Rotura Violenta

Understood; my apologies. Take care, everyone.

Sad to see people in a forum of coaster enthusiasts resort to name-calling and self-aggrandizement over the discussion of a roller coaster design. Certainly not conducive to discourse, but perhaps the self-righteousness is worth it? As I mentioned, the drop on Apocalypse is small but is, in my opinion, one of the most powerful in the park. My comment was based on the visual rather than the experiential effect of the ride. So yes, sad to see that discussion here is frowned upon and considered to be "nauseating" and "embarrassing." Hope your day picks up from here, guys

I'm torn on TC. Of course evaluating the ride based on what we see here is silly, but it is natural to project and hypothesize. The drops do look relatively unimpressive, but as others have mentioned, that has little bearing on how intense a ride will be. Given that much of the remainder is fairly low to the ground, the speed by which it takes the course should produce some intense forces (hopefully more than just violent seat-slamming). With that said, Colossus is a ride that has an unmistakable visual presence—it was iconic in the past due to its size/complexity, and its position in the park marks it a spectacle. In that sense, the visual of the drops isn't anything to write home about, and hopefully as the rest of the track develops, it'll look a little more eye-catching and spectacular. Of course the experience of the drops is a different matter altogether. The thing that really has me torn is the "big oval" layout as part of the appeal of a wooden coaster (for me) is the directional shifts in and through the structure—of which this has very little. One the one hand, it does look like it's going to have some nice engagement with the other track (on the inversions at least—that hi-five thing doesn't look even remotely appealing to me as of right now), but on the other, I'm with Schilke in that it's not as impressive looking as some of the rest. (Then again, when I first saw Full THrottle design, I was entirely unimpressed, but ride-wise, I now find it to be the best thing in the park.) As far as other drops in the park go, I do seem to recall Goliath cresting the lift hill a bit faster when it opened, but I don't recall the effect being that different on the first half of the ride (the second half has been severely neutered). I still find it to be a great first drop, but it's the only one in the park that feels somewhat intense to me as the rest are largely swooping or banked. The first drop on Apocalypse is a good one though—especially toward the back of the train, even though it's not very high up. X2's drop does nothing for me at all, personally. Anyhow, it's great to watch this all develop!

^ Nice pics! Went to the park tonight to check out the xmas stuff (a bit meh, but whatevs). Rolled in late and went straight to Apocalypse as I skipped it last visit due to one-train operation. The train got the top of the lift and then stopped, leaving us sitting there for about 20 minutes. Maintenance guys came up to take people's names, and they were talking about a possible evac, but they then got a call to send the train through the circuit. 5 minutes later, we were on our way and it seemed far more smooth from the last time I rode (a few months ago). They shut the ride down after that though, and I returned later to find that they'd removed the train and were back to a single train—one that felt far more rough. The park wasn't too busy, but there were lines for Full Throttle and (strangely) Goliath for much of the night. The xmas stuff is really just a bunch of lights, some fake snow, and some props. Nothing too mind blowing, but they did manage to keep the crowds entertained. Rode Tatsu for the first time in at least a year (I've never liked it). It felt faster, but that's probably because it had been running all day. Still don't like it though. Colossus is a bit of a mess right now, but as you can see from the pictures above, the crest of the lift is almost done and you can get a sense of how the angle will be pitched.

Just to clarify, when people say Scream "rattles a lot," what they essentially mean is that there are sections of the ride where it feels a little rough? Apocalypse has quite a rattle to it then, right? To me, Scream is very smooth throughout, but a ride like Tatsu get quite bumpy when it hits the bottom of that pretzel loop. So, by definition, Tatsu would have more of a rattle?

Slightly tangential, but I actually expected Nitro to suck based on how forceless B&Ms can be, but it ended up being my favorite ride in the park. The airtime was so well calibrated throughout in contrast to the jarring violent airtime of El Toro (which I liked, but not nearly as much). Nitro was a huge surprise for me.

