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Fastlane has always been advertised as "wait less, ride more." Regardless of how much you pay for it, as long as your wait is less than the stand-by wait you're getting what you paid for. It's the risk you take. Especially this season with how awful staffing will be. I know it sucks. It sucks to have to wait 30-45 mins in Fastlane but that's a hecking lot better than waiting 2+ hours in stand-by.

I guess you could make almost anything a first if you sub-categorize it enough. But the first thing I thought of was the original two modern looping coasters, Corkscrew at Knott's Berry Farm and Revolution at (not Six Flags) Magic Mountain. Being old helps in this case.

Well, I got 5 rides in on Stunt Pilot Sunday afternoon. Got a couple rides both the front and back rows - huge difference in intensity between the two, which I expected based on the long trains. The whip over the twisted airtime hill is one of my favorite sensations I've ever experienced on a coaster. Regardless of the seat, the ride is definitely the smoothest coaster in the park and really fills a previous gap in their lineup. It also had a sub-30 min line throughout the day, which was great for marathoning. Operations was also incredible, with the moving station really helping create a sense of urgency to load trains. Most of the time the restraints were locked and the train ready to go within 25-30 seconds, which is super impressive. On the downside, the ride broke down 6 times over the course of the afternoon, but maintenance was waiting in the station all day (presumably this was expected) - not sure what the issues were, but it seemed like superficial software teething problems - nothing that took the ride down for a long time. Regardless, I'm really glad to see great two-train ops at Silverwood - definitely a huge step up from what i've experienced in the park before. Also, I was able to request a specific seat even with the moving station - the ride ops will do their best to accommodate. I'll probably be back later in the summer for more rides (I hear even *more* theming is on the way) but for now I'm really excited to see what crowds Stunt Pilot draws this season. Definitely a class above any other coasters in the PNW!

Sorry I never got back to you guys...I was trying like hell to get all the essentials in just in case tomorrow is a washout. Just barely got it done. After the train I headed for Orion. Listed as a 90 minute wait, ended up being a little over an hour. Rode somewhere in the middle. Its a fun ride but incredibly short. Some good airtime moments and a couple forceful turns but don't blink or you'll miss it. Liked it a little better than Diamondback but my favorite coaster in the park was still to come... After a quick drink I made my way to the other side of the park to get my last new credit, Banshee. Quick 20 minute line and got front row. There was only one drawback and it was that there was a bad wheel on my car that caused a lot of vibrating. But otherwise, this just knocked Raptor off my top B&M invert spot. Packs an incredible punch from start to finish, maintaining a great pace and the mix of inversions and helixes is second to none. I think it's far and away the best coaster in the park. After that excellent ride I took the trek halfway to Kentucky to ride Bat. Another 20ish minute line, ended up in the middle somewhere. I didn't remember much from this ride when I was last there 14 years ago, but this is surprisingly punchy and forceful for an arrow suspended! Kinda short, but tons of fun. After that, it was 7:30ish and had to get across the park for my final stop, Beast. Unfortunately no night rides on this trip, but this was as close as I could get. 45 minute line, rode somewhere in the 4th car. This was much more wild and powerful than I remember it. Even with the trims all over the place, it really powers through the first section and those straightaways aren't boring like I remember. And that helix! Not rough to the point of being painful but it sure throws you around pretty good. I think I like Mystic Timbers a little better, but this came way up my list tonight and thats a hell of a 1-2 punch of woodies on that side of the park. 8:00 came fast and unfortunately I only got in 7 rides in a little under 6 hours. So while the crowds were a bummer, this park truly has become real awesome in the last 10 years. Amazing invert, two fantastic woodies (and Racer is good too from what I remember), 2 B&M hypers that are slightly underwhelming but still pretty awesome, a top notch suspended, and a nice supporting cast. I definitely want to come back soon, maybe in October with FP booked so I can get lots of night rides. Back at it tomorrow, hopefully the weather cooperates a little bit. Planning on doing rainy day things like Festhaus and the Brewhouse, and Flight of Fear. If the rain holds off, hopefully the crowd does too so I can get some good riding in. Unfortunately gonna have to skip the Reds game I was planning on, but I'll certainly be back here sooner than later. I suppose if I were to have a ranking here, it would be... 1. Banshee, 2. Mystic Timbers, 3. Beast, 4. Orion, 5. Diamondback, 6. Bat, 7. Flight of Fear, 8. Racer While they don't have a Steel Vengeance or a Maverick, that's easily a better top 8 than Cedar Point. Which I thought could never be beat. The fact these two parks are in the same state is crazy. Hell of a 1-2 punch for Ohio. Makes up for being stuck with the Browns and Bengals.

