Pinball Wizard

The Pinball Palace in Brunswick, Georgia, started with an ultimatum — “I want my house back.”

Kelley Daniel (’85) has spent 38 years operating a successful tool rental business, but his real passion was slowly developing under his own roof.

“I got a Pac-Man machine for the house and then I said, ‘Well, it’d be cool to get a pinball machine,’ so I got a pinball machine for the house, and next thing I know, the whole room is full,” he said. “And then our three-car garage was full. Then the whole house got full. My wife told me, ‘Get ‘em out of the house!’”

The solution? He moved his growing collection of pinball machines — or “pins,” as aficionados call them — into a former bounce-house facility called Katie’s Castle. He opened the Pinball Palace to the public almost on a whim.

“I wasn’t really going to open it up,” said Daniel. 

What changed his mind? “Playing alone,” he said. “You don’t want to play by yourself. You want to have people come over and play, you know. You want to challenge somebody.”

The Palace opened with about 30 machines in October 2017. Today, visitors can play more than 120 pinball games from almost every era — the largest collection of playable pinball machines in the Southeast. In addition, Daniel owns another 80 or so pins that aren’t available to the public, some of which are currently being used for a movie being shot in Athens, Georgia.

Each machine is a pop-culture time capsule with back-lit artwork, celebrating bands like Led Zeppelin, KISS and Primus; TV shows like “Star Trek,” “The Munsters” and “The Walking Dead;” and movies like “Dirty Harry” and “The Terminator.” Some have old-school flippers and blinking lights, newer machines have souped-up sound systems, LED displays and mini-sculptures built atop them.

More importantly, each machine is waxed, polished and well-maintained as if it were a museum piece, a fact not unnoticed by visitors. Daniel lifted one of the cabinets to show the mess of wires, lights, servos and connectors that run the machine.

“There are thousands of components to these things, so they can be a nightmare to fix,” he said. “The flippers have to be rebuilt all the time. They have to stay strong or they’re not worth playing.

“You’re not gonna make a killing owning an arcade,” he said. “I’m just sharing my collection.”

Daniel said he developed his love of pinball on the Statesboro Campus of Georgia Southern University. The business administration major was a resident assistant in Dorman Hall and a member of Sigma Nu fraternity. He frequented the Williams Student Center where he was a DJ at WVGS — “where I got my extensive music knowledge of the ’80s,” he said. 

After his shift, he would go downstairs to Sarah’s Place for snacks and a few games of pinball. He has fond memories of his time at the University.

“Everything was good at Georgia Southern — I mean, it still is,” he said. “I made a lot of good friends there. We played Frisbee golf before it was even popular. We just picked out a tree in Sweetheart Circle. It was beautiful.

“Back then it was so small you knew pretty much everybody,” he said, laughing. “You knew them even if you didn’t want to.”

As he reminisced, a few people wandered in — two older couples and a father with two grade-school children. Each of them had the same reaction walking in the door: “Wow.” Daniel asked the group where they’re from. “Texas,” they said.

Photos by Jonathan Chick

“We’ve had people visit here from all over the world,” he said, pointing to a map at the entrance. It’s riddled with thumbtacks and stick pins representing his visitors. 

They’ve come from almost every U.S. state and major cities across Canada. They’ve come from Mexico and Panama, Argentina and Brazil. There’s a huge cluster of visitors from Western Europe into Eastern Europe as far as Ukraine. They’ve come from Africa, too — Niger, Ethiopia and Burkina Faso.

“One guy came from the Australian Pinball Museum, and that’s about as far as you can come, I think,” he said. “They go to pinballmap.com and there’s a map that shows all the locations. A lot of people plan their trip around pinball.”

The Pinball Palace has been named one of the most popular attractions in the Golden Isles, and one of the top destinations for a rainy day in Georgia. Pinball enthusiasts have voted it one of the world’s best places to play pinball. In 2022, The Pinball Community Awards (also known as the TWIPYs) named The Pinball Palace the second Best Location for pinball in the world. In 2023, among an even larger field of contestants, the Palace won 14th Best Location in the world, and continues to place as one of the best pinball destinations on earth.

And while Daniel’s house is mostly empty of pinball machines (except for a few of his favorites), he’s running into a familiar problem at The Pinball Palace. Even with a sizeable building crammed with pins — he’s quickly reaching capacity.

“I’m still buying machines, but I’m just trying to be more selective,” he said. “I think I bought seven this year so far. But we’re running out of room!

“It’s not like you can stack them or anything.”  —Doy Cave