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"This should be a great place!"
My parents live in the "Los Angeles area". That is an uncomfortably large and somewhat ill-defined piece of real estate by any measure. It is an area bounded on the West and on the South by the Pacific Ocean, on the North by, for the sake of argument, CA-126, on the East by IR-15 and on the South by the San Diego county line. I've got to put this into a perspective that I can relate to. If I zoom the viewport on my mapping program out to encompass that area, then start panning around the country, I find that the area is roughly equivalent to the plane defined by Kings Island, Kentucky Kingdom and Holiday World. That's a pretty large area, when you get down to it. As the crow flies, it's about 25 miles from my parents' apartment in Thousand Oaks up to Magic Mountain, but the road trip takes a little more than an hour and about 50 miles. It seems that the roads in Southern California don't actually go to the places where I want to go. Well, they go there, but they don't do so in the most optimum fashion.
When I arrived at Magic Mountain, I was charged an insane $15 to park the car, was given a souvenir park map, then left on my own to find a parking space. The parking lot is laid out to favor attended parking of cars...that is, the spaces are all angled from the driving lanes, but they are all angled in the same direction. This is an arrangement that works pretty well when there are attendants available to direct vehicles into the next available space. Without guidance, however, the result is a parking free-for-all, where people drive down narrow lanes looking for an empty space, then finding none, turn around and drive down the next aisle as they would in a shopping mall. The problem is that now they are driving in the opposite direction from both the pavement markings and the direction of the angled spaces, so if that person should find an empty slot, he would have to back into it, and if someone should happen to be coming the other direction, they would both be in trouble. Yet it is absolutely necessary to backtrack through parking lanes because all of the lanes are pointing in the same direction. After two or three lanes and several near-misses, I finally doubled back to the outside rim of the lot, drove all the way down to the end, and parked behind Scream. That is about as far from the gate as you can get. Seeing no evidence of an operating tram, I started walking. There is no walkway, so I hiked down the (unmarked) tram road. As I rounded the bend near the front of the park, a tram appeared and the driver started hollering at people for walking in the (unmarked) tramway. Give it a rest, jerk. There is no sidewalk and we're trying not to walk in the road; we'll be out of your way in a moment. Besides, where the hell were you when I parked my car at the far end of the lot? You know, I'm pretty disgusted with this place, and I haven't even gotten in the gate yet. I approached the gate, scanned my Wyandot Lake pass, showed my camera and cell phone and was waved through the me_al detector without even a second look when the thing beeped at me. Suddenly I was in a surprisingly nondescript plaza. Ahead of me was a carousel and what appears to be a disused funicular; to the right is a fountain surrounded by several flagpoles; there are exits to the left and to the right.
To the right, across the plaza, is a season pass processing center. It's a rather odd looking season pass processing center, as it has what looks like an old steel roller coaster sticking out of the roof. Upon closer inspection, it turns out that it IS an old steel roller coaster, a B&M "Space Diver" coaster that looks like it has not operated in quite a while. Actually I am not doing too well here; so far I've seen more rides that are not operating than rides that are operating!
Continuing down the midway, I found myself walking through an elaborate kiddieland, built with a Looney Toons theme and backed up by an oversized petting zoo, much larger than the one at Cedar Point. This area contains not one, but two kiddie coasters. One did not seem to be operating; the other does not accommodate riders of my size. Three coasters seen, three coasters not ridden. My luck is not improving! I exited past the entrance to a car ride, and spotted a Schwarzkopf Bayern Kurve. It was missing a car, it lacked the scenery, the tunnel, the bus-bar, and the horn, and something about the tilting mechanism just wasn't right. But it was called the Sierra Twist and I rode it. I'm not one to pass up a Bayern Kurve, even one that is in terrible shape.