First of, thanks to @PKI Jizzman, aka Zach, for meeting up today and raising my "TPR Members Met" credit count to two. Shame we didn't get to ride anything together, but I'm sure you can understand my non-desire to wait in non-FL lines haha. I also meant to ask you about your username, but you can feel free to PM me if you feel like explaining it. Alright, checked in to my hotel after an exhausting day at Kings Island. Woke up at 4:00 AM in my Sandusky hotel to be on the road by 5:30 to make it to Kings Island for opening...after a little detour to Skip's Bagel Cafe in the northern Cincinnati suburbs for the best bagels I've had outside of the northeast. For some reason, there are zero solid breakfast places around KI except for Perkins. When I pulled into the Kings Island entrance at 9:45, there were maybe a dozen cars ahead of me (see picture posted here), which as I mentioned was a massive improvement from my experience on public-opening-day Saturday, where there were over 100 ahead of me at 9:30. Note that this trip will seem abbreviated to most of you, but that's because of my goal for the day: Two rides on Mystic Timbers, Beast, and Banshee each, and one on Orion, and to spend some time working on my tan in the waterpark. Made my way in to the park, grabbed my all-season Platinum FL+ wristband (2nd redemption of the day), and noted the "Fast Lane is sold out" signs, lending credence to thoughts that it theoretically can be bought at the park when it's not sold out in advance (which hasn't happened yet). Headed straight over to Mystic Timbers, and got two rides, one front row one back row, with one-train waits a piece, for Early Entry. It's not well publicized, but the park is offering early entry for all season pass holders (right now it's Mystic, Banshee, Orion, and Great Pumpkin Coaster), which starts 30 minutes prior to opening. The kicker? The parking gates don't let you through until 45 minutes prior to opening, giving you 15 minutes to get parked and through security, and then the main entrance doesn't open until exactly 30 minutes prior to posted opening time, really making the "early entry" period like 25 minutes by the time you get to any of the rides. After two awesome rides on Mystic, it was off to my number one KI coaster, Beast....26 minutes (counting ride time) for the front row; would have been like 5 minutes if I didn't want to wait for the front. After Beast, I met up with @PKI Jizzman at the still-closed bar near Adventure Express and shot the shit on our way over to Banshee. Upon arrival, the standby queue was about 45 minutes, so he sat it out and I went down the FL line for a two-train wait for back row, left side (I forgot to start my clock upon entering the queue). We then went over to Orion, which was broken down at the time, so I said my parting words to Zach and made my way over to the water park, after a brief stop in the Eiffel Tower to snap this picture of the parking lot at 12:10 for @Zand, who had been asking about crowds. Note that NO ONE was in line for this and my only wait was for the elevator to arrive at each end. So, I made the trek out to my car to grab my swim gear, and then the long, long trek across the lot to the Soak City entrance. Upon arrival, it was with a relative ghost town. And reservations were even sold out! This was a good thing, since there was a LOT that was not open. Here's the list of what I noticed was closed: -Zoom Floom (family raft slide) -Tropical Twister (intertwined body slides) -Aruba Tuba (kiddie slides) -Lookout Lagoon (one of the kiddie play areas; there were two others open) -Mondo Monsoon (tornado slide) -Pipeline Paradise (flow rider, surf simulator) -Breakers Bay (one of the wave pools, the other one was open) -One of the two slides on Thunder Falls -ALL food/beverage establishments, including drink refill stations, except for: Coconut Cove Bar, Coconut Cove Cafe, and Island Smokehouse In between slides (never had more than a one-stairwell wait), laps on the lazy river, and chillin' in the wave pool, I spent a lot of time at the bar and made chatter with the bartender, who confirmed that staffing is a major problem (it's why what was closed, was closed), and that they are offering $15-18 an hour for most almost all positions. I trekked up the stairs for every tube slide (so four total stair climbs, ugh), and went outside for frequent smoke breaks, thus the overall "exhaustion" from today. For some reason walking in bare feet just takes that much more out of you than when you have shoes on. Anyway, I left the water park at around 5:30 and made my way back in to Kings Island proper. Here, I grabbed another ride on Banshee (8 minutes from entry of the queue to off the ride) for back row, right side. and then made my way to Orion, which was back open. First off, the FL wait was 8 minutes including the time on the ride, for the back row. I was able to leave myself some gap between my body and the restraint this time, and yeah, this ride is growing on me. Still not quite Top-10 material, and still soundly in 4th in terms of Kings Island coasters, but it is growing on me. After that, it was back to Beast, for a 29 minute total time for front row, at 7:00 PM - more or less as close to a night ride as you can get with an 8 PM closing in June. Notably, the grouper this time was filling one train full of FL people, and then one train full of non-FL, and alternating. I think she was new. Made my way to Tom+Chee for an awesome classic grilled cheese (11 minute wait from entering the line to getting my food), and then headed out to my hotel. I accomplished all that I wanted to here today (including some sunburn LOL), so I was satisfied. Next planned trip is my big coaster tour (see details here) at the end of June, but I may make some smaller day trips between then and now. For now, it's off to a good night's sleep before my 9 hour drive back to Delaware ("the state," as I have to keep explaining to Ohioans). Might swing by Adventure Park USA for the Zamperla if I see it running from the highway. Here's a photo of Banshee's queue at 5:50 PM... ...and two of Orion's queue at 6:15 PM... ... and finally one of the lighting/DJ stage for the "Area 72 Party" that now won't happen until 10 PM closing resume on June 26th. Farewell!

Not this time. The line was 3x longer than Stunt Pilot lol. I did get some rides in earlier this season (I think I mentioned it in an earlier post), but man, the great ops on Stunt Pilot really highlight how badly two trains are needed on the woodies. Maybe next season....

SOUNDS GREAT!!! I'm hoping to make the trek out there in a couple weeks, but all of the initial reports seem to indicate that it's a great addition. Glad to hear that they are using both trains, and that the ops are doing excellent. A lot of times I will be frustrated by the seemingly tortuously long loading process SW does on TT and Tremors, so having them be able to pump trains out on this thing is amazing! Did you get a chance to try out Tremors and it's new RetraK (or whatever RMC calls it)?

I really do have a much higher opinion of Kings Island and Knott's than the rest of the chain right now.

Is it just me, or has Kings Island become the shining star in Cedar Fair's Line-up? As far as resorts go, Great Wolf Lodge may not be Breakers, but it's right next door. Or, there are plenty of hotels nearby.

I totally agree! I've never understood why the park seems so insistent on keeping the entire MF ramp filled at all times. The seemingly simple change of telling the merge attendant to only partially fill the ramp (e.g. up to a certain visual landmark, like the rear of the unload station) would vastly improve the ride's FL value at times throughout the day/season. It would also allow standby guests to spend more time waiting under the shade canopies in the main queue. Similarly, I think the best solution to SV's queue at this point is as follows. Utilize the right station pathway/staircase exclusively, for everyone. Aim to fill all the space after the metal detector. It seems to hold at least two trains worth of people, not counting the one train worth typically waiting in the station, so not having enough people to fill each train shouldn't be an issue. As space allows, send ~24 people from the merged tunnel to the lockers, and then through the metal detector onto the right pathway/staircase. As space allows, send an additional ~24 people (~12 FL and ~12 standby) to the merged tunnel to wait to proceed to the lockers. Aim to not let the tunnel line go past a certain point. This way, FL users would only wait ~4 trains to ride after the merge point. While I would welcome a FL exclusive staircase, this strategy would allow the park to avoid the potential hassle of having to re-split FL and standby guests (which, I admit, worked on opening day but did seem a bit clunky), while making the one remaining pathway to the station flow more evenly and quickly. The park could also eliminate the second metal detector staff position. As has been said, the lockers themselves seem good. They're free, easy to use, and occupy an attractive mini plaza. I think adjusting the flow of guests through the locker area is what needs to be improved.

