I do love a
good, old-fashioned slot machine at a seaside arcade.
When I was
a child, each school summer holiday my mother would buy us a week’s runabout
train ticket (allowing us to travel anywhere in our region). Every morning
she’d ask, “Where shall we go today?” to which I’d reply, “Margate”, and off we
went.
I loved
Dreamland, a proper old fun fair with rides and games, and all the arcades with
their (literally) penny machines. The fun you could have with just a few
pennies – or better still the 1/2p machines on Margate’s Sun Pier (long gone).
These may have been the most annoying little coins ever, but you could have an
awful lot of goes on the machines with them for very little money.
I still
believe that seaside arcades are a good source of family fun, even though the
cheapest machines you find these days are 2p – happily you can find quite a few
of these. We sometimes visit one as part of a weekend outing, sharing a couple of
pounds worth of 2p pieces, which we eagerly feed into the slots. Many of these
machines now contain small prizes, adding the extra challenge of trying to win
one of these, in addition to the hoped-for shower of coins. A recent trip
yielded a set of little wind-up teeth, which provided a great source of
amusement for my son.
On our
trips we always restrict ourselves to the 2p play machines (with the occasional
exception of a ‘prize every time’ crane) and limit the amount we spend to just
a couple of pounds. This gives us a lot of fun for a little cost, and means we
don’t get too compulsive in our play.
Even more
fun are some of the ‘old penny’ machines, dating back to the days before
decimal currency and computerized games. At arcades containing these machines
you can ‘buy’ a bag of old pennies to try your luck at the machines of
yesteryear, some of which are much more fun than their modern counterparts. We
particularly love the two-player games, where you each turn a handle at top
speed to be the first to complete a cycle race/horse race or drain a baby’s
bottle and my son simply adores the ones where you guide a ball through a maze.
Do you
enjoy a good seaside amusement arcade?
Follow
me on Twitter @shoppersjoy
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