A little further along I spotted very large queue house. Behind this facade were hidden two rides, a Chance Yo-Yo called the Swaashbuckler and a pendulum boat ride that I think might have come from Intamin, called the Buccaneer. I rode both, and I could see why Six Flags bothered to hide them behind the facade so that they were both hidden from the midway. Both look like they could use a power wash and a coat of paint, and the Yo-Yo, if it tilted at all, didn't tilt enough to make the seats rock. It was faster than the one at Six Flags St. Louis, but really no better. Across the midway was the entrance to Goliath, which I am obligated to ride [Footnote 1]. Well, obligation or not, I wasn't going to get my ride this time around. It did look promising, though...this time there was an attendant standing at the entrance explaining that the ride was down. So perhaps it would come back up. Er, that's FOUR coasters not ridden so far. What the hell is wrong with this park? I was becoming very happy that I had spent only $15 to visit instead of the $75 it would have cost to buy a ticket at the gate! On the other hand, perhaps it's true that you get what you pay for. But then, there is no way that parking lot is worth $15!
Onward I went around the circle. I came to a fork in the midway. Here, the active midways form a broad "Y" with a short path to the right towards Colossus and Scream, and a wider path to the left past Batman. In the corner is a theater building, at the back of which is a first-aid office. As I made my right-hand turn, two park employees who seemed to be in a hell of a hurry came flying out of the first-aid office and headed down the midway I had just come from. They would have run me down if I hadn't stopped short and ducked. What, are they trying to drum up business or something? I proceeded to the nicely landscaped entrance of Colossus and through the short queue directly into the minimalist station. At least Colossus was running. Well, sort of. The station really is tiny, especially considering that it has to handle two tracks of three trains each...a lot of people have to be able to move through there. Of course, Six Flags was making up for the lack of space by only running two trains and only using one of the two tracks. As you sit in the train, it was the right-hand track, and I took my ride in the front seat.
Colossus runs Morgan trains, and is only the second wood coaster I have ever ridden to run these trains that coaster nuts love to hate. To be honest, I've ridden in trains that are a lot worse than these. These trains have a reasonable amount of space in them, I didn't have any trouble with the lap bars, and because the cars are trailered, the train tracks very nicely. That's the good. The bad is that the trains have that same cheap-sounding hollow rattle as Morgan's steel coaster cars. They feel flimsy, lightweight, insubstantial, and like they have no place on a wood coaster. In short, they just feel wrong. They are also lacking in basic cushioning. But to be honest, having ridden them on both Colossus and on the Jack Rabbit at Seabreeze, I'm not fully convinced that they suck horribly as everyone else seems to think. They at least have the one redeeming quality of being able to track properly, which is more than I can say for anything that ever came out of Philadelphia Toboggan or Gerstlauer. The trains are not the only area where Colossus is a little different. Much of the track exhibits a very interesting construction technique that I have never seen anywhere else. It has been claimed that Magic Mountain had replaced some of the track with steel I-beams, but as I look at it, it looks to me like they simply took the standard wood track and instead of applying standard road steel to the top and inside edges, they used a much larger and thicker piece of steel, perhaps a piece about 8-12 inches wide and an eighth inch thick, and simply wrapped it across the top and inboard surfaces of the track. I couldn't tell if it went on around the upstop surface. But I am pretty sure that this large piece of steel is wrapped around fairly standard wood track, or at least that's how it looked to me. It does have the completely wrong sound to it, though, when this completely wrong rattletrap of a train goes over. Apart from a long spur that connects the station to the rest of the ride, Colossus reminds me a lot of Cedar Point's Gemini. Both are massive wood structures, both feature figure-8 layouts, both are racers, both are 125 feet tall, both feature modest amounts of forgettable airtime, both feature Fiberglas cars running on steel track....unlike Gemini, Colossus was once painted white, and now could use painting again. The ride isn't actually bad, but it also isn't particularly good, and the trim brakes along the course, just when it starts to look like it might get good, are a real tragedy. No, the real tragedy is the double-dip on the parking lot side which has been "paved over" with flat track and a trim brake that brings the train to a full stop. The original track is still there, with the new profile over top of it. It's clear that this ride is a shadow of its former self in many ways, and I'm beginning to sense that it's kind of emblematic that way of the whole park.
