DoubleDown

Very true. To add to that thought, I feel like even once I saw the announcement (what was that, back in 2003?) and what they were going to do with the area, the park was never going to be the same. While it was great to see a B&M installation at a park like Knott's, I was not particularly a fan of what was happening to the surrounding area. Don't get me wrong, I love me a B&M, I love how the ride interacts with the park. But the thing is B&M's are SO beefy, and the way they elevate their rides most the time, I was just not a fan of how they (just how you described it) "plopped" the layout on top of Reflection Lake. I really felt their decision to "update" the area took A LOT of nostalgia away, turned the lake into a meaningless pond, and also added a ton of concrete with little to no shade which as we have seen, has become a norm around a good majority of the park these days. I went to the park a couple weeks ago with a couple friends because we wanted to go on some rides and not travel too far, and I will say that while the park still has a good portion of that nostalgic feeling in some places, imagine doubling or tripling that about 10-15 years ago. However while I do not feel that the addition of rides has hurt this park, I do feel the way the park decides to integrate these rides into the existing infrastructure has undoubtedly taken a lot of that nostalgia away, and is a direct result of what Knott's has become. This is coming from a native SoCal kid having a pass in highschool and bringing girls along just so we could be alone and hook up. I know the park well, I've spent a lot of time there, and after going a couple weeks ago, I am honest when I say I don't need to visit for at least another 5 years.

Sucks when work gets in the way of getting out to the park on the very obvious dead week of operations. Glad some of you guys get to take advantage of it! 35 times in a row on Lex Luther? With a 3 minute ride cycle, what is that, like 2 hours of ERT? Only problem with Twisted Colossus is it really takes a toll on you physically after about 5 rides in a row. During the promo video shoot thing, they sent us around about 8 times, and even though it was a lot of fun, I had enough and was ready for a break. Thanks for the updates everyone!

My reaction if they restore Revolution with new trains and only lapbars:

I've been on a lot of rides, and Ghostrider was an absolute monster of a coaster for the first 5 years of its operation. Sometimes I wondered how the thing could possibly operate the way it did without eventually taking a toll on the trains and track as a whole. That drop after the MCBR tugged you SO HARD in the last row in a way I'll never forget. Kinda reminds me of what Twisted Colossus does now, except it was like 15 years earlier, and after that drop it was just pure highspeed insanity. It actually used to make me cringe because of the anticipation. In my opinion, if they simply did an RMC kind of re-tracking with the exact same layout, the ride would be back on top amongst some of the best rides in the world. I feel like a modern wood "retracking" or whatever Cedar Fair is talking about is not going to be a long term solution and the ride will eventually degrade back into what we know it is today.

Assigned seating can be beneficial and work out well for capacity if done right (Disney). The ride ops at Magic Mountain, however, are inept at the process, and have never been able to figure it out. They even had a hard time with the single rider line. One time the op put me and my friend in rows 10 and 11, leaving open seats beside us because behind both of us in line, were two people who were riding together. Naturally we just sat together anyway. It absolutely blows my mind that such a simple process goes over the head of the ops at Magic Mountain. Not only is this because of lack of training (I'm sure even the trainers would have a hard time) it takes a lack of common sense (anyone with a brain should be able to figure it out on their own without any kind of training). I also don't understand why you can't "ask" to sit somewhere. Why the hell not? I'm a paying customer goddammit! When I was a ride op at parks I always let people sit where they wanted, all they had to do was ask. Disney assigns seats, but has never told me no if I asked nicely if I could sit in the front or the back. It's there for efficiency, of course, but NOT there to power trip and not let people sit where they want and wait longer if they so desire. Allowing 2 out of every 100 guests asks if they can sit somewhere does NOT hurt capacity!

^?????

Yup me too. But I think I'm outside the circle in saying Deja Vu was one of my 5 favorite rides in the park and not only was I sad to see it go the abandoned plot of land and remaining footers don't make it any easier.

^Great analysis! Love hearing that kind of perspective. Let's hope so! Here's to Intamin making a splash in the United States with some awesome unique coasters! Enough of this 300 foot boring B&M forceless floater air bullshit! I want an Intamin to kick my ass like RMC has done with Twisted Colossus! I'd imagine it really comes down to cost more than anything. Being in a desert climate, any other color would rapidly fade with the relentless sunlight/dust storms etc and add a considerable amount of maintenance if they want it to look good. Ahh, that's what I thought. If Tatsu over in California looks bad, anything with a decent paint job in the UAE's heat would fade very quickly Well let's not jump to conclusions. After repainting X2 with a different mix of paint, I'd have to say that rides paint job has held up pretty well over the years.

