cinepro

I got to ride it too, and had the same impressions. I wasn't sure about the VR, but ended up enjoying it. They did a great job of syncing the animation to the ride. The most important thing to know is that my party of three did not have reservations. We just checked in a few times throughout the day and if people hadn't shown up for their reservations (and you had a SP), then they let you ride. So while you aren't guaranteed a ride without a reservation, it's definitely worth a shot. And yes, it was taking them about five or ten minutes to dispatch a train, so even if the line is just barely out of the station, plan on being there for a while. For those who don't know, the animation is an "Independence Day" type dog fight against aliens in large city, with a huge alien mothership overhead. The banks and turns of the rollercoaster sync with banks and turns of your ship, with the loop being a huge "flyaround" of an alien ship. My favorites were the brake stations, where they had you fly through a building or hit some billboards. When you're waiting for the ride to start, you are sitting in the hangar, with the guns on the ship active so you can shoot stuff and look around. As you ascent the lift hill, the ship rises out of the hangar, with targets on the walls for you to shoot. Then, you are launched into the action and about two seconds later your gun gets shot off so you can't actually shoot at anything. I suspect this is done because the trigger is on the side of the visor, so you have to have one arm against the side of your head. Which reminds me of the most interesting thing I saw all day: Two thumbs up for the new Revolution!

I got to ride it too, and had the same impressions. I wasn't sure about the VR, but ended up enjoying it. They did a great job of syncing the animation to the ride. The most important thing to know is that my part of three did not have reservations. We just checked in a few times throughout the day and if people hadn't shown up for their reservations (and you had a SP), then they let you ride. For those who don't know, the animation is an "Independence Day" type dog fight against aliens in large city, with a huge alien mothership overhead. The banks and turns of the rollercoaster sync with banks and turns of your ship, with the loop being a huge "flyaround" of an alien ship. My favorites were the brake stations, where they had you fly through a building or hit some billboards. When you're waiting for the ride to start, you are sitting in the hangar, with the guns on the ship active so you can shoot stuff and look around. As you ascent the lift hill, the ship rises out of the hangar, with targets on the walls for you to shoot. Then, you are launched into the action and about two seconds later your gun gets shot off so you can't actually shoot at anything. I suspect this is done because the trigger is on the side of the visor, so you have to have one arm against the side of your head. Which reminds me of the most interesting thing I saw all day: Two thumbs up for the new Revolution!

A friend of my daughter's just texted that they were able to "ride Twisted Colossus twice with no wait - Thanks Magic Mountain!" So, how many people are riding it thinking they got two rides...?

i went to reply and was thinking it's less than 2 minutes, then i read 60 seconds...i see what you did there. LOL i know someone had said an onride photo was going to be somewhere on the blue track. but, there was no sign of it anywhere, along with some kind of booth near the exit. does anyone know the plans for this, if at all? just curious. I've never been a fan of on-ride photos, but if they set it up at the right spot where you could get both trains dueling, it might make for a very cool picture.

That's what happened when I rode it last night. We were already started on the green lift when the blue train showed up. I don't know if the green lift chain is variable speed or what, but the blue train had caught up to us as we reached the top and we both dropped at the same time.

I think people would get it once the Blue side came around and the lift started going again. Especially if it did it frequently, people would understand. Just because they're GP doesn't mean they can't figure out simple things like that. (at least most people with a some ability of cognitive thinking). I think the issue, though, is still having riders sitting on a lift hill for an indefinite amount of time. It took 20-30 seconds to get from the platform to the first lift hill (there are some mini-camelback hills or whatever they're called), so at the very least they might be able to hold it if the "blue" train has been rolled out and is on the way. Sometimes I hate discussions like this, because I think "C'mon, they just spent millions of dollars on this. I'm sure they've got the sync issue all worked out. They've probably got their best people on this." And then I think of all the other times SF has dropped the ball, and it's like....."well, maybe we've just thought about it more than they have..."

