SFMMGeek27

To answer a lot of questions at once: They only have a flash pass person on one side of SEFK even if both sides are open. They always only open with one side so whichever side opens with the park is the one that has flash pass all day. I always choose the side that doesn't have the flash pass person, even if the line is longer, because you will get on faster when you aren't being cut by flash pass! Also, they run both sides of SEFK on most summer days now. LLDOD closes for high winds because the cables in the tower fly back and forth in the wind and it causes the computer to malfunction. Ninja is technically running at full capacity because there aren't any other trains that are operable, so it's not their fault. Operations have been amazing this summer! I'll be at the park on Saturday to cover Colossus closing festivities!

Yeah, Iron Colossus is basically two coasters, depending on what they do with it. that's gonna be a monster to get done for 2015. It should be AMAZING though. Iron Cyclone is already well on it's way.

Quick question: Is anyone going to go to the park on the 16th to ride Colossus? I'm planning to be there. I wanna get the super cool button they're handing gout to everyone.

Apocalypse SFMM. Pouring rain with 3 others on the train. BEST RIDES EVER. It currently ranks as my #1 coaster in the rain. You won't understand until you do it and you won't disagree with me. In the rain it's better than El Toro.

I've been on many woodies and Apocalypse isn't bumpy at all. Any roughness adds to the experience. It is a wooden coaster afterall. Makes it feel more out of control. Also, the fact that the ride has cushions all around you that are 6 inches thick and feel better than my sofa... I could ride that thing all day. It's not in the least bit uncomfortable. Yet I think Viper is smooth as glass and love Ghostrider (not as much as Apocalypse though). I can only handle 3-4 consecutive rides on Revolution though. Ahhh.

You try to calculate the capacity of things that aren't even rides. Such as drink stands and lines at restaurants or airports. And then comparing them to the capacity on your favorite roller coaster.

Now that the marathon is officially over: CONGRATS CAESAR!!!!!!!!!! Enjoy your four free Gold Passes, T-shirt, and piece of Colossus! I can't wait until Caesar himself posts here a review of the event.

They haven't needed to use both sides. Colossus isn't popular enough. It would've been nice to have 3 trains for the last few months of operation, but even with only one track and two trains, waits haven't commonly exceeded 25-30 min. So it still isn't that popular. I've seen both sides on Tatsu running 9/10 of my visits this summer, and the one time they weren't was because they were only using one train, with a mechanic actively working on the other one in the other station. They don't use both right after opening or right before closing. But they do use both most days all afternoon. I've seen it on weekdays and weekends, so that's not true. X2's unloading station was ditched during the 2008 renovation. Capacity is better using the old loading station for both loading and unloading. Superman and Alex already have terrible capacity. Imagine how much lower their capacities would be if they were timed together. They should use five trains and a dual loading station. Similar operations to California Screamin'. If not, then 3-4 trains and one loading station. If the ride is that long, there needs to be high capacity.

It will probably be closed, it would have to be unless they were running one public train and one marathon train, and I don't think theyd do that, especially since the marathon riders are going to have guests and supplies in the station. The ride SHOULD remain open with two guest trains running during the marathon. There are only enough riders for one marathon train, and the support people will be in the waiting area next to the ride, so that's where the supplies should be as well. As I will show in my update later today, it looks like a THIRD train will be available in the next couple of days to run on Colossus. It had been sitting in pieces for a year with a completely missing front car, but it is now back on the transfer fully assembled and it looks ready to go. It would be awesome for Colossus to run 3 trains for it's last few weeks, really increasing capacity, because the crews have been on top of it, with having one train near the top of the lift hill before the other train has even entered the station. I'll find out if they will run three or not soon.

Prepare yourselves for a park update tonight or tomorrow from Monday and today! I'll be at the park all afternoon today.