You can buy fast lane online the day of, IF it's not already sold out. Passholder weekend I bought it online when I pulled up a mile back in the car line. You can only buy FL online/on app. You pick it up once you enter the park on the left. I think today was more so people getting an extended holiday weekend, but who knows. To be fair FL+ was only $75 and FL was $60. Pretty cheap, I think it's usually around $90. Fast lane waits are 10 min or less, Mike can detail that. FoF is just the longest due to capacity and the merge line is at the space ship.

Zach, you think handing her off for a night makes for a mixed bag of feelings, wait until you take a vacation without her or she goes off to camp for a week or the track you will make in the floor pacing when she takes the car for the first time, lol. Glad you had a nice visit! Shout out to the park. Yesterday not only did they treat the employees to free (and I am told fresh and "better than normal") burgers, dogs and other traditional Memorial Day food in the catering grove BUT they also gave them an employee ride night on Thunder and Freeze for about an hour and a half after close.

Kumba. Just start with Kumba.

Six Flags Magic Mountain May 2021 TPR is fortunate to have a handful members who provide regular updates and photos from their respective home parks around the world. Until now, however, I’ve never written a trip report from mine. If we’re defining home park as “the park literally located closest to me,” then mine is Adventure City ten miles north from Huntington Beach in what I guess is technically still considered part of Anaheim. But no one actually cares about that place and I’ve never even bothered to go. The next closest is Knott’s Berry Farm all of twelve miles away in Buena Park, exactly one mile closer to me than Disneyland Resort. Then about sixty miles farther away than any of those is Six Flags Magic Mountain. Throughout my various moves around Southern California, SFMM has never been the park closest to me, but it is the park that made me a coaster enthusiast, so in a way, it always feels like coming home. And what I mean by that is it feels a lot like coming back to your parents’ house after spending your first semester or two away at college. You feel all warm, fuzzy, and nostalgic on the drive up, but once you’ve been there a few hours, you don’t see it the same way anymore and you’re kind of ready to leave. You’ve grown, you’ve changed, you’ve experienced what else is out there, and now you just want to go drink with your friends to Europa Park instead. Six Flags Magic Mountain has its fans for sure, but in our circles it has spent the last two decades as more of a perpetual whipping boy. Even when they do something right, enthusiast praise is almost always accompanied by a hefty dose of well-deserved criticism. I think you still have to call it the chain’s flagship (I tried to avoid that pun, but it’s the right word), but how many of us can honestly call it our favorite Six Flags? I personally put Great Adventure, Over Georgia, Over Texas, and Fiesta Texas above it, and Six Flags Mexico and New England make me less frustrated. Like many things that underwhelm, I think SFMM disappoints because for all its advantages, it could and should be much better. How does a park in this market, in this climate, and with this kind of consistent capital investment, acquire this kind of reputation? There are reasons for all of these, though I’m probably not the guy on here best equipped to explain them. A wealth of information can be gleaned from the main SFMM topic. The feeling I get these days is that twenty-odd years of poor management and narrowly targeting a clientele that isn’t especially lucrative has left the park in limbo where the only way forward is doing more of the same. I think Six Flags knows this now. After a couple of branding experiments, first as “the xtreme park,” and then as a more family focused destination didn’t work out, they’ve settled into the idea that the best plan is no plan at all. It might be the only option left. When I go, I find a park mostly devoid of atmosphere that is solely reliant on a quantity-over-quality coaster collection to draw people and placate them once they’re in. That said, it’s actually a little better now than it used to be in both regards. While I don’t care for it, Justice League: Battle For Metropolis is a sorely needed dark ride and Crazanity filled the gaping “OMG WTF is that???” giant flat ride hole SFMM had to fill. And Lex Luthor: Drop of Doom is probably my favorite non-coaster ride in the park. But two big flats, a dark shooter, and a bunch of redundant kids rides all jammed into one corner do not make for a well-rounded park. I contrast this with the last Six Flags parks I visited, the two in Texas, where neither park has the same quantity of large coasters, but blends those they do have with a greater variety of minor attractions, subtle theming, and regional flair to create a cohesive atmosphere. I don’t think anything can be done to create that at SFMM. If my nostalgia serves me correctly, it actually was a bit more like that at the end of the Time Warner era in the late nineties. For better or worse, the time since has simply taken a toll. It also isn’t like there are no standout coasters which make the trip worthwhile due to their presence alone. Twisted Colossus and Tatsu are world-class rides, if not the best of their type, and X2 certainly has its good days. SFMM simply lags behind other parks with similarly large coaster collections like Cedar Point or Hersheypark. This is true in terms of the consistent quality of its coasters as well as atmosphere and two other key metrics—operations and service. No Six Flags park in my experience has been an exemplar of efficiency and guest service basics. What stands out to me about the general demeanor of SFMM’s employees is not just that they seem unmotivated or lazy (because this is true of most parks in general), but how so many of the staff exude this attitude of thinking they’re just too damn cool for their jobs. As if showing they cared was an admission they don’t have better things to do. Maybe you disagree. I chalk it up to being an L.A. thing. May 2021 was my first visit to the park in almost a year-and-a-half. Since February 2020 when a conversation I overheard at the bar at the Knott’s Berry Farm TGI Fridays (I did both parks the same day) began with, “Have you guys sold fewer Coronas since this virus thing got started?” How times have changed. Did my lengthy absence from Magic Mountain make me any fonder? We’ll see. I still get amped seeing Goliath and Twisted Colossus running when I pull into the parking lot. I’m pretty sure the original Colossus was the first coaster I rode at this park sometime in 1996 or 97. I also remember what the Colossus ride-op told my dad after he asked what they were building when the first couple of Goliath supports went up a few years later: “Oh, just a roller coaster.” Twisted Colossus doesn’t have the same parking lot coaster reputation that Scream does. I assume this is because it’s been there so long, people have ceased to remember that it is one. Hurricane Harbor… As a kid I once said, “One day I shall go.” I have yet to fulfill that promise. Despite everything I’ve said about the lack of atmosphere, SFMM’s entrance plaza is absolutely one of the best and most iconic out there. Revolution and Tatsu function as the “weenie” (as Walt Disney coined it) once you’re through the gates the same way the Disney castles do. It really is the perfect weenie for a park built so heavily around coasters. Tatsu juxtaposed over Revolution illustrates how coaster technology and scale have progressed over the decades and how Magic Mountain has literally and figuratively come full circle. It would be less visually appealing, but my one critique of Tatsu is how the final turn doesn’t dive down the side of the mountain in a climactic swoop toward the midway before climbing back up to the brakes. I’ve always felt that would make for a more exciting finale. I had a 11:30 reservation but entered around 10:45 without issue. I don’t usually buy Flashpass when I come here, but I thought the gold version would be a good idea this time since I knew staffing and on-ride capacity were somewhat limited. This was the first time I used the new app-based version of Flaspass rather than the watch or Qbot and it worked flawlessly. I hope this is what all the parks do going forward. FP definitely helped as I would not have been down with some of the moderate-length, but slow as shit queues I saw. It does a few things pretty well, but overall I’m not a Full Throttle fan. A less gimmicky version not focused solely on stats could have been a much more fulfilling coaster. I am also not a fan of the current gen Premier trains. I cannot understand how a modern coaster car can be so open, yet so restrictive and uncomfortable. Full Throttle I’m beating a dead horse here, but another thousand feet of track at the end of the layout would have changed everything about how we look at this coaster. Anything to allow a proper, full-speed descent down the outside of the vertical loop that doesn’t abruptly cut off the airtime just when it should be getting good. Maybe a low-rise speed-hill over the station and a wave turn up the hillside followed by a ground-hugging turnaround threading the loop and an airtime climb into a decline brake run. Simple but makes a world of difference. That would still keep the length at just a little over 3,000 feet too. Alas, as fun as it is to dream, such a ride was not meant to be. With the version we have, I really enjoy the launch, loop, and reverse launch from the tunnel. 