Yes first coats need to go on dry so hold the spray gun away from the playfield once you have an even dry coat you can hit it with a wet coat.
Yepp.. pretty much what i ended up doing. This was on my home made Vortex machine when i clearcoated over the mostly hand drawn/painted art and the bloody ink ran...AAAGH!! was not happy.
Since then i've used a full sheet of mylar on all of my PF restores.. just saves a lot of time i find.