Here is some additional information about the marathon: Say goodbye to Colossus in a Colossal way! Six Flags Magic Mountain is hosting a 36-hour coaster marathon on Colossus and they’re looking for riders. The Colossus marathon will start on Monday, August 4 at 9 a.m. and will end at 9 p.m. on Tuesday, August 5. If you are interested in participating, please e-mail the park at sixflagsevent@gmail.com and tell them why you want to be one of the 24 participants in this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Each participant will receive a Six Flags 2015 Season Pass. Grand Prize will be four GOLD Passes and extra surprises! A few key points for the marathon riders: Each hour, riders will ride for 45 minutes with a 15 minute break. At 3 a.m., the park will move you to the “other” wooden coaster, Apocalypse, for three hours while Colossus receives its regularly-scheduled maintenance. At 6 a.m., you’ll be back on Colossus to finish the marathon. Riders will be required to sign a medical waiver. If rider is under 18 years old, support person must be a parent or guardian and will be required to sign the medical waiver on the rider’s behalf. The park will provide regularly-scheduled meals to the riders throughout the marathon. Any special dietary needs are the responsibility of the rider and will be allowed to be brought in. Each participant is allowed to bring one “support” person. This person will be asked to wait in an area next to the ride and will be available to supply their marathon rider with any additional food and drink throughout the duration of the marathon. Marathon riders will be encouraged to document their marathon experience on social media during the 36 hours. Prizes will be awarded for best posts during the event. Additional information will be provided to riders by the park in a follow up e-mail. Good luck to everyone who applies!

Are they the newer intamin OTSR's? Because those didn't seem to be a problem for me at Busch Gardens a few months ago. I believe they are considered the newer ones. I've never seen anyone with a problem on it. Goliath should be no problem either. On X2 you're fine as long as the seat isnt broken, some of them dont go up and only fit small people, but even then you can just pick a different seat usually. If you're also really tall you may have trouble fitting into Gold Rusher's train, that's the only one I can think of. Now that you mention it I think SFMM's rides are pretty accommodating to larger guests. I cant really remember ever seeing someone get the walk of shame. Maybe Batman depending on how big you are, I've seen it on Flight Deck which has the same restraints. Since we currently have SFOT's Batman trains, we have two "big boy seats" on each train! Our trains do not have those so it's quite nice having them, even though I've been stuck with them for the last two times I've been on. Tatsu may be a little difficult to fit into, depending on body shape. I've seen some not-very-large people be walk-of-shamed from Tatsu just because of their shape and the restraint's shape. But that's the most common one where people don't fit. Sometimes the restraint will even lock but the computer will not register it as locked. It's weird.

What rides do you think have really poor queue or station configurations? This can include station setup, unavoidable switchbacks, far away Fast Pass and regular line merge points, etc. I would say a bad one is Riddler's Revenge. The loading lines and station are built at an angle and it can make it so the back row is a 2 train wait where the front row is a 10+ train wait. It's very unbalanced. Feel free to share your thoughts!

Currently at The park and the operations are really horrible today, but it's not their fault. X2 only had one train until about 2:00 PM and Tatsu has been down to one train all day (currently in line for that). Colossus also had only one train with the line out the entrance. The front has been taken off the other (red) train and it looked major. Ninja also only has one and has a really long line. It's hot but not too bad.

SFMM is bad but not that bad. They are taking train 1 off the transfer and returning it and making train 3 the new donor train. Also, I'm hearing Batman backwards may be back for Fright Fest in lieu of Colossus.

^It is true that they HAD 4 trains. Now they only have three. Trains 2 and 3 are the only ones that have been operating for the past decade or so, with train 1 sitting on the transfer rotting / being used for parts. From what I'm hearing, there was a lot of damage to train 3 from the accident and it is probably done for good. I heard that they had to cut the train off the rails in order to take it off the track. This will probably become the new donor train. I also heard they plan to take train 1 off the transfer after a decade and refurbish the whole thing so that Ninja can have two operable trains in the future, but if anyone has ever seen train 1 lately, they will know that it will take a really long time to refurbish that thing. Just what I've heard.

^here's a photo to show you. Right off of their website. Trust me, it's bad.

Sunday is gonna be HELL at the park. It's the Gold Pass bring a friend free day. GET A FLASH PASS. You will need it. We are talking about 2-3 hours for headliners and 60-90min for the non-headliners. It's no joke. I went last year and thy actually extended the park hours to 10PM closing. The overflow lot will fill and they will be using lots you didn't even know exist. I give you good luck and yes, you will need a flash pass to do more than 5 rides that day.

