AllenA07

I live down in New Mexico and we got this storm eariler in the week. Dropped a ton of snow on us out here.

Maybe they'll finally install Bench: The Ride... Now I'll be left to wonder if any of you remember Bench: The Ride.

Almost all of my reading is for school now. I'm up to around 200 pages a day of reading things that are in some nature historial. My last big read was the Thomas Paine collection, however to be fair I only read his three biggest books (Common Sense, Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason), and left out many of the others. However when time allows for some fun reading, I've been making my way through the Jack Ryan collection by Tom Clancy for a while now. I've only got a few more books before I finish up that series. Good books if you're into that kind of thing.

I think losing the 1st gen Freefalls is a shame. It remains one of the only rids I've ever been on that has really scared me. Something about it just seem so much more dangerous than a modern tower ride. I'm curious to see when SFMM loses theirs. It's packed in there pretty tight with attractions, so one would assume the ride will be gone by the new season. However I don't know, this is SFMM so more than likely they'll just shut down the southern half of the park for a few months and claim it's in rehab.

How Thomas More's political philosophy in Utopia can be seen as a hybrid system between Epicurean philosophy and Plato's Republic in a modern (well 16th century modern) world.

My guess is Florida is going to be playing Ohio State, despite the fact I think Michigan deserves to be there. Now the one thing I'm thrilled to say however is that it won't be USC this year. It is a very good night to be a Bruin.

This thread has been around for a bit so I guess I'll join in. I'm currently in my senior year at UCLA, wrapping up a B.A in History. After this year I'll be heading East for law school. I've already applied (and been accepted to one) but it'll be a few more months before I know exactly where I'm going to end up.

I actually recall having into the park and doing the exact thing that Wrs just mentioned. The training the park gave me was fine and I got the idea that if something needed to be done, you had to do it. That was never a big deal for me, and I'm sure there are employees like that. The problem is it is so hard to get fired at Magic Mountain (I'm convinced that short of theft or actually and litterly murdering a guest it's not possible) that people know they can screw around without any real consequence. When I worked there, the park had Scream Dollars, which would reward you with things like free food or money off at the employee store. While this was a neat concept, only twice in my entire time working there did I see somebody handing these out. I don't recall the exact rules governing how write up's work, but if I remember you get several warnings, and they fall off your record pretty quickly.

I must throw in my vote for Windjammer... Even though I still sport my Windjammer T-Shirt whenever I head to Knotts.

Despite the fact that I was a kid at the time, and was not much into riding rollercoasters yet, I can tell you that the park has run Psyclone backwards before. I want to say that they did this in 93 or 94, not sure exactly the year. I'd be curious to know if Ninja would work backwards. I know Astroworld ran XLR-8 backwards, but I don't recall how popular it was. Most other rides, while I bet possible, would just not be much fun/safe, backwards.

I'm going to take this chance to turn this around. Back when I was working at Magic Mountain I would get all sorts of fun questions. It got really interesting when a few years back when I was the Sound Tech for Road kill Kitchen when it was still on Samurai Summit. It's funny in a way but when you leave a stage unprotected people just have to go up there and play, or in some cases hop over the wall and play with the Sound System. Because of this, between shows I would generally do absolutely no work other than walking around and making sure people did not play with our stuff. Well I'm generally pretty friendly and was always more than willing to help people out or answer questions... The most common question was concerning if Ninja went upside down. And yes the general public did ask some very odd questions. A surprising amount of people wanted to know where the entrance to Ninja was, despite the large Ninja sign mere feet away. However it did occur once that I got a group of coaster enthusiasts (patch jackets and all) to my show. Well this day they decided to play "let’s see how dumb the employee is." I can't remember specifics, but these people spent a good 10 minutes quizzing me before the show. Now for those of you who recall my website (Rollercoasterz), I did know a fair bit, especially about Magic Mountain. So in that case it was the enthusiasts that were the annoy ones. Finally the best question I was ever asked was many years ago while taking pictures of X construction from inside the park. A man walks up to me and asks "Excuse me do you know if that ride is open (pointing at X)?" Now mind you, this ride was not in the testing phase yet, in fact I don't even think it had been topped off yet. From where we were standing it was apparent that there was a majority of the track missing. I thought this guy might be kidding, but upon return to his group he says "sorry guys, maybe it'll open later on today."

