Mike Austin

If you didn't know already, at the moment I'm at the University of California, Riverside, as part of Disney World's International College Programme (I go over to Florida on the 19th). As I'm over here, and probably not coming back here for quite a while, I managed to get in contact with a couple of TPR people who could give me a lift to Six Flags Magic Mountain and back (I knew it would pay off some time if I kept asking in my travel topic if anyone wanted to take me! ). Obviously I took this offer up, and despite one of them having a helicopter pilot exam in the morning, we eventually got to SFMM at about 3pm, giving us still an alright 7 hours in the park... I was rather scared that we were going to pull in and have a day at the :dontswear: that is Scandia instead, but thankfully we continued driving! X2 is the first thing you see as you drive into the park. The view from the car park. How many coasters [creds] can you count here?! We weren't the only people arriving to the park late, as we entered with a decent stream of other cars and the road train thing was still full up to get to the entrance. The classic park entrance. Annoyingly, one of the park's best coasters and one of the main reasons I wanted to go back to the park was closed today. I was going to buy myself a Q-Bot once we got into the park, but most of the rides it had on I wasn't really bothered about doing. First coaster, and first credit of the day was the new for 2011 Green Lantern. The queue was about 80 minutes long and the ride was pretty brutal, really throwing you against the restraints on the drops. Oddly, as you joined the queue a ride attendant gives you a little raffle ticket thing with the word "boarding pass" written on it. Apparently, this is designed to stop queue jumping, but it really didn't work as people were just getting a ticket, leaving the queue and pushing in later, and then the ride ops didn't seem to take note of these tickets anyway! All rather pointless really. The Green Lantern's full sign. After Green Lantern, we made our way over to Colossus. Luckily, the opposite side was running to the last time I came here, so new credit #2 for me. The ride's ok and rather smooth, but is really lacking in airtime. Credit number 3 and new for 2011 number 2, Road Runner Express. +1 Look how good Tatsu looks. The revamped Superman is excellent. Both sides are now running, which meant I could pick up my final credit of the day. The launch isn't too forceful, but you really feel it when it does get up to speed. It could do with doing more, but I still liked it. We were going to ride X2 next, but found it was down. We also noticed that Goliath was stuck on the MCBR, so instead we made our way over to Apocalypse, only to find that it was running 1 train and the queue was over an hour long! I noticed someone eating a huuge turkey-leg so decided to get some for myself... Om nom nom. I decided to eat it whilst walking back over to X2 and must have heard at least 10 comments by people wondering where I got it from and how big it was. SFMM would make a ton of sales if they actually advertised that they have this! Hector and Corey. I'm not too sure what their TPR screen-names are, but they've been to the West Coast Bash every year so you might recognise them. It gets dark so quickly in California, and after about a 90 minute wait we got off X2 at about 9:45pm. The audio wasn't working, which detracts A LOT from the ride, and the ride was extremely bouncy in the final part. It really didn't feel as good as it was riding in 2009, but the first half of the ride is still very good. After a quick dash, we managed to get over to goliath for the last train of the day. Again, this didn't feel as good as 2009 as it felt less forceful and it didn't feel as fast. And that was the end of the day. Overall it was a decent day but was really let down by X2's broken audio, Tatsu being down and Apocalypse only running one train. I would have liked to have a full day there to get on some of the other rides, but apart from Apocalypse and Tatsu I got on everything I wanted to. The day could have been better, but it could also have been a whole lot worse. So that's that. An extremely rare trip report from me, and hope you enjoyed it!

Sorry for the double post, but I'm now quite confused over some of the time people have given me. According to this: http://www.metrolinktrains.com/schedules/html.php?id=1115, on Saturdays, I can do the following: 351 Riverside 6:20am > LA Union 8:35am 261 LA Union 8:55am > Santa Clarita 9:48am 270 Santa Clarita 7:35pm > LA Union 8:35pm 376 LA Union 9:00pm > Riverside 11:15pm Therefore giving me a lot longer in the park than people have said and not having to worry quite as much about finding a platform in 5 minutes to catch the next train! Is this timetable correct, or does it go to a different Santa Clarita station or something? :?

Thanks for the information everyone! I'm thinking about going to SFMM on either the 9th or 10th, but I'm wondering if it's actually worth the effort? With limited time in the park and having to get up very early to try and use the trains, will it actually be worth it? :S Unless, of course, someone is up for doing the trip with me!

Didn't Olivier fall asleep in the wait for the cave?

THIS!!! Seriously, just remember this will cost you about 30 bucks round trip, It cost me £20 ($38) to travel to central London today, and that was only a 50 minute trip! Thanks for the information Gigalyte!

Hmm, that's what I was pretty worried about. As I don't really want to replace SFMM for Castle Park, I'm now making an appeal if anyone fancies having a day out and don't mind providing some transportation (I'll pay for petrol...etc) to get there. Send me a PM or something if you are interested! Unless there is an otherwise decent option to travel with public transport relatively quickly which someone knows about?

On July 3rd I'm visiting Riverside for a couple of weeks to study at the university there. On one of the weekends, I quite fancy having a day out at SFMM but have no idea on how to get there. Unless someone (I've met before) fancies having a day at the park with me and don't mind collecting me from Riverside ( ), can anyone give me tips and ideas for getting to the park train and bus-wise? Thanks. Mike.

I've only been on the one at New York's Playland, but it is quite a common ride, especially throughout Europe. I didn't really find it "rough" as such, but more scary than anything! I felt that if I took my foot off the ladder thing then I would just slide out the back of it! :?

Hurler at Kings Dominion. Bend after first drop, face into Hanno's shoulder, pain for me, hilarity for Hanno, Hurler to the bottom of my rankings.

I've lost a ton of weight on every TPR trip I've done. I wonder why that could be? Saying that, I reckon even if I did like any of the food (how am I going to survive 6 months in Florida???), I still would've lost weight just due to the sheer amount of sweat that this trip brought!

Hmm, ok, thanks for that Chrissie, Swimace and Joey. I may go out and buy a couple of shirts and pairs of trousers anyway, just so I'm not wearing the same clothes to class every time! Otherwise, I might just hang tight for now and buy clothes out there if I find out I need more than I've got...

I've been assigned "Operations/Merchandise", so I'm presuming that this fits into the "non-constumed" description? In that case, I think a shopping trip is in order... Great!

I received the introduction letter from Disney today outlining the 'Disney Look', general rules, codes of conduct...etc..., but I'm now quite confused/worried on the dress code... The ONLY business-y style clothes that I own is 1 suit, which I bought specifically for the interview as before that I didn't own any business clothes. Otherwise, I just own several different coloured polo shirts, a few t-shirts, jeans and shorts. So, should I be looking to go out and buy a ton of business/dress shirts and trousers now?

I'm pretty surprised to see Hades within the top 20, especially after hearing all the negativity towards after the rides in August. Other than that, I think these results look fantastic, and it's one of the first times where I've felt the results truly correspond with what people really think and say about the rides! Bring on the steel poll!

Navigator's the Disk'O. I think the Frisbee is called Flip Flop, although I'm not 100% on that... And I agree that Blackpool Pleasure Beach is scruffy and dirty. I love it!