The Six Flags Magic Mountain (SFMM) Discussion Thread

EL LOCO would fit perfect.

I can't believe so many of you are saying an El Loco would be perfect?!?!

Think about S&S's track record lately, think about SFMM's track record of dealing with Prototype type rides, and lastly, do you really think they would have let the S&S guy come to West Coast Bash, say "we're putting one on the west coast next year" if that was Magic's ride!?!?

Seriously...come on.

Edit...oh yeah, and capacity too!?!?

"but Mark Shapiro is biased against inversions" (RIP Psyclone)

Interesting...I wasn't aware of that. But with SFMM holding the record of the most inversions in a park, I think avoiding more---at least for the time being---is a good idea.

This Ninja-like ride looks...fun...but it is too close to the same type of ride. Personally, I like the crazy canoe one. That is really different and looks like fun.

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that S&S coasters seem to have very low-capacity trains/cars? Nowadays, getting a lot of people through a ride requires the seven- and eight-car trains that we often see---and nine-car trains on B&M hypers. Long ago, the old Mountain Express (Schwarzkopf Wildcat) used single cars, and the line could reach 90 minutes on almost any given day. I don't think SFMM would go for any rides with such low throughput. This is another reason why the idea of adding new flat rides tends to be shunned there.

Eric

EDIT: I guess I was writing this when you posted, Elissa, because I saw your comment about S&S's capacity.

So you don't think that they would consider EL LOCO,or The Crazy Canoe ride either? Because of their low capacity trains.

well its up to magic mountain to decide what they want to put. I really like the idea of putting El Loco VERTICAL it looks more intense than compact one. I would just want it to change track color. also if they used sierra twist are to make a power tower, cause i dont fit on the silvester one in bugs bunny world

Queue and all, I think Sierra Twist's spot is too small for any sort of drop tower. (EDIT: Except for a Moser kiddie one.) I also think it would be a bit out of place there. Six Flags seems to favor Intamin, Cedar Fair seems to favor S&S, except the former Paramount parks favored Intamin as well. I don't care which, but I think the best spot is still where Freefall was.

Mark Shapiro said he doesn't like inversions in the "written" part of the interview with Robb.

Update coming soon!

Well everyone, here we go again. It is time for yet another Six Flags Magic Mountain update. You'd think by now we would have run out of things to report, yet here we are with more things to report. Robb and I met up to discuss the possibility of having a scavenger hunt for TPR on the X2 reopening day. We definitely want to plan something, so we

will work out details and let you know in the near future. We walked around the park and met up with Joey,

went on a few rides and enjoyed a nice Saturday evening at the park. Enjoy!

(The photos are arranged by location, not by time of day.)

As Robb drove in, he saw an incredible sight: Superman, Goliath, Scream, Colossus trains/cars all going at the same time.

It is not necessarily special, but a nice first impression when pulling up to the park. Unlike KBF!

The parking lot was not in overflow, but C Lot was almost full.

The first thing you notice when entering a new area of the park is where all of the employees are.

Seriously, they are very noticeable now, and you can see guests confidently approaching employees to ask for assistance.

No employees here!

Even Corbin Bleu from the Disney channel is trying to get in on some bright shirt action.

In this picture is a new-shirt employee, and an old-shirt employee.

Can you see where the old shirt employee is?

3-Point Basketball continues to bring in guests all day long. They recently added sports themed music on the court which not only livens up the area,

but it really brings in the guests.

The Jet Stream area is slowing seeing improvement as promised. This tree is just one of many that have been planted over the past week.

Landscaping popping up everywhere.

Queue building has received paint. We also noticed how clean looking the Jet Stream water looked. Honestly, it looked clean enough to swim in!

This cell phone charing station can be found in one of the stores by Psyclone 500. After 15 minutes your cell phone is fully charged.

There is one by the Colossus County Fair Arcade, and one more at the front of the park.

The machines are free, although some still have directions on them saying that it cost $2.

(There is nowhere on the machine to put money in.) I highly approve of these machines!

Cyclone Bay will be keeping its name. Enough said.

Corey and the other Electricians have been doing a great job bringing light back to the park. The Gotham City Backlot arch and other statues are brightly lit up,

and Viper's entrance glow in captivating. The next project is the X2 lift.

New patio sets have replaced the old tables and chairs at Cyber Cafe.

AND LOOK...THEMING! Okay, so they are just wall decorations, but when was the last time you saw wall decorations here? I consider this theming!

And the fresh mini doughnut maker! This is one of the coolest things about Cyber Cafe. But you need to make sure that you eat them warm.

It will defeat the whole purpose if you eat them cold!

Even the trash cans are nice and spiffy.