Scream is the one that gets cited as having "rattle" but I've yet to experience it myself (and I've probably rode it 30+ time). I suspect that I just don't know what I'm looking for though as I find a number of B&Ms to have rough-ish spots. I'm one of the few here that thinks Scream is actually one of the better rides at SFMM as I'm not a fan of Riddler or Tatsu. But I've also ridden the B&Ms on the East Coast and I can't think of what this rattle could really be.

It looks fantastic—thanks for posting! I find these more compressed, immersive layouts to be more appealing than some of the others RMC are working on, but I look forward to trying them all at some point.

I'm not the biggest fan of violent ejector air myself (I found Skyrush and El Toro to be rough endurance tests) but I love some serious floater action (such as on Nitro). With that said, I welcome both ejector and floater on TC as SFMM is long overdue for both, but Green Lantern, for me, is something else entirely. I'm probably one of few people on this site that really enjoys Ghost Rider—even at its most jarring—but I find GL to be deeply unpleasant, poorly designed, with zero redeeming qualities. So it has nothing do with whining or some fear of extreme air (GL has no "air" to me), and everything to do with my personal preference not to be slammed against steel bars over and over while being spun in circles. And that's sad to hear that Robb hates Californians. I wasn't aware he'd made such a statement, only that he'd expressed annoyance with aspects of living in LA. Given that I know some of the Californians he's friends with, I'm sure they'll be upset to hear that too. Thanks for expressing his thoughts more clearly.

Not that I care that much, but I did watch the full POV video and try to count the moments that looked like there'd be airtime, and it was indeed 18. A few of them look they'l be weird ejector-looking moments rather than standard airtime hills (in which the hill is taken with the train tipped on its side). My count didn't include the little bumps at the beginning—it all came after the first lift hill.

That's interesting about the different accelerations. I've never really noticed any kind of acceleration on Supreme Scream or Lex Luther before, but it makes sense. If the platform that the cars sit on is on a taught cable system pulling up and down, you'd think whatever spinning mechanism ToT uses to roll the cable would need to accelerate as well. I guess, I'm mainly just going on what it feels like to me—which is very tame, but definitely a seat lifter. What's most interesting to me though is that I find drop towers like SS and ToT to be super tame, but the old Intamin freefall at Magic Mountain was gnarly. Also, I just rode a carnie-style drop tower a couple of days ago (at Scandia) at it felt far more intense than SS or even LL. I wonder if acceleration is playing a role there as well?

I've only ridden the CA one, but no, it doesn't feel like a regular drop tower and certainly isn't free-falling or being pulled faster than gravitational pull. You come out of your seat on it, but I doubt you'd even need the seatbelt to be honest whereas on a regular drop you wouldn't stand a chance. A quick bit of googling suggests that the speed of the drop on TOT is about 40mph, Supreme Scream (a fairly slow drop ride) is 50mph, whereas the Intamin towers (like Lex Luthor) are 85mph.

I must say that I wasn't impressed by Knotts that much this year either. Although much smaller in scale and budget, Scandia was scarier than both. I've still yet to visit Universal's halloween thing but the crowds are a bit of a turn-off. Maybe next year I'll brave it.

Was at SFMM last night riding in the rain. Goliath gets a bit "pelty" and Yolo ended up getting shut down. So yes, many times.

