MagicMountainMan

Which is why it’s a running joke in the industry SFMM is the training ground for USH and Disney. I used SFMM as a training ground to go elsewhere myself, so... Does SFMM make more use of journeyman/licensed professionals now? That was another kind of weak bargaining point I remember... even the full-time "ride electricians" often weren't journeymen themselves, just lampers with a lot of hours and experience. To be a ride electrician you have to be at least going to school to persue a license. However most of the other positions still are filled with people who get experience from the job itself and then move on and get a better job elsewhere. Magic Mountain is truly a training ground. People with relatively little to no skill get hired for a lot of the semi skilled jobs, they learn the job as they go and get experience, and then leave to go somewhere else. Almost nobody in the 'semi skilled to skilled' jobs stick around more than they have to. The pay is too low and there is ample opportunity elsewhere that doesn't have a toxic work culture or an aversion to spending necessary money on employees. It's too bad that the park's management teams won't get experience and move elsewhere...

Sadly, it will never happen in the way it should happen. The park, and Six Flags in general, are sincerely allergic to spending money unless it's on something that will see an immediate return on investment. The park has such a crippled and ageing infrastructure that now a lot of the maintenance guys just find themselves putting out the daily perverbial fires around the park. I hope that with the change of guard at park president some of this changes but I think when it comes to Six Flags, hoping is a little too much to hope for.

Ride Electricians and Mechanics would be striking too, not just the helper positions. Are they actually going to walk? That was the huge point of contention on the workers' side that led to the 15 year battle over bringing the part-timers into the same bargaining agreement in the first place. Obviously a lot has changed since I left but when I worked there the majority of those workers wouldn't have honored/supported a strike for part-timer benefits. IAM also has very bad timing with their agreement. With most of SF's parks either closed or in limited operation they have a fairly large pool of workers to pull (a tactic SF has used before). Yes, the maintenance workers aren't happy that they lost their one guaranteed weekend day as well as not getting a higher top level rate even though the base rate is keeping pace with minimum wage. The rest of the "seasonal" workers (who actually do 40 hour weeks for the most part) weren't asking for a crazy pay rate or crazy benefits, but Six Flags played hardball and gave all of them literally nothing extra from what they already had being outside of the union. This is a classic case of whoever blinks first loses. Six Flags has already started to bring in temp labor to "learn the job" of the workers who voted to strike. However there is an emergency negotiation tomorrow and I don't think Six Flags necessarily wants the black eye of workers striking right at the very beginning of their 365 push. And the vast majority of the union workers did vote to strike as nobody is happy with the contract they offered, so yes, if nothing changes there will actually be a strike. Oh and Neil Thurman will be park president effective January 1st; Bonnie is moving into a corporate role with the company. Neil has really jumped around these last few years but it will be nice to see him back at Magic Mountain again, his home for quite a few years after Jay Thomas brought him over from Kentucky Kingdom.

Ride Electricians and Mechanics would be striking too, not just the helper positions. You're not the only one who thinks it's a mystery...

Yes, it's closed right now due to cost-saving. The park has been in full cost saving mode for the last few months due to not hitting attendance projections. However there is also something mechanically wrong with it, but that's not been confirmed.

^&^^The jerky rotation of X2 is mainly caused by the amount of "play" in the rack where it attaches to the outer rail. The rack rests on a rubber cushion to act as a damper so that the natural vibration of the wheel base on the track doesn't get transferred into the rack and pinion (which could definitely cause problems). The side effect of this is that each car does have a lot of play and can easily rotate a bit just by pushing the car up and down by hand. So a lot of the bouncing you see and experience on X2 is actually the lack of stiffness on that rack's connection. It's a necessary evil. Could it be redesigned to have tighter tolerances? Maybe, but I'm sure that this is as good as the tolerance gets without causing a safety or mechanical headache, otherwise S&S probably would have designed for less rotational play. So that modified fiberglass panel isn't actually steel. Those are indeed not the counterweights. I will do more investigating....