6.5/10 It looks tame now, but that drop seemed like a monumental undertaking to me back in 2000 in a way the inversions on Viper, Batman, and Riddler just didn’t. It’s funny to think of how now it is generally considered to be one of the cruder and least thrilling hyper coasters. My enthusiasm for Titan does not extend to its older cousin. It would not be all that hard to photograph SFMM in a way that makes it look bad. I thought it would be more interesting to make it look as nice as possible. I didn’t ride Superman: Escape from Krypton today. I usually don’t even think about it until I hear it running. It’s fun, but a ride on it doesn’t necessarily make my day. I didn’t get to Lex either. I planned to, but even with the gold Flash Pass it became a struggle to get a lot done. Ah, the Screampunk district. I long to return to Phantasialand one day to finally see who did the steampunk theme better. You know. That old rivalry. Magic Mountain vs. Phantasialand…. If nothing else, the old regime did a fantastic job with Goliath’s queue line and station building. It’s the micro-budget Indiana Jones queue we never knew we needed. There are few coasters that waste as much speed as Goliath. Goliath I’m happy it exists, even if only for its off-brand uniqueness. I love the fact that SFMM has a plus-sized hyper coaster with three-bench trains, a straight ramp first drop, almost no airtime, a MCBR that hits harder than an eighties Arrow, a grayout helix, and one of the great all time coaster entrances. It's at once hopelessly primitive yet smoother than almost any modern equivalent. A “Giovanola rattle” just isn’t something you hear about. It is remarkably consistent in its sheer averageness. There is little logic to why I think Titan is so much better, but I just do. 6/10 The best part about a good steampunk theme is how it is steamy, yet also punk. Oooohh… steampunk. What if steampunk actually was the future? Like it turns out the solution to eliminating fossil fuels was steam power all along and all the old sci-fi authors were actually right? Just a century or two later than expected??? Oooohhhh steampunk… Twisted Colossus For me, it’s a tossup between this and Ghostrider for the title of best coaster in California, with Railblazer in a tight third. TC fills the niche of elite destination coaster I realized was lacking at SFMM once I started to travel more widely. It’s fun (more so when it races), long, intense, and has more airtime than anyone needs, but it still falls a little short of what I consider the top-tier RMCs. There are a couple of elements that don’t work well for me. One is the double-down on the green side. It doesn’t level-off enough at the midpoint to deliver a true 1-2 airtime punch like it’s intended to. Second are the twin double-ups both sides share before the second pair of turnarounds. These level off properly and work better than the green double-down, but I think they’re still taken it a bit too quickly. Not like I want it slowed down or anything, but the air comes and goes a little too suddenly to enjoy it. With TC though, the good more than outweighs the slightly less-good. I love the pair of first drops, the dueling inversions, and my favorite part is actually the climb up to the first pair of turnarounds—the two strongest and most prolonged airtime moments on the ride. This is a very solid mid-tier RMC, which means it’s still better than a top-tier almost anything else. 9/10 RMC first drops do not need size to be great. TC’s pair of them are honestly no worse than Steel Vengeance’s for me, though neither can quite match the one on Iron Rattler. Twisted Colossus doesn’t race a lot these days, which is a shame, but predictable. The green stall over the blue camelback is probably the ride’s best part when it does. My favorite element when not racing—the apex of the climb into the first turnaround. I’d rather RMC had done a single drop with a right-left shimmy instead of an abbreviated double-down here. Scream (or SCREAM!) So… most of us seem to regard this (if not Hydra) as the worst B&M floorless, but on this visit it was running GREAT! And I mean that. Usually Scream is a rattle trap, has a big jolt at the bottom of the first drop, and lightly fries you like you’re riding over a skillet due to the hot asphalt it was built on. None of that happened this time. It was fast, smooth, and dare I say approached the quality of the rides I had on Superman Krypton Coaster last October. Problem is, I haven’t been able to say that about a single lap taken on Scream since its opening season. Maybe it was freshly refurbed, I have no idea. The vast majority of rides I’ve had on this over the past eighteen years have varied from mediocre to awful and that is where I expect it to return. Hope I’m wrong, but we’ll just have to see. Based on my cumulative experience with the ride, Scream gets a 5/10. Scream was built in 2003, when the “Xtreme Park” brand had fizzled and the attempted revitalization as a family destination had not fully begun. So the ride’s presentation makes it look like nobody quite knew what to do with it (or cared) so they just did a bare bones job as cheaply as possible. When is the last time you heard someone say, “My favorite elements are cobra rolls”? None come to mind. Imagine if they had just laid some sand down and planted like nine palm trees. Would have looked so much better. I even felt some airtime going over the s-hill today. Sometimes Scream’s corkscrews are barely more comfortable than Viper’s. Not on this day. They were great! From this angle you almost think Goliath’s whole run is through a grove of palm trees. But it’s only the queue. So this one time a few years ago I was at the park by myself and ran into a couple of other enthusiasts. We started talking and hung out for a few hours. One of these dudes was wearing this floppy looking clown hat that looked like something you’d find at a Disney gift shop, but minus the character touches. When I asked him about it, he said he always loses a hat on Goliath. Me: “You mean you intentionally wear a hat just so you can lose it on Goliath?” Him: “No! It just happens!” Me: “….” So we get on the coaster and he puts the hat behind his back until we go through the tunnel. Then he puts on the hat, holds onto it through the big turnaround, and lets go as we enter the camelback. Predictably, the hat flies off his head as the train goes over the crest, and he turns around and looks back at me while holding his cheeks like the most mind-blowing thing ever just happened. Don’t be that guy, folks. Ahhh the Golden Bear Theater… Home to decades and decades of… quality entertainment…. I’ve actually never gone inside. Like many of you, I was ecstatic when it was announced SFMM would refurbish Revolution with lapbars to become the New Revolution. It’s a drastically better coaster now. In the bad old days, the best part and only redeeming quality of shoulder restraint Revolution was how it wound through a forest of trees along the hillside. But then when it came time for the refurb, some clueless exec decided they needed to cut a bunch of trees down to improve the coaster’s sightlines from the pathways. I distinctly remember a promo video with this guy saying, “We wanted to open it up a lot so people could see it.” You know. So people would know a coaster that had been there for forty years was, in fact, there. Fortunately there are still enough trees that Revolution’s (and Tatsu’s) experience hasn’t been irrevocably harmed. Revolution It broke down before I got to it and I ran out of time later, so I didn’t ride it on this visit. Overall, I’ve really enjoyed it since the refurb. It’s smooth, comfortable, and