Fascination: A Game of Lighting Up Five Lights in a Row

The first time I saw the game Fascination played on the boardwalk when I was on vacation I was in my early teens. I thought to myself, "boy those people need to get a life", it seemed odd people were fascinated by rolling balls to light five lights in a row. You watch the game and expect it to be mainly senior citizens playing the game and yelling at the balls as they roll down the table towards the 5x5 grid of holes that are missing the center hole for the grid. In reality there are a lot of people yelling at their balls as they roll, but to my surprise it wasn't the stereotypical senior citizens I expected to see playing the game when I walked in. There were a fair share of senior citizens, but there were husbands and wives playing, parents and children, and friends as well. These combinations included every age group you could imagine of about eight years old and over.

Fascination is a game that got it's start on the boardwalks of many beach towns along with amusement parks across the country. Unfortunately in recent years due to a lack of profitability of the game for the owners and other activities fighting for consumers attention the number of locations that have fascination games has dwindled significantly. There still are several scattered across the country, but the area that I know of that has the most is the boardwalk in Wildwood, NJ. On the boardwalk there is a Fascination game at Olympic Casino near 23rd Street and one at Flipper's Fascination near the new convention center. As a child I always attended the one near 23rd Street, but after doing some internet research I have realized that Flipper's Fascination is ran by Randy Senna who has a love for classic boardwalk games from the childhood days of many of us. He also has some unique features he has added to his game which you will have to discover when visiting his location. Of course it would help to know the basics before you visit.