{"id":12149,"date":"2025-10-10T11:58:45","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/?p=12149"},"modified":"2025-10-10T12:21:24","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T16:21:24","slug":"pinball-wizard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/2025\/10\/10\/pinball-wizard\/","title":{"rendered":"Pinball Wizard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alumnus Kelley Daniel creates world-renowned pinball destination<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The Pinball Palace in Brunswick, Georgia, started with an ultimatum \u2014 \u201cI want my house back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kelley Daniel (\u201985) has spent 38 years operating a successful tool rental business, but his real passion was slowly developing under his own roof.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI got a Pac-Man machine for the house and then I said, \u2018Well, it’d be cool to get a pinball machine,\u2019 so I got a pinball machine for the house, and next thing I know, the whole room is full,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then our three-car garage was full. Then the whole house got full. My wife told me, \u2018Get \u2018em out of the house!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The solution? He moved his growing collection of pinball machines \u2014 or \u201cpins,\u201d as aficionados call them \u2014 into a former bounce-house facility called Katie\u2019s Castle. He opened the Pinball Palace to the public almost on a whim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t really going to open it up,\u201d said Daniel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What changed his mind? \u201cPlaying alone,\u201d he said. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to play by yourself. You want to have people come over and play, you know. You want to challenge somebody.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Palace opened with about 30 machines in October 2017. Today, visitors can play more than 120 pinball games from almost every era \u2014 the largest collection of playable pinball machines in the Southeast. In addition, Daniel owns another 80 or so pins that aren\u2019t available to the public, some of which are currently being used for a movie being shot in Athens, Georgia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each machine is a pop-culture time capsule with back-lit artwork, celebrating bands like Led Zeppelin, KISS and Primus; TV shows like \u201cStar Trek,\u201d \u201cThe Munsters\u201d and \u201cThe Walking Dead;\u201d and movies like \u201cDirty Harry\u201d and \u201cThe Terminator.\u201d Some have old-school flippers and blinking lights, newer machines have souped-up sound systems, LED displays and mini-sculptures built atop them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are thousands of components to these things, so they can be a nightmare to fix,\u201d he said. \u201cThe flippers have to be rebuilt all the time. They have to stay strong or they’re not worth playing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou’re not gonna make a killing owning an arcade,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m just sharing my collection.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u2014 \u201cwhere I got my extensive music knowledge of the \u201980s,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After his shift, he would go downstairs to Sarah\u2019s Place for snacks and a few games of pinball. He has fond memories of his time at the University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEverything was good at Georgia Southern \u2014 I mean, it still is,\u201d he said. \u201cI 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBack then it was so small you knew pretty much everybody,\u201d he said, laughing. \u201cYou knew them even if you didn’t want to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As he reminisced, a few people wandered in \u2014 two older couples and a father with two grade-school children. Each of them had the same reaction walking in the door: \u201cWow.\u201d Daniel asked the group where they\u2019re from. \u201cTexas,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Photos by Jonathan Chick<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had people visit here from all over the world,\u201d he said, pointing to a map at the entrance. It\u2019s riddled with thumbtacks and stick pins representing his visitors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019ve come from almost every U.S. state and major cities across Canada. They\u2019ve come from Mexico and Panama, Argentina and Brazil. There\u2019s a huge cluster of visitors from Western Europe into Eastern Europe as far as Ukraine. They\u2019ve come from Africa, too \u2014 Niger, Ethiopia and Burkina Faso.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne guy came from the Australian Pinball Museum, and that’s about as far as you can come, I think,\u201d he said. \u201cThey go to pinballmap.com and there\u2019s a map that shows all the locations. A lot of people plan their trip around pinball.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And while Daniel\u2019s house is mostly empty of pinball machines (except for a few of his favorites), he\u2019s running into a familiar problem at The Pinball Palace. Even with a sizeable building crammed with pins \u2014 he\u2019s quickly reaching capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI’m still buying machines, but I’m just trying to be more selective,\u201d he said. \u201cI think I bought seven this year so far. But we’re running out of room!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s not like you can stack them or anything.\u201d  \u2014Doy Cave<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alumnus Kelley Daniel creates world-renowned pinball destination The Pinball Palace in Brunswick, Georgia, started with an ultimatum \u2014 \u201cI want my house back.\u201d Kelley Daniel (\u201985) has spent 38 years operating a successful tool rental business, but his real passion was slowly developing under his own roof. \u201cI got a Pac-Man machine for the house […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12150,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[90],"class_list":["post-12149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","tag-spring-2025"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}