scenic. The loop delivers and is probably still the second best vertical loop in the park after Full Throttle’s. My issue, and the one thing keeping it from making a perfect Six Flags Schwarzkopf trifecta with Mind Bender and Shockwave, is how the block brakes are still applied as trims. Unless there are structural concerns I don’t know about, Revolution doesn’t need them. Nothing you can do to it will ever make it as intense than the other two and the brakes make it feel almost Goldrusher-esque at points. Regardless, we should all be thankful anyone cared enough to modernize and preserve it at all. 7/10 Rounding the path up through the Baja Ridge section. Viper’s placement still lends it a larger-than-life presence. I thought the “greatest coasters” wall was the coolest thing ever when I was a kid. And I believed it. Not that I condone actually doing this, but I think it would be low-key hilarious if someone snuck in after closing and put up murals of Expedition GeForce, El Toro, Helix, and others in their place. Ha. SFMM might not even care. It’d be cheaper to just leave it up. Looking up at Viper from here in the 90s felt like staring up at nothing short of Mount Olympus. The mythical one, not Big Chiefs. It was so intimidating I wouldn’t ride it the first time I visited. But the second time around, I was ready. Viper more than any other is the coaster that made me an enthusiast. Just look at that entrance sign. It’s perfection and typifies everything a roller coaster is supposed to represent. SFMM doesn’t make the same effort with its entrance and station structures these days. Everything about the experience of Viper was meant to be daunting. You go underneath a sign with a demonic looking snake, then you climb up the path to the main queue, where you then have to walk up two flights of stairs to the station proper, from which you proceed upward again to the peak of the nearly hyper coaster-sized lift hill. Then after the drop and the first loop, you take a victory lap high above the queue and station in celebration of what you have conquered. Viper isn’t a great or even good coaster anymore, but the psychological aspect of it works as good as ever. The bridge spanning Baja Ride from Viper to X2 is one of the most scenic spots in the park. Viper was my favorite coaster for several years from 1997 to 2001 when I made my first trips to Cedar Point, Busch Gardens Tampa, and Islands of Adventure. I knew nothing of its already by then old-fashioned technology or how to evaluate its myriad of faults. I just knew it was scary as shit and pulled the strongest g-forces I had experienced up to then. In hindsight I truly admire how my dad, who was pushing 50 around then, marathoned it with me on such a regular basis. I made him ride it over and over… Now at 33 I don’t even want to marathon it. Viper’s first loop is still a good one. Snappy and pulls hard. The second and third can be good depending on the row and the day, but they tend towards whiplash more. Viper’s second half is often determined by the MCBR. Sometimes it damn near stops you, others it slows you down a lot but still lets you carry some speed. When the former happens, you kind of fall into the harness during the slow corkscrews. If it’s the latter, you can still make a comfortable enough ride out of it if you brace correctly. Viper There’s no way around it. Like almost all Arrow coasters of its vintage, Viper has aged poorly. It was outdated only a year or two after it was built and it survives now on nostalgia and the cost-benefit analysis of dismantling it. But I will always love it and it has a firm claim in my sentimental top 5. It’s a coaster that delivers a good ride maybe two or three times in ten, but I’d be devastated if SFMM decided to get rid of it. It’s the last mega-looper standing after Shockwave, GASM, and Vortex all bit the dust and it looks primed to remain so for the foreseeable future. A fantasy of mine is for Viper to receive the Phantom’s Revenge treatment, getting new trains with lapbars and replacing all the track after the first loop. It could instantly rival Twisted Colossus for best coaster in the park. Too bad it will never happen. As it stands, 5.5/10 X2 is a coaster with a pretty cool setting and presence of its own. Now 20 years old, it still carries a mystique. A perfect pair: the last coaster of Arrow’s golden age and the one that proved so costly, it put them out of business for good. Weirdly, I didn’t like X when it first opened. I thought it was an overblown gimmick lacking in substance. I’ve grown to appreciate it over the years. Now I think it’s the second or third best coaster in the park depending on how it runs on a given day. X2 just isn’t the same for me after I fell in lust with Eejanaika a couple of years ago. Now with that coaster entrenched in my top 10, X2’s faults are a lot harder to ignore. It’s still good, but at least for me, that mystique I mentioned has diminished. X2 Somehow, with chronic one-train ops and perpetually slow loading, I still find X2 worth the wait. Hold on, that’s not true, that’s my FlashPass talking. That and I tend to visit on days I can be certain are slow. I don’t think I could ever ride this coaster and wait through the full switchbacks again. If it reliably ran two trains and cycled as quickly as any other coaster in the park (which still isn’t fast) it would be a different story, but X2 has become a novelty experience for me when the day’s conditions allow. Its reliability has improved a lot since then early years when you never had the faintest clue if would be running. That’s a great thing, because as cynical as I may sound, X2 can be a very good coaster. The first drop is absurdly spectacular as is the first raven turn and whatever they call the inversion following them. It’s after that where X2 starts to fall apart a bit. As the seat rotations get more complex and the track profiling tighter, roughness sets in. The second raven turn in an outside seat near the back of the train can be pure brutality. Riding in an inside seat mitigates it, though not completely. This is a very tough coaster to grade for me because the experience varies so much from one ride to the next. I will split the difference and say 8/10, though there are times I could have given it a 9. X opened up some great views of Viper that were not possible before. Viper-watching is an X2 queue line guest’s favorite pastime. I had something to say here, but I think I’ve now written enough about Viper to last the whole forum at least a year. If you take the winding route up from Baja Ridge past Revolution, you arrive at the… camp area. Which may or may not also be part of Samurai Summit given how it’s the location of Tatsu’s entrance and queue. This is actually one of my favorite areas of the park due to the ample tree cover and space to relax. Tatsu’s placement atop the magic mountain is so perfect I almost can’t believe the park did it. The elevation made what would have otherwise been a ho-hum first drop into a real highlight. The Orient Helpful Honda Express. It provides about the same rate of acceleration I imagine that new swing-launch version of Blue Fire going to Dreamworld Australia will deliver. An excellent terrain coaster is one that uses said terrain to do things no other coaster could. Tatsu is a perfect example. No other flyer could copy and paste Tatsu’s pretzel loop. Flying Dinosaur gives it a try by placing its midcourse pretzel loop in a tunnel, but without the elevation change the effect isn’t the same. That said, Flying Dinosaur is in totality the superior coaster. If you’re planning a trip to Japan, don’t bother going to Kyoto. If you’ve been to Samurai Summit at Six Flags Magic Mountain, then you’ve basically already seen it. The pagoda-style architecture of this oft-closed gift shop is a textbook example of the early Edo Period style ushered in when Tokugawa Ieyasu completed the unification of Japan’s once waring provinces. At the garden-like peak of Samurai Summit, Tatsu’s colors serve an aesthetic purpose analogous to the gold-plated walls of Kyoto’s Kinkaku-Ji temple. Ninja’s red station building is modeled on Senso-Ji temple in the Asakusa ward of central Tokyo. Oh my god, I really hope no one is taking these last few captions seriously. Tatsu My second favorite coaster in the park after Twisted Colossus. Tatsu is not an especially intense coaster outside of the famous pretzel loop. It’s a graceful coaster that successfully creates a flying sensation better than any other flying coaster has been able to thus far. It will probably never be equaled in this regard unless F.L.Y. rides even better than it looks, and even then it still doesn’t have Tatsu’s terrain and elevation. Tatsu is still a very smooth ride fifteen years on, displaying almost none of the rattle that has come to define Scream and Riddler’s Revenge. The train shudders quite a bit at the pullout of the pretzel loop, but that’s understandable given the speed and forces it endures in that element. Only the crazy intensity and originality of Flying Dinosaur top it among flyers. 