So, I'm not sure if I'm thinking about this correctly, but with three trains running would a "hold" on the green lift to sync it with the blue lift actually impact ride capacity at all? The bottleneck is the loading platform, so you load the third train (3) while the other two (1, 2) are going. The green track (2) makes it to the station, and the next train goes (3) while the other one (1) waits on the green lift and syncs up. You unload and load (2) while (1) and (3) go. Depending on the length of the green side, and how long it takes to load and unload, it could work. The ride has seat belts, and based on the increased load times for Goliath after they added seat belts, I doubt they'll get the load time for TC low enough to regularly "beat the track". It wouldn't be hard to program the green lift to wait if there is a "blue" train on the way. If the load time is delayed, then the third train is going to be queued at the platform anyway.

It goes up no matter what. I didn't see any effort to sync the trains, and the only time I saw them sync'd was on my run. Like I said, it was taking them a while to get the trains loaded at first, so I think sync'ing was the last thing on their mind. Maybe later in the evening they got that worked out. I'm not sure. They did run the purple train with people in the front row a few times at first, then around 8:30 they stopped. While I was waiting in the line for front row (with about 15 pairs of people in front of me), they did two purple train runs with the front row, then stopped again. When I got to the front gate, it was purple and they made me wait for the next one. FYI, the blue train had the camera mount on it. It was very dark. There are also speakers mounted on the lift hill, so there may be some sound there in the future, but nothing last night. Others probably have a better memory for the exact mechanics of the ride. It all went by pretty fast. I don't know if TC is a "world class coaster" (it isn't the tallest..., or longest..., or fastest..., or the most loops...), and it doesn't have the memorable design of X2 or Tatsu, but for those of us who like our coasters smooth, fast and fun, it's very, very good.

Just got back from the employee night, so do I get to be the first review...? Got to the park at 7:30, and there was already a pretty big line for the 8pm opening. The line was almost to the back of the station, and it took us 45 minutes to get to the loading platform. My son and I wanted to ride in the front row, so we stood in the long front row line which added another 45 minutes to the wait. They were running three trains, but they weren't loading the front row on the purple train, so that slowed down the front-row line considerably. I kept track of the loading times, and until about 9pm, they were running 2- 5 minutes per train. But after 9pm, it started averaging 1.5 - 3 minutes per train. We finally got to board (the orange train), and all I can say is wow! Six Flags really hit a home run with this ride. In short, the best coaster of this type that I've ridden is El Toro (7 years ago), and I wasn't sure I'd ever get anything like this on the west coast. But this ride put a smile on my face just like El Toro did. It's a really, really good time. I remember riding El Toro and going over the hills and thinking "If I didn't have this lap bar, I could probably fly 100 yards through the air". I had the same felling on TC. It's really good "ejector airtime". The best part of the ride was the 2nd lap. We were about half way up hill when the blue train started up their lift, and our chain slowed down considerably. So for those who are wondering, they can apparently vary the speed of the hills to race the trains (maybe it's done automatically?) By the time we got to the top, the trains were neck and neck. The 2nd lap was one of the craziest roller coaster rides I've ever had. It's hard to describe how weird it is to be doing barrel rolls and look "up" and see the other train mirroring you. The trains weave in and out and it just really adds a layer of excitement to the ride. Afterwards, we went and got the hot-dog dinner SF was serving, and by then the line was extended well out of the station and back into the park. I suspect they'll be running it past midnight if they can't get the load times down well below 2minutes. I watched several more trains go, and didn't see any others synced up, so I don't know how common it will be. Obviously they'll do it for the media shoots, so you guys that get to go on those are very lucky! All in all, I would rate this up there with the best coasters at Magic Mountain (I tend to like the fast and fun coasters like Goliath and Apocalypse the most).

There's a property a few miles south of MM called "Calgrove Kennels" where you can see old signs and stuff from the park. They appear to collect all sorts of Magic Mountain junk.

Here's a picture I took driving by at 2:30 on Sunday:

Hey guys, A couple quick questions about the SFMM day: Are the three tours different (and very short), or the same tour with staggered start times? Are breakfast and lunch included in the price? Thanks, CP

I hope the park is ok. I heard it got pretty flooded last week.

I was bummed that they didn't build a more intense wooden roller coaster instead of Terminator. Something like El Toro at Great Adventure seems to have a very small footprint, but it's an incredible ride. Not that they've built TS, we'll probably never get a "super" wooden roller coaster. As for improvements, I wonder if they could redesign the Goliath trains to make them more open, like the Nitro (2 across though) or Superman trains. That would add a lot to the ride.