MagicMountainMan

I could not agree more with this. Anybody going to the park this weekend? I'm curious what the current status is of Tatsu. They have had a crane on site all week doing the re-installation of the chain and motor. It should hopefully be up tomorrow but I have no confirmation on that.

Yes I'm sure the dry climate of Southern California doesn't help the ride at all. Although to combat that, there's actually a sprinkler system on the ride that waters it every night during the summer when it's hot and dry out. That's actually why the wood has turned white; the combination of the water and then fire retardant getting blasted in the sun turns the wood white. I guess I find it interesting that the ride is so bad now. Granted I haven't ridden it in a few years, but it's kind of sad considering it's now the only wooden coaster in the park and it's now an unenjoyable ride. I'll have to ride it myself again one of these days just to see how bad it's gotten.

Genuine question: What is the root cause of wooden track riding so rough after a while? Is it that the track loses its rigidity so there is more 'play' in the track so to speak? Or is it that starts to give a little between bents? I get that overall the wood just starts to break down, it's wood. But how is it breaking down that causes Apocinator to go from good to bad so fast? (Besides them using the wrong type of wood for the climate it's in)

They are currently reinstalling Tatsu's lift motor so maybe they will actually get it open soon.

They could still very easily put Tatsu's motor back this week and have it up soon, but it does seem like they have been delayed. The original timeline was to have Tatsu up early March but that was before they even started work on the coaster so who knows what has transpired since then. Apocalypse is down for some retracking. Apparently one of the trains was doing some pretty extensive damage to the track and now they are trying to fix it.

Tatsu is supposed to be open by the first weekend in March but I don't know if they have been delayed or not.

Notice in the video the Riddler's gas station is in it, freshly painted and everything. Right after the video wrapped, they took it out. They were actually shooting the video right next to them doing construction on JL.

I would honestly love to ride Viper with the soft vest restraints. I'm just not sure that any investment in Viper would be wise seeing as Magic Mountain is not the type of park where the old Arrow looper is still one of the upper tier attractions. But hey, who knows, maybe they will turn Viper into an Aquatrax giga.

The fence at Sky Tower is just hiding the lift hill motor which is sitting right behind it, that's it. Again, they aren't painting Tatsu.

I've heard this so many times, from so many posters, and I've seen no evidence to back it up nor does it make much sense to me. Is there ANY kind of solid evidence from anybody at the park to back it up that this ride is THAT much difficult to paint or are people just talking out of their asses because the ride appears "high up" in only a couple individual parts of the ride? I can't see it being any more complicated than X2, furthermore, my only fear of Tatsu getting a repaint is they will do away with the awesome 3 tone color scheme like they did with X and Scream. IMO Tatsu is NOT going to be "very" expensive to paint, probably as much as any other ride in the park. However I agree I hope they use the same quality of paint they used on X2 as it seems to have held up well. 1) X2 was almost $1 million to paint. 2) Regular boom lifts cannot reach any part of the ride. 3) The park would need to rent cranes (very expensive) and painters that harness onto the track and supports themselves in order to get to areas (very expensive and very slow). Hopefully that makes a bit more sense to you. Also, they are not repainting Tatsu right now. Maintenance has been working on the lift hill, and the lift motor is currently off of the ride and sitting at the base of Sky Tower. That's all that's happening. Riddler's on the other hand is getting a repaint and they are changing the support color. From what I saw the supports are turning yellow, but that doesn't make sense to me. Purple would make a bit more sense but I haven't seen anything confirming that.

If there was ever a time when Tatsu should have gotten painted, that was last year with the opening of Revolution... Tatsu is going to be very expensive to paint though which is most likely why they are holding off. When it does get the inevitable repaint, it better get the same paint X2 got as that ride still looks fantastic.

They are doing a lot more BAFF days these next few months so that they don't have a repeat of last time... But it will still definitely be crowded.