9/10 I didn’t ride Ninja today. The 6pm operating day was already waning by the time I got up here and I had other priorities. Overall, I think Ninja is fun and the second best suspended coaster I’ve ridden after The Bat at Kings Island. I never got to experience Big Bad Wolf, though I hope to ride Vortex at Canada’s Wonderland sometime soon. West Coast Racers and Apocalypse make for a pretty nice view down the backside of Samurai Summit. It’s too bad the park couldn’t have built the beer garden (and I use that term very loosely) up here instead of the space between Riddler and West Coast Racers. Having a drink in the shade while watching the coasters from above would have been great. And somewhere around here is where I would have put it. Would have gotten less foot traffic, but that’s not my problem. Is it safe to say the whole “YoloCoaster” meme has been retired now? The Underground, home to what I think is… wait for it… the best themed coaster at SFMM. Bear with me on this. The area still looks a little sparse, but it’s a huge improvement over the desolate stretch of nothing that was here before. The dueling/racing moments look great from the midway, but I think the effect is felt better on-ride on Twisted Colossus. It doesn’t seem like the West Coast Racers trains come together as closely as they do on TC. At the very least, the midway has some great kinetic energy now. The upper story loading floor of the WCR station building. And now here we are down on the ground level of the WCR station, which is of course a complete lie. That’s just my Mustang on the dyno. I should have taken more photos from the actual ride station to help make my point, but this is why I call WCR the best themed coaster in the park. If accuracy is your metric, they captured the look they were going for perfectly. It ain’t fancy, but it’s accurate. There’s some alright airtime here, especially on the white side. If you drive the I5 and I405 enough around LA, chances are you’ll see a Maserati or two doing exactly this along the median some day. West Coast Racers I feel like saying the exact same thing in every review here, but WCR does a couple of things well while the bulk of it is somewhere between disappointing and average. Granted it’s a slightly different case here since this one is supposed to be a deluxe family coaster to some extent, but so is Cheetah Hunt and I can’t criticize that one at all. The dueling aspect syncs up well and adds to the fun. The white side has a couple decent airtime moments. The yellow side helix pulls some nice g’s. Those are fine and good. However the trains are clunky and uncomfortable, the inversions do nothing, and there’s something about Premier’s track profiling on this and other recent coasters that feels awkward to me—like they did a first draft of the heartlining and called it a day whereas Intamin or Mack would have dialed it in further. Its not for me, but I’m glad people seem to like it. 6/10 You know what, everything I said was wrong. This is the most well-themed ride in the park. Actually, I’m not sure. Maybe when it still had the Terminator IP. And the queue still has a lot of theming. But then the station is all bare wood, so…? Apocalypse I was pretty excited when Apocalypse first opened as Terminator Salvation. After years of Colossus and Psyclone stinking up the place, a fast, fun, smooth GCI sounded like just the thing. Because, I mean, GCI’s are all of those right? Well, yes, just not this one. It was smooth and fast when it opened. And it still carries that fast pace today. But it stopped being smooth real quick, though it is again now, but probably just temporarily. And was it ever all that fun? Ehh, not really. The first drop has some good air in the back when it does its mini-Wodan impression. There’s some floater on the low-rise camelback and a good airtime pop in the hitch of the elevated turn that follows. But after that it’s just… meh. Once Apocalypse enters the tunnel it commits the remainder of the layout to doing absolutely nothing. There’s no more airtime, laterals, or any of the complex transitions GCI layers into their other coasters. It just hurdles along through some flat turns and ineffectual directional changes. This isn’t a first-gen GCI like Wildcat or Roar either, when GCI had yet to adopt their current style. Apocalypse is a contemporary of rides like Prowler, Renegade, and Thunderbird/American Thunder, each of which offers a lot more. 6/10 The preshow video was pretty cool in the Terminator days. You got see real, honest to god, legit movie stars like Moon Bloodgood in a Six Flags park! I guess Common was in it too and he’s pretty famous. But I think most of us can probably act better than him. Apocalypse is running quite smooth at the moment. But the majority of wooden retracks seem to be going the way of ipe wood or GCI titan track/RMC RetraK lately to improve longevity and Apocalypse didn’t get any of that. So it may be only a matter of time until it deteriorates again. I seem to remember people referring to this as a dead man’s turn when the ride was built, but I don’t think I’ve seen the term used in a while. The last coaster I made it to this day was Riddler’s Revenge. It still dominates the skyline around the back of the park. Its position in front of the hillside has always made the world’s largest standup coaster look even larger than it is. Riddler’s Revenge was the other coaster that, along with Viper, made me an enthusiast. It was still under construction the first time I visited. The supports for the lift and first drop were up and I remember staring up at them and thinking about how they absolutely dwarfed Batman, which I had just come off. I was both terrified of and drawn to it. Once it opened in 1998, I couldn’t get enough. Everything about it was just so big. I had never seen or heard of a hyper coaster then and Riddler had this immense, twisting drop and these huge diameter loops that looked totally different and much cooler than the tighter, elevated ones on Viper. The back-to-back dive loops were my idea of coaster nirvana at the time. A typical day at SFMM for me back then was one ride each on Colossus, Batman, Ninja, Psyclone, and Revolution, and then as many as I could possibly manage on Riddler and Viper. As the penultimate standup, Riddler benefited from experience learned on Mantis and Chang. Its elements are less snappy and a little more drawn out. Probably why it stayed smooth well into its second decade of operation when its predecessors had long since gotten rough. Georgia Scorcher is my favorite standup now. And like Viper, Riddler’s Revenge has fallen deep into my rankings to the point where I rarely think about it unless I’m at the park. It’s much more re-ridable than the old Arrow, but time finally caught up with the big B&M standup too. You aren’t guaranteed a smooth ride on it anymore. Riddler’s Revenge This had always been a backseat ride for me. You got a little more torque on the twist down the first drop and a combination of hangtime plus a final, little yank in the four big loops. Nowadays it’s front or second row only for me. It took about twenty years, but Riddler finally began to get a little rough. The back is still tolerable, but if I want to ride it more than once, I have to ride farther forward. One thing I love about this coaster is how it adds plenty of non-inverting elements to the mix of inversions. The layout feels grander this way and gives the ride a more unique personality even if it can be kind of dull. On a hot day with a full train, Riddler can still deliver the thrills. 7/10 The worst-kept secret in town is the RMC single rail raptor for 2022 taking the place of Tidal Wave and spanning the distance from Batman: The Ride to Justice League. The Riddler’s Revenge Plaza is about to look pretty different in a year’s time. Assuming they name it Joker or another DC character, the new coaster could be a great opportunity to fill in the space between the current DC Universe and the Justice League/Riddler area. Combining the two into a single, larger DC Universe might greatly improve the atmosphere in the back of the park. Back in the parking lot as the day ran out and I ceased to be able to reserve anything with the Flash Pass. I may give SFMM a hard time, but I’ll always be back.

