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^ Holy hell, guy, it was a joke.

Today was media day for Wonder Woman Flight of Courage! Awesome addition to SFMM's lineup. Now there are two coasters I will ride every time i'm there. I have not ridden either of the first edition single rails that just look like they are sped up in videos, but I believe this is just enough for everyone. The front was more violent than the rear, but the rear has the type of airtime I enjoy. First drop was my favorite in the back seat. There still seems to be a lot of detail work to be done in the future, but it's ready enough to open, I guess. As you may have heard, Batman's entrance is now the old exit. Before going up the ramp, they created a new concrete walkway to the original queue. The stairs still smell the same post closure. lol. SFMM opened it for media day as well so I got one ride in. The new DC Universe entrance looks great. There is a ton of open space in the plaza area as well as some space surrounding the ride. The old turnaround area for Tidal Wave is unused dirt at the moment. There definitely has to be a plan for that land. Walls are still up in that area. Anyway, an excellent addition to Magic Mountain's already solid lineup!

We visited the park last week and I wasn't planning to do a TR but after reading these reports about the park's attendance this year, figured I would. We had a great visit and I'd recommend a visit this year to anyone. Operations were crazy good everywhere except Superman Ultimate Flight, where they weren't exactly bad but had the typical Six Flags flying coaster struggles. Seriously, they were flying to dispatch trains at all the coasters in a way I've never seen at a Six Flags park before. Kingda Ka was running 2 trains/one station and they'd have the train out before the other returned. Ditto at El Toro and Medusa. The park was also clean and yes, completely empty. The only thing we were bummed about was Nitro being unavailable, which I hope is back in operation soon. The only "Six Flags hot mess" thing we experienced was slow food service along with some of the food choices unavailable. We tried going to Yum Yum Cafe for lunch but after waiting about 5 minutes with the employees and customers both standing around looking confused with no food being served, we moved on to Garden State Grill. It was a little bit slow to order and receive food but we got our food in the end and the employees were nice about it. Now, some pics. You are legally required to take this photo if you visit this park. As we parked, we saw Kingda Ka launch a train, soon followed by El Toro going up. Things are good. Oof, I will say that both Kingda Ka and El Toro were running kind of brutal on this visit, but I heard from a friend that El Toro got new wheels this week and is back to running great, which I'm super jealous about. I honestly can't remember if this pre-entrance building was here last year, but being able to breeze through security without stopping (they have those wide-range metal detectors set up) was great. It also gives the park entrance a bit of a nicer touch. Toro toro toro. My #1 coaster and there's no denying that first drop and orgasmic airtime. But boy did the turnaround and pullout from the RT hill hit hard that day. The Intamin duo. Later in the day, the park was so empty that El Toro's trains were going out with 10 passengers or less. Riding in an empty train also seems to make for some rougher rides. In total we got about 8-10 rides before we had to tap out. I'm happy they replaced the wheels and maybe we'll make it back up later this year. The Ferris wheel looking interesting with some gondolas missing. Even though you may now purchase your marijuana legally in the state of New Jersey, Six Flags would still prefer if you partake elsewhere. Maybe setting up "designating toking areas" would help with attendance at this point? A Green Lantern pic from the parking lot that I snapped on the way out. In all, we rode El Toro about 8-10 times, Kingda Ka twice, Jersey Devil 4 or 5 times, Batman twice, plus one ride each on Medusa, Superman, Green Lantern, and Skull Mountain. Oh, and we even rode Dark Knight, a coaster I haven't been on since it's opening year. We did all this in about 6 hours and we even left earlier than we'd planned to get some dinner. Check out Great Adventure this year, you might just have an awesome time.

That's the front seat of Journey's job....

I can't imagine actually being angry about this kind of stuff. They have a rapids ride whose sole purpose is to drown you, bro.

I've seen photos elsewhere, just some track in the parking lot. Wild Arctic is the presumed destination.

Have Intamin install a cable lift and call it a day

You love their rides then claim they are poorly engineered. The speed and weight of the trains exceeded the stresses modeled. Hence the change from topper track to I-Box in the higher stress areas. And they have changed the wheels several times (different materials) due to them wearing differently than in other uses. Something about the ride is (was?) causing it to perform a lot different than expected and different than other coasters RMC designed/built. I'm an Electrical Engineer, not Mechanical, so I have very limited understanding of the forces and modeling done. But what I do understand and see with their rides says something is vastly different with LR and they have struggled to figure it out. Not sure they have solved or not, but the track change was a big change to deal with it. So every jet the US military flies is faulty. From the F16 to to F35. Seriously, go look at the issues the F16 had initially and how much was spent improving it. They all have high maintenance requirements and generally poor availability rates.

Seems the forces in some areas were higher than modeling showed. Don't think anyone has ever called RMC a company with poor engineering. This was new territory, and lots of lessons learned. I wouldn't call the system faulty, just not reliable in the environment. Like a sports car. Again, new territory. Pushing a system well beyond previous limits. This was the first, and so far only VM launched coaster. LR's issues are minor compared to some military projects I've been involved with.

As I recall it was Velocity Magnetics, and their first coaster launch system. https://www.velocitymagnetics.com/no-brakes-on-growth-at-velocity-magnetics/ Their Projects page list 4 coasters. 3 of them are braking systems. LR is the only launch. https://projects.velocitymagnetics.com/ There was something else about the system too. I think it was using a storage system because getting enough power to directly drive the launch in to the park was problematic. The description for their LR video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FDJBWQnrfs mentions it. [quote]This launch draws approximately 2.5 megawatts over a 5 second period of time from our ION-Vault system which re-charges every 100 seconds, and does this approximately 40,000 times per year with no maintenance to the ION-Vault system over the past four (4) years of operation.[/quote] Interestingly (or is it telling?) there is no link to info on the ION-Vault or the Ion Energy™ Launch System on their site. The ION Energy site https://www.ionenergyinc.com/ doesn't mention it either.

This looks funky, I can't wait to see the full layout. Are we expecting a switch track like on Pantheon and Toutatis?

I love that we're seeing Schwarzkopf coasters from the late 70's still operating and getting refurbed while at the same time we're seeing enthusiasts whine that B&M coasters from the 90s are old and decrepit.

...someone should hit the dispatch button.

Looks like the thumbnail image of those clickbait YouTube coaster accident videos

^One would hope they are indeed completely dismantling, sandblasting, and rebuilding it. That would signal a long term investment that should be praised!

Gold Striker from CGA. Edit: Or, in a more hilarious universe, Grizzly from CGA.

Splash Mountain 2: Electric Bayou Boogaloo

I wouldn’t be caught dead on Lil Phantom so that’s fine