I'm always so caught up on DisneySea that I always forget that this park also looks phenomenal! Still the number one place to go on my bucket list and for a great reason!

I'm not sure about Revolution or Superman (I'm assuming Superman is back open because it wasn't really raining yesterday or today), but today barely filled the first section of the lot and was pretty dead, so it shouldn't be much busier tomorrow. Oh and the ride vehicles are back on Lex. I might be late to that party though...

I don't know the true fire martial capacity of the park, but, like it has been stated previously, the parking lot capacity is actually the determining factor in Magic Mountain's attendance cap. The highest attended day this year was the second to last weekend of Fright Fest and that was about 36k for daily attendance. That's not even guests in park at one time, that's the overall day. So the highest number of guests you will ever see in park at one time is a bit less than that number. That 36k number doesn't even touch the fire martial capacity for the park I'm sure. The nice thing about sitting on 260+ acres of land is that all of the midways don't get packed (unlike Disneyland) however the park certainly has its choke points. If they ever decided to expand their parking, they could definitely fit more people in the park. (Although even 20k is quite a crowded day at the park as it is...) Also, average day in the summer ranges from 10-18k per day, with Saturdays being the large exception to that rule. Saturday is the one day a week where the park is almost guaranteed to have a sizeable crowd, so it's always a good idea to go any other day of the week. Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

The entire parking lot is full today, they might even be going into overflow. Definitely the most crowded Holiday In The Park day so far. Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

Orlando never had 3D on Forbidden Journey. Edit: My mistake, I thought you were talking about the 3D effect, not the dementor effect, and I agree I do hope that it makes it over here.

The reason that The top of the hill was not lit the other night is because the park experienced a partial power outage. The whole park usually doesn't go down at once because it has so many different mains. Why security and safety still let people on the top of the hill when the power and lighting was out? Who knows... That's only a little bit dangerous.... Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

Golden Bear acts as a special events theater for group sales events mostly. A lot of cheer events happen there as well as other events throughout the year. It's such an old and crappy theater that they will never put a normal show in there other than the occasional hypnotist. Kind of sad for a theater that used to host really big concerts with A list talent.

There were originally talks of Revolution having a Halloween VR experience but it never came to fruition for whatever reason. Glad to see that they are at least going Christmas. Perhaps next year they will make it go backwards for Fright Fest as well...

Tomorrow is expected to be much busier since most schools get the day off (unlike Columbus day).

I too am thinking of going Thursday. I want to do the Skeleton Key rooms but don't really want to fork over 3x the money just to do 4 rooms if they aren't even that good. For those of you that have experienced the Skeleton Key rooms this year, how were they and are they worth it?

I went last Thursday and did the Day/Night combo so that I could finally see Potter (literally identical to Florida but I love me some Butterbeer!). Anyhow, I had a good time and the combo ticket definitely helped. My group (about 14 of us total) were able to do every single maze, scare zone, ride, and show and we left around midnight. The only reason was because since we were already in the park, come 6PM (or earlier) when they open up the Backlot mazes there's next to no one back there and we were able to do all four within the span of an hour. ...Which leads me to my biggest qualm about HHN. This is my 7th year in a row going to the event (totally not planned by the way, it just seems to work out every year) and I've finally realized what I dislike about it. It's so disjointed. There's no cohesion to it. I know a lot of that is due to the nature of the theme park and its being perched on the side of a hill, but I still feel like it's so sporadic. I honestly miss the days when the upper lot was used for 4-5 of the mazes and there was only 1-2 on the lower lot. It really made the entirety of the upper lot feel like one big, crazy area that sucked you in and immersed you. It's just not the case anymore. It just feels like a random hodgepodge of areas all interspersed throughout the park and getting from the main gate to the metro sets and that group of mazes takes a solid 30 minutes. Part of me wishes that Universal would just stick HHN entirely in one area, or at least axe the woeful Terror Tram and use that stop as a means to get to the bulk of the HHN mazes. Or part of me is just over all of the SoCal haunts in general because none of them seem to be all that interesting anymore... With that negativity out of the way, I will say that I did enjoy the Krampus house quite a bit but that feeling was helped by the fact that I also thought the movie was wonderfully bad and I loved every second of it. Texas Chainsaw Massacre was also another highlight as it actually gave the feeling of being genuinely creepy and real, not just half baked sets that kind of gave off the general vibe of the source material (cough American Horror Story). I will say that if it's your first time going to a Halloween event even though I'm not sure how that's possible anymore given their explosion in popularity, definitely go to Halloween Horror Nights. It's still the best event in the area, but if you've been in years past, it's honestly more of the same.

