singemfrc

This is so much more interesting after having watched that full RMC factory tour Fred gave recently.

I'm not as certain that it will be overwhelming. Since you're coming from so far away and won't get to visit often though, you may want to get a Flash Pass just to make sure you have the best experience possible. Magic Mountain has more coasters than any other park in the world, so riding them all in one day can be challenging depending on how busy it is. I always recommend people just budget for the flash pass and wait till they get there and see the crowd for themselves to decide whether to spend the extra money to buy one. It really sucks when you spend all that money and get there and find out the park is unexpectedly dead and you don't need it but you've already spent all that money. Since you can buy them at the park and they never sell out, I never take that risk. As for which level Flash Pass to use, the Gold will give you shorter waits than the regular FP and the ability to reserve rides on X2 for $10 or $15 USD per person per ride. The Platinum pass is a better value now than it used to be - you can skip the line once per day on YOLOCoaster, Twisted Colossus, and Superman for free. It also lets you (on some rides but not all) ride twice without getting up. If Superman is a priority then I recommend getting the Flash Pass, because it's rare that they run both sides at once and the dispatches are very slow, so a line out the building is not uncommon and it moves very slow relative to most rides. (Another Superman tip - if you opt for the front row line, it moves twice as slow since it is 2 people instead of 4) Pro Tip for X2 & YOLOCoaster - these tend to be the first coaster that most people head to in the morning since they are both popular and close to the entrance (TwistedColossus is further into the back of the park) so their lines tend to die towards the early evening, especially X2. If you don't get the platinum or the upcharge reservations, between like 4 and 5:30pm is the best time to head to these two. Single Rider Lines - if you don't get a Flash Pass, or have a small group and want to reride quickly take advantage of the Single Rider lines on Green Lantern and Riddler's Revenge. For Riddlers you can virtually always just walk right onto the first train regardless of how long the line is. For Green Lantern you may have to wait a few minutes since the loading is kind of unique, but it still beats standing in line. People either love or hate Green Lantern, and if you love it, youll want to ride it at least 2 or 3 times because due to the free spinning cars, you get a different ride experience every time. Sometimes its boring and tame and you dont flip at all, sometimes you flip 5 or 6 times and end up upside down, and sometimes it just tries to rip your face off...it's a crap shoot. Viper and Lex Luthor also have Single Rider Lines, but I doubt you'll need them, especially if you get a Flash Pass.

They have no plans to run 2 trains ever. The fourth train is so that when one goes out for maintenance they can still run 3. When the first one is due, we'll see the green train sub in for it. The green train is currently backstage off track, I don't think they'll bother installing it until it's needed.

This. basically membership means that you pay monthly and after your first season the pass will automatically renew on a month to month basis. After the first year you can cancel any time but it will auto renew in perpetuity until you do. All benefits and features are identical and both passes and memberships come in regular or gold. As someone who would renew every year anyway, I have a membership and I like not having to go get it renewed and processed every year.

Ouch. If the lines only got to 45-60 minutes though you were unusually lucky. Key Club day is usually much busier. Though it never shows up on MM's website, they schedule it way way early. In the future if you're planning a fall Saturday trip to MM look on Key Club's website, it's always posted there well in advance.

Thats why I was hopeful that this would be more accurate, since it cant be changed by guests or trolls. The only question is whether SF will accurately update it.

From the newsletter today: it looks like the official wait time app will finally be launching with HIP this year. I'm interested to see how accurate it will be.

This is flippin' fantastic all the way around. I can't wait!

Perhaps it's a bit mean but I did chuckle that the event going on today at SFMM meant to compete with WCB fizzled. They had to eliminate most of their events and ERT because they sold less than 50 tickets. So glad I chose TPR and WCB!

^ What would make Lex awesome (and I realize this is impossible given how the ride is built) is if it were a random series of drops and rises similar to Tower Of Terror, instead of just a drop.