Just a couple of parking spaces over from Colossus is Scream, a B&M "floorless" coaster. Much to my surprise, it was open, and it was running multiple trains. Ten minutes later I was sitting in the train and getting a pretty good ride. It's a multi-looper, which isn't my favorite genre, with shoulder bars, which I absolutely hate. But as one would expect from B&M it's a good, solid ride, it's an interesting set of elements, and while it has a little bit of vibration, it is a lot smoother running than Dominator (ex Batman: Knight Flight) at Geauga Lake. Hey, there's my car!
Those two coasters, Colossus and Scream are at the end of a short dead-end path, so I backtracked and nearly got caught in a flying tackle by someone rushing out of the first-aid office across from the midway intersection. That's twice now. Are they just not paying attention, or are they doing this intentionally? Anyway, that put me into the Gotham City section, or the Gotham City Backlot section, I'm not quite sure which. The midway is quite wide here. One side has the Tilt-A-Whirl; the other has three Gotham-themed attractions. The first is a Hrubetz Round-Up which, surprise surprise, was not operating. Across from it is a Himalaya (looks like a Mack, but with an alternative secondary bar latching mechanism) which was operating. It's themed to some component of a nuclear power installation, with industrial-looking waste lines running to the adjacent rest-room building. They had something in mind, I know, but I'm not sure what it was. These two flat rides flank the entrance to Batman: The Ride. The line didn't look to be terribly long, but it didn't seem to be moving, and more people were coming out through the entrance than were going in. A sign at the entrance indicated that because the ride was undergoing annual maintenance, they were running only one train instead of shutting the ride down entirely. I am not sure which of the major revelations on that sign surprised me more: that they were doing a major overhaul to the coaster's second train during what should be the busiest time of the year, the week before Independence Day...or the fact that they were doing maintenance at all. They do maintenance in this park? From what I had seen so far, it looked like they just let rides run until they won't run anymore, then just let them sit and rot. Anyway, I decided fairly quickly that I didn't want to wait, and I joined the other people who were backtracking through the queue. I figured the crowd here might be smaller later in the day.
Riddler's Revenge is a B&M stand-up coaster, so I skipped it because I can't fit on those things comfortably if the safety belt is present. I made the mistake of taking a ride on the absolute worst set of bumper cars I have ridden in a very long time, and I waved hello to Speedy Gonzales, who was being driven down the midway in a little red sports coupe. Now why would Speedy, of all the characters, need to be driven around in a sports car? Maybe it's to slow him down enough that people can actually see him. Or maybe I am just thinking this through too hard.
I didn't ride Riddler, but across from it is the Goldrusher, the park's Arrow Runaway Train. The ride is built on the side of the hill and hidden in valleys off the midway and is really a very good mine train. It's not an especially dramatic ride, but it's fun, and that's all you can really ask of these older rides. This one is still holding up, although like everything else in the park it could use some cosmetic work, especially a fresh coat of paint.
I had apparently moved from the section of the park with all the new rides that don't work, into the section of the park with all the old rides that do work. Next on my list was Ninja, an Arrow suspended coaster that I had pretty much forgotten about. It turned out to be a pleasant surprise. It's no Top Gun/Vortex, but it's no Iron Draggin' either. It makes use of the mountain, and actually ends with a lift hill. How many trains did they used to have for this thing? There were two running, and at least two more on the storage tracks in various stages of disassembly. This is the ride where at least one of the crew members was having entirely too much fun, delivering a pre-ride spiel and screeching "Hiiiii-YAH!" repeatedly over the PA in a call-and-response style that was annoying her co-workers. It was annoying me, too, but I only had to hear it for a couple of trains.
