added on Halloween 4th of July this huge Thanksgiving expansion
    4:08
    which is where they have the Good Gravy coaster that I played the bump for here at the beginning of this episode. I saw this coaster at IAAPA in November. They had the train there for the reveal. And this is a ride where every car of the coaster train is themed like a gravy boat. and the lead car even has the spout with some gravy spilling out of it. It's just so absurd and so much fun, and I want to make sure people know about this place. Now, imagine my surprise as we're driving down the two hours from Indianapolis to Santa Claus to go to Holiday World
    4:39
    when I'm listening to the brand-new pinball show, and Zach is talking all about Holiday World, just so coincidental that we're on our way to the park, and then here's my pinball content also talking about this park that we're going to. he was also hyping up Epic Universe which is like right in my wheelhouse this is the brand new Universal Park that is set to open within the next six months and I'm like you know I'm on high alert for what they call technical rehearsals which is their soft openings and as soon as I hear from employees of the park that that is happening I'm down there in Florida because I can't wait
    5:10
    to go check out this area Super Nintendo area Universal Classic Monsters it's like walking through Monster Bash but as a whole theme park land with rides and everything a new Harry Potter area themed after the Ministry of Magic in Paris that transports you to London through the Flu Network and also How to Train Your Dragon area, all in the middle of the Celestial Park, anchored by a giant hotel within the theme park. Like, it's perfect, man. You can walk around a Universal Park, and it's nothing but themes that have also been used in pinball for the same reason, because it's just fun to play in these themed environments.
    5:43
    So, yeah, so Zach was talking about that and Holiday World, and I'm on my way to Holiday World, and I thought, you know what? more people need to know about how great this theme park is. So this is a theme park. They've got about five major coasters, three of them wood, two of them steel, plus an entire water park that is just amazing. This water park has four different water coasters. These are water park rides that you ride in either a raft or a kind of long inflatable tube structure. And they have magnetic launching systems that launch your watercraft with you and your crew in it around the course.
    6:18
    like they're super nuts and they've got four of them. Um, a lot of parks are lucky if they have one, this park has four. So here's the deal that you need to know with holiday world. First off, it's about $60 to get into a place, which is cheap, right? Um, uh, and the other thing is parking is included. Parking is free, uh, which you don't find anywhere except for Knoebels and E-Laysburg, Pennsylvania and holiday world. Um, not only is the parking free, uh, but soft drinks are free all throughout the park. They have drink stations set up. So included with your admission
    6:50
    is unlimited soft drinks. Like none of this pay $18, you know, for a refillable souvenir sipper cup and then drag this disgusting thing around with you all day to fill up. No, no, there's just drink stations set up all over. Just grab a cup, fill it up, drink as much as you want. And it's included. What the park found is when they started doing this, people would stay in the park longer. They'd buy more food. The park ended up making even more money by giving away soda and everybody's happier imagine that you fill a park full of happy people and they tend to spend more and buy more merchandise and buy more food instead of leaving the park to go eat at a mcdonald's or something
    7:22
    it makes sense so free parking free soft drinks free sunscreen there's sunscreen stations set up all over the park between the water park and the regular park to just go i mean why not you know just go up and grab those gallon of sunscreen and put some on so you don't burn you know they're not nickeling and diming you for like sunscreen that you forgot and then everybody gets sunburned has a bad time. The water park is included with admission. There's none of those tube rental fees that you find at some places. So it's just like pay one price, come and have fun in Southern Indiana, go and check this place out.
    7:53
    We were there for about four and a half hours. And in that time, we wrote every major coaster once or twice, went through the entire water park wrote all the water coasters We went into the what do you call it Splash Lagoon No the wave pool Went to the wave pool and then also played on some of their funnel slides and everything too We got food. We bought merchandise. My kid stuck her head in the big ball of fluff for the Build-A-Bear thing that they had. And I took a picture with a guy in a giant eagle suit.
    8:23
    It was fun and fantastic. And we did it all in four and a half hours and got back on the road. So go check out Holiday World if you're anywhere in the southern Indiana area. Even if you're not, it's not that far. It's such a cool place. There was even like there was a fireworks and drone show that night that we didn't even get to stay for. There's a campground attached to the place called Lake Rudolph that you can go camp at. It's just a fun way to go. I can't plug it enough. So we left there and we drove on down to Pigeon Forge. We got here late last night. Pigeon Forge, Tennessee is what happens if you take Kissimmee, Florida and drop in the middle of the Smoky Mountains.
