My daughter loves the arcade here. She wants to go exploring by herself, with the key, and go all over this very large place that is the resort. My son worries about her, but every single door has a braille plate on it saying what it is. Those plates are rarely used, but when they're needed, they're vital.
It's not needed that much for my daughter though because she memorizes how to get places. We make her take her cane, but that's mostly for other people who see her. It says, "BLIND PERSON!" very loudly. In a shouting voice in your head. You wouldn't believe how people who are in general not paying attention will come to focus and get out of the way for a blind person.
My daughter wants to go to the arcade. But this is interesting. Picture this: the games are all played with rechargeable cards. The card has a magnetic strip on it and save for a very small, barely discernible spot on one side, you can't feel where the magnetic strip is. I showed that one little tell to my daughter and she then knew where the strip was.
She navigates to the arcade, which is games mostly that give out tickets—tickets that are shown on a screen she cannot see that are then added back to your card. Without a sighted person there, she has no idea if she's won two tickets or five hundred. Most of the winnings are small, especially for someone who has no skill because they're randomly pressing a button or pulling a lever.
So she gets to the arcade and I explained, in the room, how the card readers are positioned differently. Sometimes they want the magnetic strip to the left, sometimes to the right. Sometimes, if the reader is rotated, they want the strip facing up, sometimes facing down. If she can get the magnetic strip positioned correctly, she gets to play the "game". She knows when this happens, because the game makes a different sound.
And I'm calling them "games" because most of these games are pressing a single button. Maybe a ball is dropped or a spinner is spun or something happens on a large monitor that is based upon when you pressed the button, pulled a lever or spun a spinner. Once you get the card read and the, "you get to play now" sound happens, you have to find the start button to start the game. Or you don't. It's different on every game. Then you pull the lever or launch the ball or do whatever you do to try and win the tickets. You do a thing that is away from where you can touch what's actually happening, because if you could touch it, you might be able to beat the system and win the jackpot every time.
My daughter plays these games (and she loves doing this, she would spend a hundred dollars there if I let her) and at the end, the card has an unknown number of additional tickets on it. These tickets can be used to buy little dinky prizes that children seem to love trying to earn with their parent's money.
The arcade isn't very popular as most people are busy skiing or eating or at the pool. If someone was there, I feel sure my daughter would ask them how much she won. Not knowing doesn't deter her, she's madly in love with the arcade, just as I was at her age. Only I could see.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: She came home after one trip. The card was empty, she told me, "of the twenty dollars I just put on it?" She told me, "but mom, I think I got a hundred tickets!"
The Big Boy Update: My son was almost in tears tonight because he had to be in a group photo. He's never been averse to having pictures of him taken before, but he really, really didn't want to be in these. He asked me if he could give the camera the middle finger he was so upset about it. That surprised me. I told him the pictures weren't for him, they were for the adults who were taking them and to please be kind and just stand there for the picture and it would be over soon. He asked if he could sneakily give only a wee bit of the middle finger on the side of his face like he had an itch. I said no. Not in the slightest could he even pretend to be accidentally giving anyone or any cameras the middle finger. It was over soon and he went back and fell to sleep extra early for him because he was so tired from the day of skiing.
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