I decided that the Jetstream hydro-flume didn't appear to be TOO wet, and I took a ride. I actually rejected the first boat I was offered, noting that it was already full of water about 4" deep, suggesting that the drains were plugged up. The next boat also had an inch or so of standing water in it, but I figured I could keep my feet dry, mostly by putting them up on the seat when the boat pitched. It's a long ride on the mountain, and I rather enjoyed it. And I didn't get too terribly wet, certainly not wet enough to cause any problems for the camera.
When I got back to the far corner of the park, I encountered a fence where an attendant was explaining that Deja Vu would not be operating. I'm not sure why they didn't just put up a sign as they had for all the other closed rides in the park, but there was someone there. I wasn't at all surprised. Recall that a few years ago I was on the second train of the season for Deja Vu at Six Flags Great America. I visited that park that year in the later part of July. When I visited Six Flags over Georgia, Deja Vu was not operating, and in all honesty, I would have been surprised if this one had NOT been closed. I hate to think how much money has gone into these big Dutch lawn ornaments.
Next to Deja Vu is the Psyclone, yet another of Six Flags Cyclone inspired rides. I missed out on the original, the Texas Cyclone (traditionally known as the T-Clone) at AstroWorld. But I have ridden both the Georgia Cyclone (G-Clone) and the Viper at Six Flags Great America. Of those, the G-Clone is wonderful, and the Viper is unbelievably awesome. So why is it that I've heard such bad things over the years about the P-Clone? I guess I was about to find out. While waiting, I got to watch as Magic Mountain's maintenance department (maybe it was all of them?) worked on Delayja Vu. The train was in pieces under the ride, and the removable track section at the downtrack end of the station was removed so that the cars could be put back in place on the ride. The more interesting sight was on the other side of the ride, between the saddle and the vertical loop. There, a track tie and a piece of rail were jigged and clamped in place, ready to be welded. It appeared obvious that a section of track had been mercilessly cut out of the ride to enable the crew to remove a valleyed train. I thought it unbelievable that Vekoma had not provided a removable rail section on this side as they had in the station. They are going to be busy with this one for a while. When they chopped out that rail section, I'm surprised they didn't just keep cutting until they'd hacked the whole pile of junk into small pieces.
When I got to the station, I picked a seat in the front of the last car, and I sized up the train. This was supposedly B&M's first attempt at a wood coaster train, and it's pretty obvious why it was also their last. The cars are big, noiticeably bigger than an equivalent PTC car, in every way...taller, wider, and longer. When I boarded I noticed that the lap bar has a more Arrow-like fit, actually landing more in my lap and less against my chest than in the PTC train. I couldn't tell whether the axles could steer or not, but I assume that they don't. Every other wood coaster train design [Footnote 2] is just a rip-off of PTC's design; why should this be any different? Anyway, the P-Clone ought to be a good ride. Unfortunately it is not. It does have a few moments where it might give some airtime, but the train bounces around so much it is hard to tell. I wonder if most of the trouble with this ride is that the trains are just too darned heavy, and the ride is moving too slow? In any case, the ride is intolerably rough, and when I got halfway down the exit ramp I had to reroute around a person who had demonstrated this fact by unloading certain bodily substances unexpectedly on the ramp. There was nothing I could do except to stop in the next shop I found and suggest that they call in a hose company, which I did. That covers my duty to inform.