Yesterday the side closest to YOLO was going MUCH higher than the left side. The right side was consistently touching the brakes while the left was barely reaching the red part. That's strange! I wonder if they're doing this to prevent the LSMs from overheating.... I think you're right! Last weekend when all the problems were happening it was really hot and I don't think the LSMs could cool down fast enough. This happened all last summer as well, actually to the point where they'd run it from opening to 12:30 and then shut it down until 5 or so. They did that all the time last year. It never went down yesterday while I was there with the empty rows, so I bet that was it.

^Yes, they finally repainted YOLOplaza and fixed the YOLOmist! Yaaaaay! On a side note, they were not using rows 3 or 7 on either train on YOLOcoaster yesterday. And, for a Saturday, the park was really light! None of the lines exceeded 45 minutes, including Goliath, YOLO (which is only 45 min with a full queue anyways), Tatsu, and X2! And they have started assigning rows on Colossus! So I only waited about 10 minutes for it instead of the 30-40 I have been recently. It was a good day and Superman is running both sides again! I literally walked on midday!

There was already an incident with a tree branch on Revolution this year, which caused it to be closed for almost 6 months. Six Flags released a statement yesterday that implies that he ride will be up and running after an inspection:

I just rode Ninja yesterday! That's crazy! As of yesterday around 2PM when I rode, everything seemed perfectly fine, and I believe I rode in train 3 as well! I didn't see any trees anywhere near falling! So this must've happened really quickly! Well, I'm glad I rode it yesterday and not today at least.

The park was REALLY empty today, like station-wait for X2 empty. Too bad there were so many technical difficulties. Apocalypse was down all day, and many others went down at points as well, including Full Throttle. As I was waiting in line, a train misfired and went backwards back down the loop. They fixed this quickly but the first test didn't clear the loop either. After 15 min it was back open and we were about 3rd to getting on when one of the trains got stuck in the final brakes. The ride system wouldn't release it to return to the station, even after the other train was launched. This was an easy fix by maintenance. Then I got on. We cleared the loop just fine but then when we got into the tunnel the brakes didn't fire soon enough so we stopped about 20 feet further up in the tunnel than we were supposed to. Because of this the backwards launch didn't work so we just sat there in the tunnel with no employees and we were just talking for 8-10 minutes. (And we didn't hear any announcements or anything through the speakers). After 8-10 min, with no warning whatsoever the train just launched backwards and scared the crap out of me and everybody else on the train. We barely made it out of the tunnel before we went back in and got stopped in the brakes again. This time we were 30 feet too far back in the tunnel than where we should've been. After 2 minutes or so we scooted forward like 10 feet slowly and then stopped again. Then we heard the whole system powering up and down as it would go to utter silence like 3 times. After that we finally scooted slowly forward the remaining 20 feet into the correct launch position. After a minute or so we launched backwards again, this time correctly and cleared the top of the loop! Yay!!!! BUT THAT'S NOT IT... After we clear the loop we are sitting in the final brakes and the other train is sitting empty in the station. It is launched and it misfires in the loop and rolls back. Our train had already been advancing toward the station, so they had to apply the emergency brake just before the station. Then, they fixed the rollback and launched the other train again and it made it. Then our train advanced in the station and stopped halfway in. At this point, maintenance literally came up to the train and literally manually PUSHED our train into the correct position! Then, the lapbars wouldn't unlock! So they just decided to unlock us manually and get us out. So after a 20+minute ride on Full throttle, we got no compensation! It was a pretty cool experience, but that backwards launch scared the crap out of me! The ride was down for the next two hours or so after that. And then as I walked by it when I was leaving, it was back open but only running one train. The other train (presumably ours) was in the transfer. That was cool!

^ I rode Namtab at about 12:30 on Wednesday and there was absolutely NO line! I could've gone again if I wanted to! The line looks longer than it actually is because they do seating assignments. And yes, there were two trains.

So it was never explained why one of trains completely disappeared for a time? I wonder if it has anything to do with that weird rollback they had a while back They were both taken off the track one at a time just for a general refurb. I rode both trains today and they big seemed the same. There is now red and green paint at the top of the loop. It looks weird. Also, Roaring Rapids was running In the morning with a long line but when I walked by in the afternoon the whole thing had been drained and there was a sign out front saying it was closed for a while due to annual maintenance. Sounds like something serious.