All the pictures earlier in the thread make me wonder if there are pictures of Windjammers demise still around on the net. That ride was mauled when Knott’s removed it.

About the Intamin Space Diver in storage. Back in the day when I was running my website I was able to confirm (with some decent sources) that the ride does exist, and if I recall is currently somewhere in Europe. However please remember that it's been many years since I learned this information and can't reveal my sources since to be honest, I don't remember them. On a different subject as far as the park is concerned. I really think it's time that Magic Mountain return to the basics. I've seen a few of you posting about painting rides, but at this moment peeling paint is the least of the parks problems. I'm personally still waiting for the park to replace the Revolution trains, doesn't mean it'll happen but it'd be nice. The parks biggest problem at this point I believe is gross under staffing and lack of a general budget. The park has to fix the little problems before they can touch the big ones.

I'll throw in a vote for Desperado. I know it's not the tallest and the fact is there is little to look at from up there, however very few rides give the same sense of sheer height... And no matter how many times I've been on it, that tunnel at the bottom is always far smaller than the train.

IMO Willoughby's Mansion is the best maze in the park. I susgest getting up there early if you want to get through it quickly. I used to work up there for a show during Fright Fest, and there would be some long lines!

If you all think Colossus backwards is a rough experience, you should try and convince the park to run Psyclone backwards again.

Some of those pictures appear to have come from either in, or very near the Golden Bear Sound booth... Not that anybody really cares, just an observation that I made.

wrs28330, Do you work in the entertainment department at the park? I've got a hunch that we've met before.

I know I don't post much, and I'm not 100% sure when I found this site. However I do remember Robb (and Elissa) from RRC. Also going back several years, I do recall that there would occasionally be informal chats setup on AIM, I joined several of those as well.

That ride seemed like it was in trouble after the one at Cedar Point fell. Knott's was quick to get rid of theirs. I recall that ride being built in a hurry. If I recall it took about a week to fully get put up.

I have a disgarded land marker which "accidently" fell into my car during a photo trip a few years ago. I also have a full set of X blue prints somewhere.

Nice job nailed most of those questions. Buccaneer however was built by Intamin.

A couple things that I can add to this... Sometime if you're in the Ninja Station look at the ground and you can see where the platform used to turn. The upper station of Eagles Flights (near Ninja) is actually where we staged a Halloween show. A small bit of trivia, can you name the last date that Eagles Flight was dispatched? I can tell you that it is indeed recored on the control panel for the ride inside of the Shangri-La station. Finally... I believe the restaurant was called Seasons (could be wrong) and it was a cheap steak house.

wrs28330, PTC built the Carousel... I'm pretty sure of this fact. Also, Superman does not use the greatest amount of power in the park, even though that seems like the obvious choice. Also Sarajevo Bobsleds was not the ride used for Olympic training. Colossus, decent guess with the swings, I'll give you that one. It uses 40 Horsepower.

Alright I've got some pretty difficult stuff about Magic Mountain that I thought I could throw up: Where is the one place left in the park you can still see the Trolls? Which ride was used for Olympic Training at one point? How many Horsepower is the moter on Swashbuckler... And for a bonus, how much power does the park use to run the ride and the lighting system? Which company desinged Buccaneer? Who desinged Sierra Twist? What was the Sky Tower orignally built for? What was the name of the puppet who used to scare people over by Viper? Which ride in the park uses the greatest amount of power? Alright that's all I feel like posting for now, I'll be curious to see if anybody can get those.