know how I kept saying that Park President Jeffrey Siebert has been teasing "something" coming to Poltergeist and I was saying how I have a feeling that it might be an enclosed "haunt" portion of the queue. . since they never use those back 6-8 switchbacks? well. . Mr. Siebert just posted THIS pic on socials. they certainly made room for . . . something. . by removing the 6-8 switchbacks in this portion of the queue!

Kennywood just hit 35 dispatches in an hour on Phantom and didn't stack once! This crew is amazing.

I found Jesus. He was reincarnated as the front row of Diamondback. This thing is 100% a front row coaster and holy hell do those camelbacks produce up there. Rode it 4 times in the front, getting pelted by the rain and loving every second of it. Went in the back once just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating and yeah...it isn't half the ride back there that is in front. Sorry Banshee, your stay as the #1 coaster ar Kings Island only lasted 24 hours or so.

Mystic Timbers is great, was my fav ride there and we'll see if it remains so after Orion, though it wouldn't surprise me. Sounds like it was a good time and dang now I HAVE to try the blue ice cream beer lol Also seems like crowds were no issue which gives me hope but also guessing rain kept people away.

Ah but here's the thing, we get that...it's less not zero and ofc 45 mins is better than 2 hours. Problem is it seems that, at least thus far, they have kinda bungled how they've been doing it and the FL was not that much less than normal. THAT is a problem, like 45 mins vs 120 is clearly a huge difference and worth it, some are making it sound like that hasn't been the case though....but I do assume it's still early season bugs that will work itself out. Least I hope. Bc yeah bad news i305isdaddy but for SV it was deff more than 15-20 mins lol It's till Cedar Point, like I don't think people always seem to grasp that and like, ya gotta understand crowds are part of it. But if ya wanna go it is what it is. I know I am excited as hell esp that weather should be perfect. Since I'll be arriving tomm night gunna pop in the park (since I got the platinum pass ) I know rides have been closing early but maybe can grab some of the not big names. EDIT: Oh btw how do we get the actual fast pass? Can we just pick up at the gate/conveniently or do we need to go to some place?