Have they finally stopped balancing the ride on purpose to stop it from flipping? People talk about the other Zacspins with positive reviews when it's unbalanced, did SFMM do something different to theirs that is making the flipping uncomfortable? I've heard that SFMM has put balances of some kind on the cars to try to minimize flipping, but recently theyre at least not making as much effort to balance the weight of the riders. I got a ride just like the one he described at WCB and loved it. I think part of the problem is people's expectations going in, also the ride can vary so greatly people might ride once and get a bad ride and never realize that you can also get a much better one. Of course for some people they're all bad. I rode three times at WCB and got all three basic types - my first ride was your basic garden variety totally balanced "SFMM" style ride with no flips and no discomfort. The second ride was the one like Kevin described - completely unbalanced with at least a half dozen flips and we ended up up-side down in the station. Totally awesome. My third ride was the bad kind - just a little unbalanced resulting in those "almost-flips" where you tip forward and then violently backwards so fast it rips your face off. Those hurt. On average though GL shouldn't be any more uncomfortable than Insane or any other ZacSpin, they're all the same other than the layout and the balance. The reason they can be so rough is the way the center of gravity is and where the spin point is at. If you watch the interview with Alan Schilke at IAAPA last year talking about the new S&S Free Spin design, he explains the differences and why the new S&S won't have that same issue.

SFMM's is decent and definitely superior to SFDK's, but I would still say overall in California it's SFDK < CGA < SFMM < KBF < USH. I like SFMM's scare zones, when the actors are good it's pretty entertaining. SFMM's landscape provides pretty good opportunuties in some places and there's a good pool of scare talent in the area. From what I've seen the mazes arent quite the quality of CF or Universal though. I do like that one special thing they still do is turn off all track lightning on most coasters, so you get pitch black rides. Gold Rusher is especially and surprisingly good in the dark during Fright Fest.

I find it amazing how many people complain about this in the comments of the Facebook post. I've heard about this from other parks who RMC their rides (Twisted Colossus), but I've never seen it myself. These people have no idea how lucky they are. There was a ton of backlash and complaining when they announced and started tearing down Colossus too, but I don't hear any complaining now.

A couple deconstruction photos posted on Facebook by the park: Captain Lee's Facebook SFDK's Facebook

That's why I avoid all Saturdays that aren't West Coast Bash. That's also why I loved West Coast Bash all the more - since I avoid busy days, I don't often get night rides, so that was a nice change.

In all seriousness having an iron reef type interactive overlay thing on Grizzly would actually be pretty fun.

I wouldnt mind a few more like Iron Reef, that's pretty fun. KBF did say that although theyre not doing it this year because it's brand new, they will definitely be doing Haunt overlay for Iron Reef next year. The ease of doing that kind of thing is what he's talking about.

Yeah the Knott's KBF can do that, it did the same to me Sunday night! It looks all pretty and you want to go ride it and then Ugh I know better... Also they were playing Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" in the station when I rode it Sunday and it's been stuck in my head ever since - the torture doesn't end when you get off this Boomerang!

Thanks for unknowingly taking a photo of me and my friend on our front row ride on Twisted Colossus!

You're correct on all counts. It was the computer that was at fault and the operators have no control over the lift speed. I guess this is what you get when you have SF doing controls in house instead of IOE I made one error there. Regarding the sensors it should say "If when the blue train enters the lift it sees that the green train is close enough..." - though I suspect most here knew what I meant since the way I wrote it is impossible

I asked them about the loose article policy on TC during the backstage tour and if they had thought of a mandatory fluffy bunny policy like on X2, they said that it had been discussed but it's not something they're planning on doing now, but could change in the future.

It'd be a close tie between the TC backstage tour and the night ERT on TC.

Yeah sorry I meant the family, not Walter specifically. My error.

Matt Ouimet has stated that won't happen..Ghost Rider was one of the last rides planned by Walter Knott, so it's layout is held in some reverence. I think what you'll see coming up is a lot more than a simple retracking though not a layout change.