Literally to save money. It's a ride that requires more operators than most, it's already extremely unpopular, and the park is in budget cut mode right now. The perfect storm for shutting down the ride for the rest of the season. They're also doing some special maintenance on the ride as well, but nobody seems to know what that means. I've always heard this, but I've asked and everyone at the park has always told me that they didn't add weights, they just added the magnet to drastically slow down the spin rotation. Where are the weights supposedly installed? The cutout for the computer's keyboard and trackball still exist on the ride's control panel. I've always found it quite interesting and that's hilarious to know that's how X used to operate... Now the ride has a nice Allen Bradley PLC with touchscreen panel that is very much in line with the times. For me, I've always found it fascinating that X/X2 uses pressurized air to lock and unlock the harnesses. It's not your typical pneumatic system either, there is literally an arm that comes up and down to pressurize and depressurize the seats and restraints that connects to the back of the train every time it parks in the station. That arm doesn't exist at the old unload anymore which is why when the ride breaks down they can't get people out of the train at old unload unless they manually hook up an air hose to the train itself to get riders off. They will only ever unload from the old unload in rare circumstances (mostly if they can't advance the other train out of loading). Also, X2's train has fiber optic cable ran through it for PLC comms for whatever reason which is also amazing and unusual. It's a weird ride to say the least. Even now, it's just so unique and different then most any other ride that has ever been built I find it really fascinating.

For all two people that care, Green Lantern is down until the end of the year (if not longer) so no need to worry about riding it. All the park would need to do to make it a better ride though would just be to simply remove the magnetic brake that prevents the cars from freely spinning.

You said it yourself, as long as people come, which they have been, the park makes their projections and everything is a-okay. That's the way SFMM operates in a nutshell, don't spend money if it isn't necessary. There will always be a market that exists for cheap, big thrills and a cheap (for SoCal) haunted event. It's the only theme park haunt in the SoCal market that doesn't close to charge another admission price for its Halloween event the same night; that's their marketing pitch and that's the "value" in the event (as according to marketing). Again, there will always be a market for what SFMM offers. Is it a great market or a market that generates the amount of per-capita income that is necessarily desirable? To us enthusiasts, no. But clearly it works for Six Flags and that's why they'll never change.

Superman is missing a lot of LSMs on the one side of the track and they have purposely under-volted the rest of them to not kill any more. That's a product of the LSMs literally being antiques that are extremely expensive to replace so naturally the park has a hard time justifying the cost. Also, you're right on the money (or lack thereof) with Dead End. The scenic budget was literally $0. Everything that is in there is recycled from something else or just stuff the park has (like paint). It's sad. And I think your critique of Fright Fest is right on the nose. Six Flags has a trend where they have large capital and small capital years for rides, but for entertainment, it's either some capital or no capital. This year was a zero capital year for entertainment which is baffling as I have no idea how the park expects to compete in such a saturated SoCal market by doing the same thing every year and not spending any money. This year though the park as a whole has been suffering and attendance has been down for Fright Fest... (Oh and the park doesn't really have a design team)

I've never seen anything less than two trains on Twisted Colossus. Most other rides will cycle one train on these slow days however. Green Lantern has been down pretty much every single slow day and I think even some weekends these last few months. Apocalypse only opens in the later half of the day for the same reason Green Lantern isn't opening, to save money.

Oh no definitely not. Both Knott's and Universal are in a different league than Magic Mountain. Magic has some fun scare zones, and that's about it. This year is the year that Knott's and Universal have traded places in my mind, but Six Flags doesn't touch either. To put it in perspective, Magic has less than half of the budget that Knott's has for Haunt. If you keep that in mind, you'll have a good time.

Just got back from Haunt and had a really good time! Having done HHN for the last 7 years and having not been to Haunt since 2012 it was a fresh experience for me with the only maze that was there from my last experience being Trick or Treat (which is wildly different now anyway). I don't know if this is a controversial opinion or not, but I think overall Haunt is now better than what Universal offers. For those of you that like me have become HHN regulars, I think this is the year to go to Knott's. Every maze is on par with what Universal offers, and it's really refreshing to go through such a variety of mazes that are unique and not tied to any IP. (And they aren't all just gore mazes which is what I feel like Universal has turned into) The other thing I appreciate is the variety of scares. It's not just a loud noise, a strobe light, and an actor rushing you. Don't get me wrong, Knott's had it's fair share of actors who would do the default sideways stare that plagues any maze where there is no defined scare, but overall there was a variety. Both shows were fun and it was really nice to see the Hanging again after having a missing part of my soul that is filled by Halloween pop culture parody. Perhaps the strongest piece of the puzzle that Knott's completes that Universal missed on is scare zones and overall park atmosphere. Partially due to the small size of Knott's and partially due to Universal being almost two separate parks, Haunt just felt really complete. There are actors everywhere. Every single bit of park lighting is changed. Ghost Town is quite possibly the best scare zone of any event purely due to actually being a ghost town. The overall cohesion of the event was on point. Oh, and Knott's is an excellent value for the money and Thursday was a great day with completely manageable crowds!