The outer patio is nice and colorful as well, and the fountain adds for a great atmosphere out back.

There are reminders now at all of the Merchandise locations for season passholders. Discounts! (and a "pass" is not a body part.)

Johnny Rockett's Fries and Shakes is now open at the restaurant formerly known as Justice League Feast, formerly known as Chicken Plantation.

Every new location that opens comes equipped with anti-infinatethrill features, such as this wonderful door!

The menu. Notice chicken strips are are also served.

Robb says: "Haha fries, I am going to turn you into poo...but you need more salt."

I hadn't been on Tweety's Escape since my summer camp days, and although I could still stand in the cages, it was not too comfortable.

Joey getting caged up.

And Robb gracefully folded his body into the cage.

We'll be honest, showing the good and bad. We had to go looking for it, but we did find a large amount of trash in the Riddler's queue.

I learned something valuable today: When I do my park walks to meet guests and pick up trash on the midways,

it is important to also go into the queue lines, because there is still alot of trash there as well.

This looks like Magic Mountain cira 2003, not the Magic Mountain of 2008.

And we end today with Mike. The Scream crew was doing a great job with their dispatch times. They were sending one train before the second train even got to the ending block break.

Thanks to Robb for photos!

If you haven't been to the park in a while, it is officially time to get your butt back here to see the new SFMM!

It seems the "Fries & Shakes" location would be better for the full menu, and vice versa. I'm just talking about the facilities. Well, the fried chicken restaurant was legendary and I'm glad there's still chicken served there.

Anyway, I hope we see premium dining returning to Samurai Summit sometime soon.

^ The reason why the Fries & Shakes location can't do the burgers is there is no grill in that restaurant. Perhaps it will be something that will be added in the future?

It was nice to see the park not doing it's "Knott's Impression" (inside joke from the days when we'd get off the 91 freeway heading to Knott's and not see *any* rides operating for the entire travel down Beach Blvd.)

In the past every once in a while SFMM would also be doing it's "Knott's Impression" where you pull into the parking lot and not see a single one of the 17 coasters going.

Last night, the 5 coasters closest to the parking lot were all going together! That was nice to see.

I will say that this is the best the park has looked on a busy holiday Saturday in a LONG time. Yes there were areas like Riddler's & Sceam's queue that had trash, but honestly, we had to go looking for those areas. The midways looked fantastic, but the queue lines still needed some PSA love.

--Robb

Wow, they are really getting it together at Magic Mountain.

Did they let Joey out of the cage or is he still there? I hope they at least feed him occaisionally.

I'm still impressed that X is getting a lot of love, in the eyes of myself & many people I know who aren't coaster geeks X is the main reason to go to Magic Mountain. I've got friends who were really disappointed when they've got there and X has been closed in years gone by.

Now if only they could get some more Intamin, a pre-fab or one of those tasty looking mega-lites would be nice.

Funny thing...I was just out at the park on Wednesday, and I considered going out there again today since I really don't have anything that I have to do today (it's Easter---the girls are off somewhere).

Jay and Neal greeted me that day and asked how the park was looking (they were with Mark Shapiro, too). I told Jay that I hadn't seen the park that clean for a lonnnggg time. And I wasn't suckin' up, either.

I wasn't aware that adults could ride those Tweety cages. And thanks, William for the CENSORED label---I don't think I wanted to see what was behind that!

Interesting, too, was that the Cyber Cafe's original name was The Coffee Grinder, where they served...coffee! Funny how things come full circle sometimes.

I looked at today's hours awhile ago. They're open till 8 tonight, so...maybe...

Eric

Great update! Good to see all the improvements going on at the park, and also interesting to hear about something being done to the lights on the X2 lift.

Just a quick question-when are the new maps coming out?

I'm still impressed that X is getting a lot of love, in the eyes of myself & many people I know who aren't coaster geeks X is the main reason to go to Magic Mountain. I've got friends who were really disappointed when they've got there and X has been closed in years gone by.

Myself as well; the fact that Shapiro approved the upgrades to X to get it fixed was what convinced me he was not anti-thrills; I was a little skeptical before that and I am grateful they are doing this. If the new trains and reconfigured loading procedures offer a smoother ride and they can live up to the capacity expectations as it appears will happen, the park is going to have a huge hit on their hands.

Mark Shapiro said he doesn't like inversions in the "written" part of the interview with Robb.

He may not like inversions personally, but he also seems to be a shrewd businessman and I would not take his personal dislike of going upside down to mean that Six Flags parks will not ever see any new coasters with inversions, as there are a few parks in the chain that could use a good new coaster with loops. However, SFMM is not one of them-they don't need any more coasters with inversions for a while, they already have some of the best.

