2004
Coaster Trips: 2004: Six Flags Magic Mountain, Universal Studios Hollywood
Tuesday June 22nd
Six Flags Magic Mountain
To say I had been looking forward to this day would be a huge understatement. I had wanted to visit Six Flags Magic Mountain since I first became interested in Roller Coasters. In fact, one of the major factors that led to my present hobby was photographs of the ride Superman: The Escape, located at Magic Mountain.
The day began with Gloria picking me up at 7:30am from my hotel in Buena Park. Gloria was one of the three people I drove around for two days at the start of the European Coaster Odyssey in July 2002, and had offered to return the favour should I ever visit California.
The drive to Magic Mountain was uneventful, and a lack of traffic meant that we arrived at Magic Mountain well ahead of opening time. Entering the car park gives you a birds eye view of X, the only 4th Dimension roller coaster in existence. X presents a striking appearance with its first drop of 88.5 degrees.
Before we could enter the queue for park entry, we had to pass through a metal detector. The security officer asked Gloria if she had any small knives or pepper spray, much to her amusement. I had neither, and my camera was the only thing to set off the alarm. Once that was out of the way, we joined the queue at the park gate. Six Flags employees armed with PDAs were collecting survey information from the people in line. I gave them some general demographics but refused to provide any personally identifiable information. I have to wonder why they even do this; I would imagine they probably get more fake information than real.
Anyway, the opening of the gates led to the running of the bulls, as everyone in sight started charging towards X. They need not have bothered; the ride was down and was not expected to open before 12:00pm at the earliest.
We made our way across instead to Déjà Vu (#258), the Giant Inverted Boomerang from Vekoma. After X, this is probably the slowest loading ride in the park, so we were lucky enough to arrive there before anyone else and get a front seat ride in. Giant Inverted Boomerangs are really good fun, far more so than the standard model, and this one wasn't a disappointment.
Beside Deja Vu was Psyclone, which was closed with no sign of life on the ride platform. Gloria said that quite frankly this was no great loss, so we made our way over to Gold Rusher (#259) instead. As mine trains go, this one is pretty average; not outstanding, but not bad either.
Six Flags Magic Mountain makes a great deal of the fact that it has sixteen Roller Coasters. However, of these, Flashback doesn't run between May and September, and Superman: The Escape hasn't run in months. As they are not available to guests, therefore, I think that the park would be better off advertising fourteen coasters. Also, since two of them didn't open with the park today (which, as I understand it, is not unusual), maybe they should claim twelve coasters. And given the state of at least one of the coasters, maybe that should be eleven coasters and one death trap. Or ten and two. But I digress.
Riddler's Revenge (#260) is without doubt the best standup coaster I have ridden. It seems that after a lot of attempts, B&M have finally gotten the stand up formula right; this was fast, fun, and smooth. However, it was running with one train when it could easily take two, making the wait much longer than it needed to be.
The park is home to the original version of Batman the Ride (#261), and like the one in Warner Brothers Madrid it is one of the better of its kind. Nevertheless, it was also running with just one train, when it is designed to take two without problems. Do I see a pattern here?
I was a little nonplussed by my ride on Scream! (#262). As the newest coaster at Magic Mountain, it breaks with the tradition of the other B&M machines here by actually running two trains. Its theming, however, is that of a parking lot. Or rather, it is built on top of one; the white stripes remain (though they are somewhat faded now) and no attempt at landscaping has been made. Once you ignore that, it is not a bad ride though it suffers from some unusual vibration which is inexcusable on an eighteen month old B&M. Maybe a lack of maintenance, or maybe shoddy construction, or maybe just the seat I was in. All I can say is I did not enjoy this anything like as much as Daemonen at Tivoli Gardens a few short weeks ago.
Colossus (#263) was originally a dual track racing coaster, but the left track is now in a sad state with no chain on the lift hill and various bits of broken track. The right hand side is still running, but for how much longer given the state of maintenance it is impossible to know.
At this point, it was time to ride Goliath (#264). After two mediocre coasters it was a welcome change to ride a really good one again. It is very similar to Titan at Six Flags Over Texas, which for a while was one of my favourite coasters.
Adults are not allowed to ride Goliath Jr, one of two junior coasters at this park, so we went to Canyon Blaster (#265) instead. Due to an enthusiastic ride operator we got two circuits on this, which was quite enough for my knees!