    8:57
    And also adjacent to that is Dolly Parton's theme park, Dollywood, which sounds like a complete joke, but I got to tell you, it's a super awesome place. Awesome rides, food. It's a little more expensive to get in, $25 for parking, $100 for a ticket. But like world-class rides, great food and everything. We stepped into the door ready to have such a great time. We got there right at opening. and then we noticed right in the main entrance area there was a flooding situation going on with muddy water percolating up through the concrete. Obviously there was a water main
    9:29
    break that happened at the park but we kind of like trudged through the water and then kind of went into the park not thinking much about it. We're about to board their brand new coaster that opened this year. It's a multi-launch family coaster called Big Bear Mountain and then we get the announcement that the entire park is closed. There's no water. It's shut off. Everybody get out. whole park's closed. We were there about a half hour. We're just getting to the front of the line and then boom, everything shuts. So that's a raw deal, man. What the heck? They don't have earthquakes here. What happened? Just a water main just decided to break. There was water
    10:00
    percolating up from the flower beds, from the main concrete walkways. They had it all corded off and everything. And I'm like, all right, well, maybe they'll take care of that. And even though it's brown, it didn't smell like sewage. So that had me plussed. I don't want to make a knock against the park. They're promising to reimburse everybody for today, but it was a little bit of staleness. So we turned that into an opportunity to try to have some more fun elsewhere. So we're right outside of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It's hot and it's humid down here in the South, as it should be in the middle of July. So we went up and into the woods and we found some
    10:32
    swimming holes and went and played there for about five hours today, swimming in this river. Tons of people there, rocks to jump off of, kids are floating through the rapids on the inner tubes. just just a fantastic time i'll post some pictures up so you can see what i'm talking about but like get out to the smoky mountains if you can this place is amazing um holiday world is amazing and it's not all about just disney and universal as cool as they are there's other stuff too and encourage everybody to go check it out uh there's also some pinball here too so we're right next to gatlinburg tennessee uh where underneath this mock-up of a space needle that you can go up
    11:04
    into as an observation tower uh there's one of those pinball museum places you know so they have like 50 60 machines or something two-thirds of them are probably functional at any one time it's interesting to go into uh we're skipping it this time because last time was kind of lackluster uh but we did find something fun and interesting pinball related today and that is that big daddy's pizzeria in one of their locations in pigeon forge on the strip is a pro standard version of wwe wrestlemania a game that it's really hard to find anybody outside of me or jeng
    11:37
    guys that really likes this game but the reason that we headed in to go play it was because i have recently got the wwe limited edition the gold version with hulk hogan's autograph and i wanted to go back now that i own that and i've had some time on it to go back to the regular one and kind of see like what the differences are and like you know there's a lot of games out there where the pro the premium there not a whole lot you know separating them uh bond i thinking of uh deadpool I thinking of Ninja Turtles you know the pros obviously better um other games there tends to be a lot more when you get to the
    12:12
    godzillas and the other l ones um but man they really did it up between the standard version of wrestlemania and that limited edition and going back to it again i'm like okay wow first off like as soon as you start playing when you pick your wrestler there's classic wrestlers in the limited edition version that you can play as like hulk hogan you can play as the hulkster and hear his intro music going on um and it's like amazing uh plus like undertaker's in it as well in addition to you know john cena and all the other ones now if you don't care any much about wrestling who the hell cares about this right this game's stupid but if you like it on the level that i do
    12:47
    um then that's super fun also there's extra ramps in the game like the the two side drains off of that uh upper wwe ring play field um there's an extra one on the right side as well as an extra flipper on the left that will allow you to knock a ball off of the other wire form the standard wire form on the left into some of the targets across the field there's a spinning disc in the middle of the upper play field as well as the lcd screen the jumbotron playing wrestling footage in color on the play field which is just like you miss it when it's not there and i think this was stern's
    13:22
    first instance of an lcd screen in a game so it's so awesome i want to get a topper together where I can find a way to tie into that signal from that LCD screen and put another big Jumbotron up on the top as a topper. I think that'd be super awesome. So I'm having fun with WrestleMania. Not a game for everybody, and that's totally okay. But for me, that game is super fun. I had some great games on it right before the trip, before I came back out here. So I can't wait to get home and put some more time on it, figure out the code, throw some art blades in there, make some mods for it.
    13:53
    And man, it's going to be super fun. So I don't know what's up for tomorrow. we have one more day in Pigeon Forge if Dollywood's open tomorrow we got rain checks so we can see if we can pop into the park and at least go on some of their awesome rides that they have there otherwise I'll be heading to Chattanooga Tennessee where there is a pinball area I don't know if it's a pinball museum or what it is but it's a place I've been meaning to go check out so I'm going to check that out there Chattanooga's a town that I thought about moving to a few years ago so I want to spend some time there and then we'll be down in Atlanta ready for the show to start on Friday
    14:23
    so there'll be live streams because you know how I like to cover that stuff um they'll be uh hopefully daily uh little recordings that we'll do or we'll talk about everything that we found and saw that day i'm super excited to hear from marco specialties that they're bringing uh godzilla 70th on site just like they did last year with venom it's so cool i'm glad they're doing that uh so i'll get to get my hands on there and give you a hands-on impression uh so yeah i'm just super excited uh today we did some mountain coasters in the region as well uh but yeah go to tennessee if you're at all interested in in themed entertainment
    14:56
    fun stuff to do. You want to take a break. You want something fresh and different from Florida, different from Los Angeles. You don't want to go to Cedar Point again for the 10th time in a row. Come down to Dollywood, man. It's totally worth it. Hit up holiday world. Hit me up. If you want some advice and other cool things to do, I'm going to pop off of here, start getting things uploaded. And then I got to talk to Genghis for WAP episode number seven. It's just never stops, man. But yeah, keep giving me feedback. I love that stuff. I'm love that we're active on the discord and I'm checking in as soon as I can, but I'll be on the road for the next week or so until I can finally,
    15:28
    you know, get back home. So thanks for being Patreon members. Enjoy this extra content. Talk about it on the discord. You're already doing that. I'm just kind of throwing this stuff out there because I think it's what you're supposed to do at the end of these things. And I'm going to go get myself a Diet Coke. All right. Be cool, guys. We'll see you next time.