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that S&S coasters seem to have very low-capacity trains/cars? Nowadays, getting a lot of people through a ride requires the seven- and eight-car trains that we often see---and nine-car trains on B&M hypers.

I think that the real test of that will be in how they are able to do capacity on X2, but other than that, I would agree. I know if I were operating a park I would want to go with B&M for the major steel coasters in the interest of both capacity and reliability-when one of their coasters is run correctly and to capacity, the lines can really move. When a park invests in a grouper to make sure all four seats across are filled each train out-then capacity just jumps up even more.

Someone had mentioned something about the old S&S tower from Six Flags New Orleans possibly going to SFMM, and I think that would not happen simply because of the capacity. If and when they get a drop tower, I see it being one of the higher capacity versions.

And even though it is highly doubtful that SFMM is getting the El Loco, remember that the S&S rep did confirm it is going somewhere on the West Coast. I think it is more likely that it will show up at Knott's or maybe even to replace the old High Roller on top of the Stratosphere in Vegas.

You know what SFMM lacks and so does California - serious, plentiful airtime. Goliath has got one pop, & Xcelerator a ways down the road has got some in the 1st four rows, that's about it - more airtime please.

I had never even heard of the term airtime until I headed east.

^Go ride Daffy's Tour Bus.

Don't worry, be happy.

I agree with you to a certain degree about the airtime at our parks, but i love them with or without the huge airtimes on our rides.

GhostRider at Knott's had good airtime at one point. And even now, I get some on a few hills.

I've always thought that a good, long airtime machine along the very west side (behind Batman, Riddlers, former Psyclone) would work well and not take up too much space. Maybe one day, though.

Eric

Well, this is a little disappointing....

At 7:01 this evening I was denied entrance to the park, which closes at 8:00pm.

The gentlemen at the re-entry gate was very nice about it, but told me "Sorry, the front gate is already closed...you can't come in if you haven't been in yet today."

I looked stunned at him.

On my very best behavior I said "You're kidding? The park doesn't close for another hour. I'm a Valencia local and I just want to take a stroll around the park with my daughter for the last hour the park is open. Chances are I'll even spend money!"

He said he would make an exception this one time and let me in through the re-entry with my season pass.

I don't understand this policy of closing the front gates early and not even letting in season pass holders. I refuse to believe that I am the only person in Santa Clarita that enjoys coming to the park in the last hour to take advantage of the diminishing crowds.

Anyway, I'm at Cyber Cafe right now posting about this. Going to have coffee and donuts and continue our walk around the park!

This is one policy I hope is changed. At least let in Season Pass holders in that last hour.

--Robb

I don't understand why they'd close the gates an HOUR early. I'd understand like 20-30 minutes, but an hour is enough time to get some credits in and spend some money. That's ridiculous.

You are calmer then me i would have went off on that person.

I agree though the front gate closing a whole hour early is crazy.

If I didn't have a season pass, I wouldn't spend the $60 (or whatever admission is this year) for just an hour in the park. Maybe too many idiots bought tickets before they realized the park closed only an hour later, then complained about it?

But I agree with Robb, they should at least let the passholders in. An hour is definitely enough time to hit up a few rides, but I don't think it's worth paying a full day's admission.

(I hope that makes sense.)

That is a bunch of crap idk why they put this into effect id talk to Jay and Neal if i was you Robb Thats really going to hurt them in the long run.

Robb, just be sure and let Jay and or Neal know. That could help in the future...

Eric

Maybe too many idiots bought tickets before they realized the park closed only an hour later, then complained about it?

I'd be happy to take people's money right up to closing time, so long as the hours were posted. And if they complained, I'd happily hand out a comp to them too... Better to take their money today and hand out a comp, than to only hope that they come back with their money tomorrow.

The policy should be 30 minutes. I don't know what most parks use as a policy, but that was Disneyland's (and probably still is).

I think water coaster or bobsled coaster would be a nice family addition. The next coaster at MM should definitely be a ride for the whole family.

I would be stoked if the 5-year plan included a new troll land with a dark ride in the style of Knott's Bear-y Tales. An omnimover type system can have an hourly capacity approaching 2,000 (The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland is about 2,400 with both stretching rooms operating).

Have they fixed up the side of the Magic Moments Theater yet? I noticed at WCB that some of the curtains on the false windows were literally falling apart.

I would also love to see Colossus race again (on high attendance days). Even though because of the ride design the same side always wins I think racing adds a lot of excitement. It would be interesting to see how guest satisfaction ratings would compare between one train versus two train racing. From an operations standpoint I would think it would be inexpensive to put in a variable-speed chainlift.