Dutch Pinball Museum

Review of my 2023 visit to the Dutch pinball museum in Rotterdam.
They're located on the west side in the historical harbour part of Rotterdam, address is: Voorhaven 12, 3024 RM Rotterdam.
Easy to reach with the subway, from the center of Rotterdam it's only a handful of stops to 'Delfshaven' on lines A, B and C.

My last visit was already 2 years ago. A lot has changed as you will see. Due to covid they had moved in, but only now were able to create their initial idea.
The entrance has changed, the museum part was reorganised, and the playable machines section was expanded with two extra floors.

The floor level of the museum is the museum part and has a few rare pinball machines for which you have to pay to play. All machines on the upper levels of the museum are on free play, play as much as you want. The entrance fee for the museum is a time block of 2 hours (unless you pay for multiple blocks). Within these two hours you can play as many machines as you want. When the time block finishes, you'll be friendly requested to stop playing and make room for the next block of visitors.
All Stern machines (that allow it) are linked to Sterns Insider connect system. Visiting the museum is a quick way to improve your profile and get awards on many different connected Stern games.

You can't get more dutch than this. Water, a windmill, and the Dutch Pinball Museum in the large old warehouse on the left side.
As you can see it's quite a large building, offering a lot of floorspace.

The new entrance to the museum. The visitors path has changed compared to last year.
Before you entered and could immediately select to visit the museum part on the left side, or go upstairs to the playing part.
Now every visitor follows the same path, which starts in the museum section and continues upstairs. This flow is more natural and everyone gets the full experience.

Immediately behind the entrance is the museum section. Here the oldest pinball machines are on display and not available to play. A lot of attention is given to explain the history.
In the center was a new aquisition. A transparant pinball machine, it's a Williams Star Dust. It took 2 people over 4 years to finish this project.

Display cabinets hold historic parts that were used to create parts for pinball machines.

On the walls there's general information about the history, and specific machines have their history (sometimes with a QR code to a movie clip) in front of them.

The Twilight Zone backglass recreation which also existed in the previous layout, got a new place in the next room you visit.

In this room are also some rare games.

Rare historic coin op games.

This room used to be the old entrance. It now displays more pinball history.

I'm glad to see the lyrics on the stairs that were in the original location made a come back.

One of the first rooms with pinball machines. Most games here are WPC and WPC-95.
The rug really ties the room together..

On the left the John Popaduik machines are grouped together, including a rare Magic Girl.

Another rare game is the custom made Matrix.

The next level has games that are more in the 1980ies style.

Spread around the museum are more display cabinets with production parts.

Some popular electro-mechanical pinball machines, Fireball and Wizard.

More popular games: Twilight Zone, The Addams Family, Indiana Jones and many more.

Some out of space pinball machines..

Show, don't tell. In clear cases the basic mechanisms are mounted, and they can be operated by visitors.
How does a flipper, pop bumper, score reel or chime unit work ? Here you can see and try it yourself.

Antique mechnical pinball machines that are playable also have their own room.

One of the new rooms that recently was opened: the dinosaur room.
There are so many pinball machine with this theme they can fill up a whole room.

Finally the last new room: the music room. All music themed pinball machines can be found here together.