MagicMountainMan

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 la

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 necessa

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 comp

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 w

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 whe

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 throu

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 prof

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 r

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) 20

The Pub should be opening this weekend by the way, they're putting the finishing touches on everything right now. Finally a nice looking outside beer garden area, it honestly looks pretty nice!