‘We’re all kids at heart and we want to have fun’. Why the arcade business will never die

The beach is not the only attraction that brings people to the Grand Strand area. A staple in entertainment for kids and their families is the classic arcade.

Manager of the Garden City fun arcade, Forrest Clark, said the magic of an arcade is something that has changed throughout the years but ultimately survived through generations of kids.

“Your grandparents played skee-ball your parents grew up playing Pac-Man and we have all that here so you know kids will come and their parents are showing them the games they used to play and grew up on,” Clark said.

The Fun Plaza on North Ocean Boulevard is run by Jimmy Waldorf and has been in his family for three generations. Waldorf’s collection of 1957 Williams Deluxe Baseball pinball games attracts people from all over to the Fun Plaza. Waldorf said they have 38 machines up and working in the plaza right now but the total amount of machines purchased by his father was 350.

Today, Waldorf repairs and maintains all of his Williams baseball machines and said he is teaching his son, Austin how to fix them as well. He said he started fixing these machines when he was 13 years old and has been doing it for the past 47 years.

Waldorf said he had to get creative finding parts for the baseball game. He said a machine shop in Columbia custom-made some parts for him so he would be able to repair the machines when the parts become too expensive or hard to find.

“They’re mostly original but I keep them going to keep them operating, not for the collector’s value,” Waldorf said.

Waldorf attributed his family’s years of success to the simplicity of an arcade.

“People want to go out, they can stay at home and play video games, but parents usually don’t play video games. You know they’re in town, a tourist place where they want things to do and prices for everything have gone up but it’s still comparable to going to the movies or going out to eat and it’s still cheaper than going to the amusement park down the road,” Waldorf said.

The Williams family from Boston said in an interview that whenever they’re in Myrtle Beach, they come to the Fun Plaza to play the Williams Deluxe Baseball game.

“Whenever we come down to Myrtle Beach, we come play,” Denise Williams said.

This story was originally published July 13, 2022 at 1:00 AM.