ROANOKE, Va. – The coronavirus pandemic forced many entertainment venues and museums to close for months.
Roanoke Starcade opened up back in July with several new arcade games including Pong and new merchandise.
Before stepping foot in the arcade, you have to first reserve tickets online here or purchase tickets in person.
When you enter you must have a mask and keep it on as you play. There’s hand sanitizer to use when you enter and leave. Then once you get inside you can only stay for two hours and keep two machines of distance from other players.
“We’re doing two-hour time slots only allowing 15 people at a time. After the two hours is up we do 20 minutes of sanitizing every single machine, ball, puck everything in here is sanitized and then we do another two-hour session,” said Aimee Simmons, Roanoke Starcade’s executive director.
Roanoke Pinball Museum is taking similar precautions.
Only 15 people can be in the museum at a time and will also have two-hour long sessions which you have to reserve online or at the box office. Masks and the use of hand sanitizer before you enter and after you leave are required.
While closed for months, executive director Nic Schell said they focused on how to open up the safest way possible and came up with something to take their precautions one step further.
“We have three custom fan baffles that exhaust the air through the museum and that refreshes the air 8 times an hour so that is well above CDC guidelines,” said Schell.
He also made one for Kids Square.
The pinball museum revealed two new machines right before it closed in March so many people haven’t gotten the chance to play them yet. One is “The Safe Cracker” and if you win a pinball museum collector coin shoots out. The other new machines is call “The Munsters”.