I found myself in a quiet corner of the park, near the top of the park's namesake mountain, and I happened to look up. I was standing at the base of the park's Skytower. The first thing I noticed was that it didn't look like it did in all the photos I had seen. The next thing I noticed was that, in spite of decades of trip reports on rec.roller-coaster indicating the contrary, it was open. I waited only a minute or two for the elevator to arrive to take me to the top. As it turns out, the reason the tower looks different is that the top level has been carpeted and totally enclosed with double-pane tilt-in windows, and (best of all) air conditioned. So not only is there a spectacular view up there, it's also nice and cool, almost to the point of being COLD. Judging by the number of people not sharing the space with me, I concluded that this may be the best-kept secret at Magic Mountain. It truly is a great place to hang out in the late afternoon, with tremendous views of the entire park, plus it's cool and comfortable. I get the impression that this is one of the things being done to try and bring the park in line with Mr. Shapiro's vision for the chain. If this is what we can expect, then perhaps Shapiro will turn this company around. I took a bunch of pictures, noticed the totally denuded hills surrounding the park in all directions, and thought about how short-sighted it would be for Six Flags to close this place down when it has so much potential. I went back down to the midway with the next elevator.
I started down the hill, and came to the boarding platform for Tatsu. It's a new B&M "flying" coaster. Well, that's what they call it, anyway. I don't think it's really accurate to call it a flying coaster as you ride it in a seated position, but with the car pitched so that your back is parallel to the track. Of the three manufacturers building these kind of coasters, I think only Zamperla actually gets the flying part right, and they managed to mess up everything else. Anyway, as I entered the queue for Tatsu I was handed a serial-numbered boarding card intended to prevent line jumping. The wait wasn't really long enough to justify that precaution, but it still isn't a bad idea. The interesting thing about the number-card system is that while it provides a reasonably robust method for catching queue jumpers, the very presence of the system is enough to prevent queue jumping. So it's not a system you can evaluate by the number of queue jumpers you bust with it, because it is even more effective as a deterrent. Of course, that doesn't mean that queue jumping didn't happen. Magic Mountain has in place a "FastLane" system that allows people to spend a few extra dollars to jump the queue on certain attractions, and Tatsu is one such attraction. The way they were handling it was to shunt the FastLane people to the last few rows of the train, meaning that the ride was effectively running at reduced capacity whenever there were not enough FastLane people to fil all the reserved seats. This is a system that needs to die a horrible death and be replaced with a committment to operating rides at maximum capacity, getting trains out 'on time', and thus eliminating long waits. It can be done; just look at Cedar Point where extremely long waits for their major attractions are almost a thing of the past just because their hourly capacity is so ridiculously high. Magic Mountain has the infrastructure to eliminate long waits in this way, but they don't have the staff, the maintenance program, or the will to actually make it happen.
Tatsu is my third ride of this type, and I can tell that B&M have been refining their talents with this sort of ride. All three (the other two are the Supermen at Six Flags [Great America | Over Georgia]) are good rides, but Tatsu is clearly an advancement over the other two. Part of it is certainly the mountaintop location, but also it seems that it plays around more with the things that are unique to the ride style. They seem to have finally figured out that the whole concept of an inversion element as we normally think about it has no meaning on the flying coaster because there is no concept of "upright" versus "upside down" when your head is going in the direction of travel. On Tatsu, the major elements were flying around rthe mountain, the big vertical loop that hits you with massive forces against the chest, and the helix which does just the opposite, threatening to rip you right through the harness. As a bonus, this time when I got off my ankles were not sore from the foot restraint. In all, Tatsu is a good ride, and it is perfectly located.
When I got off of Tatsu I almost started walking down the hill towards Revolution when I realized that I could do better by going up the hill instead. I went up a stairway beneath the downtrack end of the Tatsu station, and found myself finally on a dead-end path leading towards Superman: The Escape. Here I found another of those annoying little signs that explained that so that they could do maintenance on the ride, one side is shut down. I still wonder why they are doing annual maintenance on major attractions in what should be the busiest time of the year. Anyway, the small crowd made for a tolerable wait, for an utterly forgettable ride. Okay, so it goes fast (but nowhere near the advertised 100 MPH) and it goes high up the tower (but nowhere near the 415 foot peak). So the ride uses an impressive bit of electrical technology to shoot it down the launch track and up the hill. The acceleration on this thing is just not that impressive. And because you go shooting straight up the hill, there really is no way to adequately appreciate how high you actually went. Perhaps it was more impressive when it was new...but I get stronger acceleration when I pull my Crown Victoria onto the freeway, and with Flight of Fear, Italian Job: Stunt Track, Greezed Lightnin', Steel Venom, Wicked Twister, and Top Thrill Dragster all within a few hours of home, feeling Superman go lumbering down the track just isn't that big of a deal.