I have a soft spot for Arrow suspended coasters, and Ninja (#266) is easily the best of these I have ridden. Somewhat unusually, the lift hill comes at the end of the ride, meaning that things get going right away on leaving the station. It was on taking the funicular railway up to Ninja that I realised why this park isn't called Six Flags Magic Flat-Piece-Of-Land; you really could get fit just by walking around this park!
The current condition of Revolution (#267) is a travesty. As the first modern looping coaster, the ride has historical significance and has a plaque on it from ACE to denote this. However, its designer, Anton Schwarzkopf, would be turning in his grave to see it now; it has a lap bar and an over the shoulder restraint, the latter of which causes severe pain as the ride bounces around the track. The ride ran for many years with just lap bars. If it needs to be modified for safety reasons, then that's one thing, but so many other Schwarzkopf loopers operate with lap bars that I find it hard to believe that.
Saving the Arrow looper for last, we took a (painful) circuit on Viper (#268). Once was quite enough for me; anyone who can ride this multiple times would be advised to see a specialist. In fact, I advise them to see two specialists; one for a medical check, and one for a mental health check.
Universal Hollywood
While X was now operating, the queue was over two hours, so we left Magic Mountain for the short drive to Universal Studios Hollywood.
Our goal at this park was to get into the preview of the new Revenge of the Mummy (#269) ride. After Gloria purchased a season pass and I got my regular ticket, we joined the line, mindful of the warning that the ride was in Technical Rehearsal and could go down at any time. An hour into our wait, that is precisely what happened, and rather than letting people remain waiting, they emptied the queue line altogether. Instead of being able to wait in the shaded queue area, therefore, we hung around in the blazing sunshine at the ride entrance.
It was during this time that we noticed the rather ridiculous sign outside the ride shown to the right. It is a sad world we live in when it is necessary to put up a sign saying that guide dogs are not allowed on a Roller Coaster.
Anyway, the ride was eventually sorted out, and after leaving everything in a locker (Universal requires that all loose objects be placed in their complimentary lockers for this ride), we joined the queue, with just ten or twelve people in front of us.
The ride has been designed to run with Disney style efficiency, and there are six sixteen passenger trains. We watched as train after train was dispatched with nobody in it; by my reckoning over thirty trains were sent out empty. At long last we were able to board. Revenge of the Mummy is not a bad ride. However, if you go in expecting a quality coaster, you will be disappointed. The launch section caught me by surprise, and I made the rare decision to buy the on-ride photo for that reason, but other than that I felt distinctly nonplussed overall.
Six Flags Magic Mountain
With that out of the way, we returned back to Magic Mountain and joined the line for X (#270). The queue features a poster board proudly proclaiming its capacity of 1680 persons per hour. This is absolute and utter fantasy. The trains on X seat 28 people, so to make that capacity, it would be necessary to dispatch a train every sixty seconds. This would also entail running more than one train, so you can be loading a train while another is out on course. While waiting, I repeatedly timed the interval between trains. The best I saw achieved was 6 minutes 45 seconds, with the worst being 11 minutes. On average, I would guess the trains were going out about one every eight minutes, bringing the capacity to just 210 persons per hour, which, for the signature ride at a major park, is quite frankly pathetic.
After an excruciating two and a half hour wait, we took our places in the front car. I have not had a coaster really wow me in a long time, but as we flipped over to take the first drop on X head first I realised that I was riding something special. X is a fantastic ride hampered by awful operation. While not the smoothest ride in the business by a long shot, due to its unique rotating seat design it can pull off manouvres which other coasters can only dream about. Hopefully more 4D coasters will be built in the future, preferably in parks which know how to operate their rides.
While queueing for X we had heard that Psyclone (#271) was now running, so we went over to take a circuit on that. I try to find something positive to say about every coaster I ride. To that end, I have nothing to add here.
We finished up the night with two circuits on Goliath. We were only going to go once, but the last train of the night had empty seats on it, so we jumped into a spare row.
Six Flags Magic Mountain has some fantastic coasters. But it is let down badly by not running its rides to capacity (if at all) and cutting back on maintenance, leaving rides running in a sorry state. While I enjoyed my day at the park today, I don't see myself returning to Sucks Flags Tragic Mountain any time in the near future, as the probability of a ride I want to ride being available is far lower than at any other park I've been to. A little staff training and a little more money for maintenance could fix this park. Will they do it? I wish they would, but I can't say I'm hopeful.