Drop Lanes

A drop lane is a vertical channel running down the playfield directly above an Outlanes, so that a ball entering it falls straight into the outlane below — which gives that outlane a second mouth, higher up and away from the flippers.^[1]

A lane whose whole purpose is to hand the ball to the drain is a hard bargain, and designers rarely left it at that. On Gay 90’s (1970, Williams) the drop lane doubles as an extended Kickback Lanes, so the kicker throws the ball back up the length of it;^[2] on Dixieland (1968, Bally) the left lane is unusually long and carries a Detour Gates the player can earn to be let out of it.^[3] Where a factory put a post in the falling ball’s path to steer it back towards the flipper, the lane is not counted as a drop lane at all.^[4]