Dutch Pinball Museum

The Dutch pinball museum in Rotterdam is definitely worth a visit. Or better, an 'useum' as founder Gerard likes to call it. This is not a boring museum, but a place where you can (and must) use everything.

As you can read in my review of the old location I was already very impressed by this museum.
In 2020 they moved to a new location. Below is my visit in 2021 of the Dutch Pinball Museum in their new building.
The new location is in the historical harbour part of Rotterdam, address is: Voorhaven 12, 3024 RM Rotterdam.

The new building is very BIG, especially compared to the old location. At the moment the museum only uses about half of the available floors. Expansions to other floors are planned in the future.
There's also a small coffee bar now.

All that floorspace made the museum bigger and better than it was before.
The 'museum' part and the antique, non-playable games from before 1960 have now moved downstairs. In the old location they were upstairs, while most people stayed downstairs playing the newer games.
Now it really is organised like a museum. And don't worry, once you go to the upper floors there are still more then enough games to play. The newer games are better spread out and divided in groups. There are about double the number of pinball machines available than there were in the old location.

That also brings me to my only negative point if you compare to the old museum: it's become too big :-)
In the old location you were able to stay half a day and be able to play about every game they have in that timeframe.
The new location has changed the visiting times. There are 3 timeslots a day available, each of 2 hours.
2 hours are just too short to play all games. But for most casual visitors this is an ideal proposal.
For those of us with the ambition to play all pinball machines available, there is the option to buy a day ticket which gives you access to the 3 blocks of 2 hours. 6 hours should be enough, if you can physically handle it :)

In Rotterdam the water is never far away. The Dutch Pinball Museum is now housed in the large old warehouse on the left side.

There are nice pinball related decorations everywhere you look.

When I visited there was a unique machine present: a Magic Girl pinball.
This version was upgraded with better software and new mechanisms so the gameplay was 'complete'.

Even next to the Magic Girl there were special things to look at, like this artwork and internal work in progress sketches.

The museum pieces are now nicely organised.

Gottlieb Humpty Dumpty, Cinderelly and more of the very first games with flippers.

More antique pinball machines.

The museum also has a large collection of tooling - molds that were used to create the parts.
Were you interested to know why Chicago Gaming Company made new sculpts on their Cactus Canyon remake pinball machine ?
It's because the original mods used by Bally/Williams are here in the museum.

Something the founder of the museum is also proud of, the real-life diorama of the curio shop as shown on the backglass of the Twilight Zone pinball machine.

Upstairs all games are playable.

The dutch pinball wall of fame. The owner of the museum puts lots of effort in promoting the museum.
Here's an overview of famous (dutch) visitors.

Rare pinball machines from the 1980ies.