Pinball Pete's — Attraction in Ann Arbor

We find ourselves at Pinball Pete's once every few months. It's nice that there is a place to go do something that doesn't involve drinking. Ann Arbor doesn't have many such alternative locales, so I do appreciate Pinball Pete's for that.

Beyond that, it has some major trubs (if you will)--

The games are constantly in a state of disrepair. There are some games that I swear haven't worked since I first came here in 2008. There are many other games that are out for the night/week/month. And there are even MORE games that just eat your quarters.

The eating quarters thing is a problem because they refund your money by giving you another go at that game. But sometimes we come here as a group of three and do a racing game. When one person doesn't get in, it's too late for the other two. So two race, and then one person has to race by himself because they won't just hand us the quarters that we lost. I do understand that people might otherwise lie, but I have to believe that there's a third option for refunds.

The bathrooms are seriously questionable. This past weekend, we noticed that there are cameras in the men's and women's rooms. It's not a secret, they have a sign on the door saying there's CCTV, but what's going on? I've never seen this and it seriously creeped me out. The stall door also wouldn't lock, the soap machines were empty and clearly had been for quite a while, and there were no paper towels.

The guy who always works here strikes me as a creepy sexist. If I (as a woman) go up and ask for help, he's always willing to help. When my fiance (a man) goes up to ask for help, he's not as willing to help. Sometimes he also strikes deals for extra tickets, but they too seem to be based on gender. He'll arm wrestle women, but not men. Once he gave us a math problem and when I solved it quickly in my head (math lover over here) he made me write it down because he didn't believe that my fiance hadn't slipped me the answer. Finally, this past weekend, we noticed that there's a child's pony ride (like the kind that used to be outside of grocery stores) that is newly placed right before where he sits; we could not avoid reaching the conclusion that he put it there to watch young college women ride it ironically.

So... we go here. I'm sure we'll go back at some point. I just wish it weren't such a...

Three or four stars?

I'll rate it a 4. I want to rate it a 3 because my experience was hampered quite a bit by many issues. I'll start with the good:

There was a lot of variety of classic and modern games, it was also economical and made sense cost wise. Would definitely come back with the prices they charge. There seemed to be a machine for everyone, was super happy to see guitar hero. It's sweet they upgraded all the monitors to flat screens, haven't seen this done at similar arcades.

The bad: Most games had some issue with them. Going into this my friend who invited me here wanted to go pod racing together, but when we got there only 2/3 machines worked and they were set to single player only due to technical issues. Okay no biggy, but we went to play guitar hero and the guitars didn't register when you raise it for the special, and the 2nd guitar was missing 2 screws in the top plate so every time I hit the green button I had to push down the plate that was popping out to even get it. We played a 98 classic star wars game which was great, the joystick was super stiff at certain angles and unresponsive. The main racing game we wanted to play wasn't working so we tried Mario kart and one of the 2 machines was down, so we tried the other off brand racing and my friend got capped at 70mph when I was going 120mph and the speakers weren't working. We later played the immersive domed in star wars game and the joystick was falling apart and the tape was coming off. My experience was awful in there, it had about 20 fps so with how fast paced it was I couldn't tell what was going on, but the other machine while playing with my friend worked perfectly for some reason.

All in all, please hire more mechanics because we kept running into a ton of...

I'm disappointed. I went to Pinball Petes with my family today and a bunch of machines weren't working correctly.

I was mostly upset because I played the dump truck game where you drop a quarter in and if youre lucky enough to hit a sign, the truck dumps all the quarters out. So, I put maybe two or three bucks worth of quarters on this machine and get a bunch of tickets not even thinking I'll hit one of the tiny flimsy signs. BUT I FINALLY HIT ONE!

The old busted game didn't register the hit and didn't dump the quarters so I went up the counter and informed the guy behind the desk. He followed me back and saw the truck I had hit and offered me tickets in place of quarters, so he wouldn't have to open the machine.

I agreed with the belief that I would receive a fair number of tickets in exchange. I average about 20 to 75 tickets per game I play because I do frequent this place and am familiar with the games.

I go up to the counter and ask him how many tickets I get, 150 is all they offered. So, I told him I would rather have the quarters out of the machine, "You don't get the quarters, you get tickets." Now, I'm 24 and was spoken to like a child and cheated out of hundred of tickets.

We actually haggled over how many tickets before he generously gave me 200 whole tickets instead of maybe 10 or 20 dollars in quarters.

All in all the entire experience turned me off Pinball Petes and I won't be returning unless it's to use their change machine. I also won't be recommending Pinball Petes to my family and friends. Instead, I'll reccomend Chuckee Cheese or the Put put and arcade on Washtenaw.

My kid had fun otherwise I would...