Source: Looopings.nl There is news about the expansion. The Dutch High Court has given the final verdict today and approved the plans, this means the Efteling is now officially allowed to expand it's borders. After the local government approved the expansion in September 2018 there are now no further obstacles for the park to expand, the park is now allowed to expand both east and west borders with the rumored Intamin family launch coaster with Circus theme coming in the east expansion first. Last year the park chairman announced that due to Covid there was no money to rush the expansion however after the news he has said that next year they want to start depending on how the pandemic continues. So this is some good news. I'm excited to see this rumored coaster as we've been talking about it sins 2018. Looking forward to see how the park will fill in the expansions as it will be be quite a big area.

Pretty awesome day so far! Started with a walk on front row ride on Adventure Express and walk on back seat ride on Racer. From Racer I saw a grand total of 8 people on a train on Orion! Good two back seat rides there in 15 mins! Now in line for Flight of Fear (might be the only line of the day, but its only to the UFO). Rain has been steady but light, but everything is running as far as I can tell! Should get plenty of riding and beer drinking in today!

It's still better than Mean Streak.

They actually encourage it!

It seems like Cedar Point has had a bad combination of bad luck and shitty execution when it comes to Steel Vengeance.

New hamster wheel coaster now open in Myrtle beach.

Heading to Denver next week to graduate with my Master's degree! While there, I am planning to hit Elitch Gardens. Any discounts other than the $20 off from their website? Was really hoping to visit Lakeside as well, but it doesn't look like they will be open til later in the summer. Any other must do or must eat in the city? Thanks!

The log flume (or at least the lift hill, boats (or at least the original ones), and I'm assuming a large part of the ride hardware) was relocated to the park after KK originally went bankrupt, before Ed Hart took over for the first time. At KK it was replaced by Vampire, and Lightning Run is in that same/similar spot today, I think? There is some debate (or at least in my mind) of whether the flume trough itself, lift hill and drop aside, was relocated or if the design was just copied. I think there might have been a couple other rides that Silverwood got at the same time after KK closed, but I don't know for sure which ones they are. My best guess are the Antique Cars, and Red Barron, but IDK for sure and it's probably impossible to know for certain. I just think it's kinda funny that both Stunt Pilot and the Log Flume were relocated from KK to SW, both due to financial issues, and were placed right next too each other in the same park.

They couldn't answer because you spoke to someone in India reading off a prepared Q&A sheet LOL.

75 minutes at Diamondback turned into 35 minutes for a back seat ride. Pretty good ride, a little rattly and not quite as much airtime as I've heard but still a pretty solid ride. Hit Mystic Timbers next, again being told 75 mins but ended up being 45. Rode in front, freaking awesome coaster! Tons of airtime and fun forceful turns. Inside of the shed was super hot. Just hopped on the train as it was loading when I got off Mystic Timbers. After the train I'll probably hit Orion and Banshee just to get through the rest of the new to me stuff. It's crowded for sure but a lot of it is school groups who seem to be slowly heading out. Luckily the crews have been great so far. Food lines do look extremely ugly though.

I'm trying out the blue ice cream beer next door! It's delicious. If you wanna meet up when you're off say hey! We've got a solid showing of TPR here today wow it's almost like things are back to normal!

Wow, they actually pulled off making the situation WORSE than opening day/weekend. So they were separating the lines after the lockers and the FL line was typically shorter opening weekend. Still highly inefficient, but not as bad as what you described. I saw many many people screaming at the ops when we were there. I just truly don't understand why CP is putting their employees in this situation. Employees lie and say the lines are "2 hours standby" when they're actually 20 to 30 minutes and it just creates this distrust. I hope they go back to just closing the lines with the park. I do get why so many are upset, people wait an hour for a corn dog so they don't pass out then get turned down 2 hours early for two of the most popular attractions next door on already reduced days and hours. If the park closes at 6 or 7, just close the park then. My favorite quote I heard from a SV employee was "don't put your bags behind the railings, this isn't six flags". Well SFGAdv and SFSTL both had awesome operations, staff, cleanliness and so on. We put off using our season long fast pass at any Cedar Fair park because it's still miserable compared to Universal, Herschend, Six Flags and every other park we've gone too this year and last year.

That reminds of the time a woman complained to our little local water park in Cape Girardeau about getting wet on the lazy river.

I've been to KI when they had 10PM fireworks like 6 times and they never closed the lines early. I always timed my rides on other coasters so I could get in line for The Beast at like 9:50. The ride is usually already shut down for the show, but they allowed people to get in line right up until 10. About 15-20 minutes after the show ends they would usually get the all clear to re-open and they would cycle everyone in line through for the last ride of the night. Actually one of those nights they actually got a call that they could NOT reopen for some reason and instead they told us the park had kept Diamondback running so we could get one last ride on it.

They will be open through New Year's Day. Just are holding off a bit to see what the hours/events will be based on Pandemic conditions. Although at this point I will say I think it is looking good to return to normal operations. If at all possible they want that for FF, it's their biggest money maker of the year. They will go to weekends only after August 22. Pretty much every school district in the county starts the next day. On another note apparently it was super packed today. I'm guessing partly due to the colder than normal weather forcing the opening of HH to be delayed. Some stupid woman was complaining on FB that her poor son would be disappointed and why o why didn't Six Flags have heated pools like Volcano Bay, and I only got on there in the first place to see if they delayed the opening

yes King’s Island daily fireworks since 1972!!!!!!!

Weighed in at 244.8 this morning -- so I'm halfway to my goal of 200! Just gotta stay consistent with the exercise and diet. (Gonna be so hard to do that when I'm spending a few days at Hersheypark next week though...)

For now ..... Ridden in 1995 ~ (then called) T2 in Kentucky Kingdom ~ First SLC of it's kind in North America. Ridden in 2008 ~ El Condor in (now called) Walibi Holland ~ First SLC Of It's Kind. Ever. Way back when. Ouch. Twice. BONUS POINT: Most everyone's ridden this one: (1959 debut) DL's Matterhorn Bobsleds. First Tubular Steel coaster in the World. Looking great for it's age! Photo taken 2016, from the Monorail. And I got to ride it with my mom, when I was ten years old! (1963) She freeked of course, LOL. And IMhO ...... Left Side > Right side.