I ended up going to the park last night and, as I suspected, it wasn't that busy (it was drizzling and then became torrential around 11pm). For the mazes, the longest wait was about 20 mins and, for the rides, Apocalypse was about 40 mins due to one train (I didn't bother). And for those looking for TC developments, there are none. It looks the same as it has for a week or so now. No "men talking by the track" or what have you I rolled up around 6:30, grabbed a wristband and went for a spin on Full Throttle before the mazes opened up. FT is quickly becoming my favorite ride in the park, threatening to knock Ninja from top place. It’s just a fun ride from start to finish with some real thought going into the transitions and moves. Through the night, I also rode Goliath, Ninja, Superman, and Revolution, but it was the mazes that I was really there for. First was Vault 666: I wasn't overly thrilled by this. It had some nice sets, but no standout moments or good scares. The scare actors were half-baked, and there's not much I could say about it. I'm not entirely sure what the narrative was all about, but it reminded me a little of the old Knotts' Asylum maze. Chain link fences with splattered paint seemed to be the theme? The whole thing looked very recycled from other mazes. Next was Toyz of Terror 3d: I really quite liked this one. I did it twice—once with and once without the glasses. The 3D effects are effective in that it's not about the scenery looking like it's going to poke you in the eye, rather the glasses provide an additional layer of disorienting movement. I found the detail in this maze to be good as well (the plush toy hallway was cool), although not a patch on Knotts’ Doll Factory maze from a few years ago. Red's Revenge: Clearly one of the more elaborate, but you can tell that Six Flags got a good deal on the wolf masks because they're everywhere in the park, seemingly all spilling out from this maze. There was a good gag upfront (a well-timed air blast), and the interior was more elaborate than some of the others. Also, there was a very dark section that was quite disorienting and fun as well as several large-scale and fairly impressive animatronic props. While I liked it overall, I couldn't help but think that much of the scenery looked like Rainforest Cafe, and the scares were minimal. Total Darkness: This was just lousy. I recently tried the "blackout" maze at Scandia and it was so much better than this. Here, there really are no gags—you're simply walking through a what is obviously a large, dark room with some walls thrown up. There was an interesting forced crawl effect at the end (a low-hanging inflatable ceiling), but overall, this was hopeless. The Aftermath: This is the other one that reminded me of Knotts' Aslyum. It's essentially an ornate, curated scare-zone in that it's all in an arena type space. It was elaborate with some big scenery pieces, but it didn't do anything overtly special. The scare-actors, like in the other mazes, detracted from the experiences with a bunch of half-hearted “boos” and bleats. Somewhat mediocre given the scale. Willoughby's Garden of Darkness: A one-trick pony of a maze, but one that's quite well-done all the same. This was basically lots of fake leaves and ivy everywhere with scare actors well-camouflaged and jumping out. Nothing special, but not horrendous either. Both this and Chupacabra show that effective scares come more from tight paths and lots of hiding spots and that huge props don’t always add to the scare factor. Willoughby's Resurrected: I think this is the best one there right now as it makes great use of the space it's in and it has some fantastic animatronics to boot. The scare-actors were all very good in this maze, engaging lots of unique gags and making me jump a few times. The props were great, as were the scenes, and there was a good opening scare (another air cannon) timed to a photo opportunity. Very well done throughout. Chupacabra: This one's sloppy. Just a few makeshift walls with a ton of wolf masks throughout as well as a few mannequins. Good smoke / lighting effects, but otherwise uninspiring. Where it did succeed was in the design itself as it allowed for some good, smokey walkways and a number of good hiding places for the talent. Low budget though. The scare zones were hit or miss. Some were more populated than others with some interesting effects throughout (the DC universe one looked cool, but the talent was lousy; zombie crossing was a joke etc.) Overall, Fright Fest was worth the $15 I paid for the wrist-band (I have a season pass), but I would hate to see anyone pay the asking price for this place as it stands. It reeks of Six Flags in that much of it feels misdirected and naive. I’m just glad I went on a night that was relatively crowd-free as I’d imagine it would be miserable to have to stand in line for some of these things for more than 15-20 minutes. Out of the three haunts I attended this year (Knotts, Scandia, Fright Fest), Scandia stood out the most for scares (and airtime, really)—especially given their low budget. It just goes to show that the super elaborate / bigger-is-better approach isn't always the right choice. Some pics (shot with an iPhone—sorry!): Cool lighting effects over by Riddler. This was also by Riddler. It was a scare zone but there weren't any scare actors in it. This maze is more of a curated scare-zone than anything. I guess this is there every year? The talent over by Willoughby's was by far the best. DC universe lighting effects. The scare-actors here were hopeless, though. Again, more cool smoke and light effects. Red's revenge was a bit like a Rainforest Cafe with the lights off. This was consistently un-scary all night. Total Garbage, more like. I think this was over by Riddler's as well. Floodlit smoke sure is pretty. By Riddler's again. See above And again I'm still not sure what this was supposed to be about. There was an escaped animal or something?