I walked down the path that everybody seems to complain about, the one that goes from Superman down the hill past the Rotor to the back of the park. I backtracked through the park, and rode some of the rides I had missed before. That meant first a ride on Batman. Magic Mountain was one of the last of the Six Flags parks to get one of these, and as a result, Six Flags mercifully cut back on the queue theming, and more important, on the queue length. The long, winding path through the Gotham City park is not so long, not so winding, and includes an open gate to bypass part of the maze. The junkyard scene is also not nearly so long (perhaps they were afraid people would start drawing comparisons to the condition of the rest of the park?) and a nice touch is the misting system installed over that part of the queue. Unlike parks in my part of the world where "cooling mist" really means "an annoying fine spray of water", out here they have these nice high-pressure misting systems that put out a cloud that looks like steam and honestly does reduce the air temperature...without getting everything and everybody wet. Then it was up the sewer pipe to the platform, and as usual I sat in the back row so I don't know what all the ride did. But it did it in the usual fashion. It's a good solid ride, and it seems to be in reasonably good shape.
As I left the Gotham City section, I dodged two more park employees charging across the midway from the First Aid office. Had I been thinking, I would have clotheslined them and asked them why this intersection seems to be such a problem. Instead I continued on down to Goliath, which had opened up again. Even though the ride had been down much of the day, it had only a short line, although it is a very long walk to get to the entrance from the midway. As much as I hate the gratuitous extra walking, I do appreciate the landscaping details in this particular queue, featuring lush vegetation. It's much nicer than the parking-lot walk of Scream. For the ride, I took my seat in the back of the lead car and pulled down the lap bar. The seat is contoured as far too many of them are these days, but Giovanola was kind enough to keep the lumps in the seat and lap bar confined to places where they wouldn't interfere with riders of reasonable size such as myself. So far, so good. The train went up the hill, over the top and back down the other side. It's a smooth ride, it's a fast ride, and it's got airtime. What more could I want? It follows the airtime with crushing positive G forces, but there is no shudder, no bounce, no wobble. Giovanola did a tremendous job with this ride, it's a great ride, and it's just a touch extreme. I wonder if this is part of the reason they never built another one, and in fact decided to get out of the business after building this ride. Goliath is the kind of ride that should have parks beating down the manufacturer's door trying to get one just like it. Personally, I liked it a lot, but I could also see why a lot of park operators might be a little leery of a ride that is quite this extreme. That didn't seem to discourage any of the people who were riding! Given more time, and if I didn't still have to go ride the coasters on the other side of the park, I could have spent the evening here.
But I didn't spend the evening on Goliath even though it was, so far, the best ride in the park. Instead, I crossed the entry plaza and went over to Revolution. It's a Schwarzkopf Looping Speedracer, a lot like the Sooperdooperlooper at Hersheypark. So why does Revolution have shoulder bars on it? They don't need to be there, they shouldn't be there, and they are a horrible detraction from what is otherwise a pretty good Runaway Train style coaster. Or rather, what would be a pretty good Runaway Train style coaster if it were allowed to run at speed, instead of being brought rudely to a near-full stop on each block brake. I suppose that keeps the speed down to reduce the lateral forces on the curves so as to avoid the head banging that wouldn't happen if the ride didn't have those ridiculous shoulder bars on it. It's a bit of a shame, really. I'd have liked to ride more, but there were two more rides to get to. Perhaps I could come back for a back seat ride at the end of the night. But by this time night was falling fast.