Fright Fest is fun and all, but events like Dark Harbor and Knott's Scary Farm are better quality still and more fun. Granted if you also want to ride the coasters then yeah go on a Friday or Sunday and ride the coasters all day before the event starts and enjoy minimal wait times.

^Completely agree with your assessment of the deplorable in park food and the general lack of preventative maintenance, but Out On The Mountain is a buyout event, it's not Six Flags themselves that is actually 'in charge' of the event per-say. While yes I generally do agree that the event seemed to be generally catered to a male-oriented audience the performers themselves actually all had very all encompassing messages (IMO of course). Granted, again even the entertainment is brought in from the outside; it isn't Six Flags dictating the entertainment at all. I'm sad you didn't like my lights though... Can you share any of those complaints or the number of them? I am purely curious how many complaints the park gets about Viper in a given day, week, month etc. I am sure there isn't. As I said, I understand it's a numbers game. Six Flags is a business, not a museum curator. You seem to be in the know here. Do you know and can you comment if the investment in Revolution this season was made based on it's historical significance or on guest input? My opinion is that Revolution was not more popular than Viper. I'd appreciate your insights in to this. There's the whole gamut of complaints, to the usual 'it hurt', to the more absurd flavor that could only come from the clientele that the park attracts. I can't really answer your question about Revolution with 100% accuracy as I am not a corporate director making these capital investments (and corporate really has more say than the park does when it comes to big investments) but my educated guess is that the Revolution rehab was based on both historical significance and guest input. Revolution is a roller coaster that (barring any unforeseen tragedy) isn't going anywhere ever. While yes, it did get guest complaints and didn't have high ridership, it fit the bill of a great in between roller coaster that wasn't super intimidating for young or novice thrill seekers (quite unlike most of the lineup that Magic Mountain possesses). The refurb of Revolution was essentially a safe-bet win-win for the park as it was a relatively cheap and easy investment to make with the very easy possibility of a high ROI. Now, the Samsung deal was closed more last-minute (as the confusing and clumsy marketing would suggest) but ended up being a huge boon for the best type of advertising-free word of mouth advertising. In hindsight (20-20 amiright?) the Samsung deal wasn't managed very effectively on the operations side of things and the word of mouth fizzled out (as everything does) and we are now left with a weird VR-when it works-experience that destroys capacity in favor of a gimmick that was supposed to have a few more tricks up its sleeve. A Viper investment really would have none of the upside that the Revolution investment did as the VR gimmick is effectively over, it doesn't fill any holes in the coaster arsenal, and there is no historical significance attached to it. With that said, could corporate easily decide to find some new gimmick, refurb Viper and hope it sticks? Of course! Is it likely? Not really. Shocking as it is to many of you, Six Flags actually does have some insight as to how and where to spend money for a nice ROI. Sure, it sucks when we all are hoping for a giga Aquatrax T-Rex dive coaster hybrid but since this new management regime has taken over they have been very consistent and conservative with their investment patterns (as a company should be when they have just exited bankruptcy). Would we all love to see cleaner bathrooms, fresh paint, and more general upkeep of the park? Heck yeah! Is that really their current business model? Not really... Just look at Six Flags as a conservatively run business that is all about maximizing capital ROI first and the way the parks operate and invest makes a lot more sense (still sucks though let's be honest).