FYI for those of you trying to get on Apocalypse during the week, they have been opening the ride late. For the first half of the day the carpenters are working on it, then for the second half of the day they open the ride. For Fright Fest operating days they should be opening the ride at or around park open.

Last week was about half to two thirds of the first lot filled.

Yes, it will be empty on the weekdays. Last week the park barely crested 1k on the weekdays. Be prepared for single train ops on a lot of rides, but with only a thousand people in the park it doesn't even matter.

^Apocalypse is closed until Fright Fest. As of now the park only staffs enough maintenance to do the everyday scheduled maintenance on the rides. The off-season was greatly beneficial... I sincerely hope that the park increases staffing to handle a much increased workload.

It really has been surprisingly quiet in regards any new ride or attraction... But the new Revolution announcement also wasn't really leaked ahead of time either. Usually the big projects leak or they start surveying which gives it away. I'd like to believe that this next year will be a year of a nice flat ride, but with the park in panic mode after a relatively weak summer who knows what will happen... It makes announcements exciting!

Yeah, they just refurbished one of the trains. This one specifically got repainted to match the new color scheme of Scream.

^Very realistic. In other news, the park again extended its operating schedule out to October 16th as the last day of daily park operation. I don't know if the park has ever gone this late into the season with daily ops. They even added October 30th and 31st to the schedule for Fright Fest (on a Monday and Tuesday) something that I can't ever remember the park doing. They're really dipping into the well this year. Supposedly the park is really trying to make up lost revenue and attendance from all of the weather we had at the beginning of the year... They must still be making a profit those days because goodness knows there aren't going to be many people in the park on a weekday in September and October!

The junk yard behind Apocalypse hasn't existed for two years now, it's been reclaimed by Newell Land and Farm.

They are pausing Justice League installations because Sally have fulfilled the original seven ride contract. Rumor has it that Six Flags might buy two more, but that's not going to be determined for a little while now.

Yes, but only after the second show holding room. You still have to wait in the regular line up until that point, then there is a single rider split after you wave hi to Cyborg. And there are two preshow rooms, the Hall of Justice entry room and the Cyborg room. Both are holding pens so they funnel people into the first room and you watch the video playing and take selfies with the Justice League statues. Then the doors open and you're greeted by Cyborg and watch the second pre show. Once that's finished the second set of doors open and you head into the main station. Unlike the pre show rooms there are actually switchbacks in the station area. Basically it's like how the Terminator Salvation queue was supposed to work, but actually thought out. So hopefully it actually functions correctly as everything is supposed to be automatically timed with the ride. So we'll see...

The weekdays in September should be amazing for visitors. I guess the reason the park is staying open through September is because of all the rain SoCal had this winter (which actually does greatly impact attendance) and they're going to try to recoup some of that lost time and profit. But seriously, if you're thinking about visiting soon and you can wait two months, the middle of September should be like the beginning of May. Which is to say there is almost nobody there.

Fun fact: There's only a single person at Six Flags corporate that oversees theming for all of the Six Flags properties. Rumor has it that this person has quite the disdain for Imagineers as well. But I 100% agree with you it's baffling. The only answer I've ever heard as to why Six Flags insists on a scorched earth policy at Magic Mountain is due to sight lines. They want every single guest to be able to easily see the newest and hottest attractions. Let's take a trip down memory lane: 2011 - Green Lantern - Cratered the Batman metro park area for construction (I get this one) 2012 - DoD - There wasn't much to remove so they didn't 2013 - Fullest Throttle - Destroyed one of the most wooded areas of the park and cut down many huge trees so that guests could see the loop for multiple vantage points 2014 - BBW (lol) - They took out the awful fake tree that was literally falling apart and put in an afterthought of a kiddy coaster 2015 - Twisted Colossus - Luckily they did not crater the area, but they did thin out almost every tree around Twisted Witches and removed quite a few as well 2016 - The New Revolution - Cut down a ton of trees in front of the ride to 'reveal' it to the public, but left some trees in the back for the 'aesthetic' 2017 - Justice League - Took out the rock wall and two large planters with trees, cut down trees in front of Scrambler, cut down the HUGE tree in front of Gold Rusher, and cut down the trees in front of the waterfront eating area so that guests could see the area walking from any angle So yeah any time they build a new area they usually pour a ton of concrete and kill trees. The only logical explanation (that I have actually been told) is because of their precious sight lines. But let's be honest as well, it's probably a lot cheaper for the park to replace vegetation with a slab that requires no water and no maintenance. It's a good thing that the SCV doesn't get extremely hot during the summer and the park does a great job providing artificial shade and misters. Oh wait...