I quickened my step and walked on to Viper. It's an Arrow multi-looper, and it's got a very odd three-lane entrance with separate queues for the front, the middle and the back of the train. Clearly this ride and its plaza and loading station were built to handle a really big crowd, and were intended to operate at very high capacity. With two trains running, it was a walk-on, and very few people were walking-on. I sat down in the front of the last car, and the ride took off. I don't know why people complain so much about these things; it turns out that it was also a decent ride. Loop after loop after loop, but it is an Arrow multi-looper. It runs fairly well, it's held up well enough, and it compares favorably to Kings Island's Vortex. I declined the opportunity to stay on board when I got back to the station, but it's a perfectly competent ride. Clearly my evening had improved as I moved from the right-hand side of the park, with its broken down rides, to the left-hand side with rides that seem to work pretty well.
That left me with one more ride, and I got into the queue literally minutes before the queue was cut off for the night. The ride, of course, was X and it was running only one train. My wait was slightly more than an hour, and as I watched, I saw an age old trick. It was the end of the day, and it seemed that the interval between trains was getting shorter with every sucessive dispatch. It's not that the ride crews can't operate with some sense of urgency, it's that they don't until they see a long line of people still waiting to ride at closing time. As the fireworks exploded over the nearby bald mountain, I hopped into an inboard seat. Initially I pulled the shoulder bar inward, then couldn't quite put it where I wanted it. An attendant released the mechanism so that I could pull it out and down a little, getting the bar as low as possible before pulling it across my gut. So far, so good. The very strange looking train rolled backward out of the station to go up the lift. The ride was reasonably smooth, but a very strange sensation indeed. It's as though the ride can't make up its mind whether it is a track-on-the-bottom coaster running backward, an inverted coaster running forward, or something else entirely. In the end, I think "something else entirely" won out. It's a very unusual experience, and not entirely an unpleasant one. It's not the greatest thing since sliced bread, it isn't the best coaster around, and it is a mechanical nightmare, and I'm not surprised that nobody else has ordered one. But it is a really neat ride.
Unfortunately that last hour of waiting around for X took me past closing time. So there was nothing for it but to exit the park. I waited around for the parking lot tram to take me back to my car, then made the 45-minute drive back to Thousand Oaks. Then I found out that there are no restaurants open in Thousand Oaks at 11:30pm. Ugh. Haven't these people ever heard of "Waffle House" or "Steak & Shake"?
Overall, Magic Mountain is a bit of a mixed bag. They have a good selection of coasters, though the flat ride selection is lacking a bit. Several of the big coasters are a waste of space (Deja Vu comes immediately to mind) and the wood coasters are in deplorable condition. In fact, the whole park looks like it has been neglected and beaten to death for years. The park has more SBNO rides in it than some parks have rides. Just about everything from the entrance gate, counter clockwise around to the P-Clone needs cleaned and painted. Both of the wood coasters need extensive rehabilitation. Operationally, the park needs a major overhaul. But the infrastructure is there. The equipment is there, and there is enough of a customer base in the area to keep the place busy. What Magic Mountain needs more than anything else is an administration and staff of people who actually care about the place, who are proud to be running Magic Mountain, who really want to be in the amusement business, and who honestly care about living out the values spelled out on the monument in the entrance plaza. Unfortunately, after the announcement that Six Flags made last Friday, they made it abundantly clear that they don't care about Magic Mountain. Unfortunately it shows, in everything they do. It's frustrating to see, because the indifference is so ingrained into the culture of the park, and even into Six Flags' corporate culture that there is no real hope in sight. And it's a terrible shame. This park deserves better. Someone should buy the place, take it over, invest a little effort and attention and turn it into the jewel of a park that it really should be. It's not an impossible task. But it appears to me that current management, and probably Six Flags corporate, simply doesn't have a clue.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Footnote 1: If only because my name happens to be "David". [Return to text]
Footnote 2: With the exception of the GCI Millennium Flyers, of course, which are updated copies of a Prior & Church design. [Return to text]
--DCAjr
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