Went to the park yesterday for the $10 with a buddy deal at about 4:30, got on Twisted Colossus 2x with single rider, Revolution, X2 and Batman. Tatsu's queue was full (I've never waited that long for it), Superman was out the cave (bleh), Yolo looked to be an hour the entire day (worth the wait?), and Goliath's line extended out halfway through the switchbacks (nope). Lex Luther was closed (BOOOOOOO!). Viper closed (which I don't think it's ever been closed when I visited in my 20 years of going to the park). I decided to go on a Wednesday because it sounded like they weren't that crowded...didn't seem to be the case this time. Lots of cars in the parking lot. Ride operations overall were sub-par to say the least. Do these employees really think they're that cool getting paid $10 an hour to drink water, check restraints, and push buttons? Who do they think they're kidding? They're really good at making ridiculous asses of themselves, just based off watching their incompetency and idiotic decisions, for the most part. At one point my buddy asked "Is it possible to get kicked out of the park for telling one of these ride operators off? Like, could you actually do that and get away with it?" I said I don't know, but I know how you feel!! Stacking on Twisted Colossus was happening late in the afternoon, so a race was impossible. At a couple points during our wait, all 3 cars were at a standstill, 2 in the brakes, waiting for the one train in the station to dispatch. Is that a 6 minute dispatch??? Later in the evening they were getting better, but I can't understand for the life of me why 1 guest standing outside the gate on the exit ramp talking to the ride operator for minutes takes priority over 500+ guests waiting to ride. Tell the guest to wait, and make sure the people on the ride are ready to go! Why do the ride operators seem so brain dead? Are they really incapable of multi-tasking while getting cars loaded and dispatched? Never seen anything like it before in my life except at this park. They just don't seem to care about operating the ride properly, at all. Love the ride, but it seems like the operators go out of their way to put a "Six Flags Black Eye" stamp on what is one of the better rides in the park. Revolution was a 3 train wait (we were behind 4 people), and it took about 20 minutes. I'm not kidding. Probably the worst 3 ride operators I've ever seen in my life. Talking talking talking about anything they could other than checking restraints and getting riders on and off. I thought we'd be on and off in 5 minutes. Last thing they cared about was getting the trains filled and dispatched. F- to the ride operators at Revolution. Look, I know it's probably one of the more boring rides to operate, but that doesn't mean you can't get people on and off in a timely fashion. Caught the late afternoon X2 lull and the wait was about 20 minutes. Crew was working very well and at some points the train was dispatched and out of the station to lift before the other one even got back to the station. Impressive!!! Can the park PLEASE have this kind of ride operator workmanship distributed throughout the park? It'd really make a trip to the park a lot more enjoyable. We had a great ride on X2, no audio or fire, but wild as all hell, and that last raven didn't rattle around nearly as hard as I'm used to. Batman was Batman. Seems kinda tame now after Twisted Colossus. Had a great trip to the park thanks to the rides and the Full Throttle Bar which was actually very pleasant, but to underscore, the only thing that bugged the both of us was how incompetent, ridiculous, and uncaring the ride operators were in regards to getting waiting guests on and off the rides. It really sucks that the only thing in the way of everything being great is the EASIEST thing to do. Basically just do your job and care about paying guests that want to get on roller coasters. I don't understand the horsesh*t attitudes of some of the employees, who really don't care whether paying guests have an enjoyable experience or not. They suck. It's NOT that hard to be nice to people who are funding your paycheck! Trust me I know, I've been there before!

Heading out to the park today at about 2 to avoid some of the heat and get some night rides! Hope everything goes smoothly and I'll let you guys know how it goes. I'm getting my buddy on Twisted Colossus for the first time so I'm looking forward to that!

Awesome video, the best of this ride I've seen yet. I can't help but wonder that the experience on this ride really needs to be done in person, because even after all the videos I've seen, the ride seems more like a lot of slow crawl through the very detailed animatronic scenes for a good length of time, with only about 20 seconds of speed and thrills. While I do think the theming on this ride and in the entire park is fantastic, it just seems like there should be more to this ride. I know that there's plenty of other things to do in the park, I'm just not sure I'd take a trip out to this park just to get on this ride.

My honest opinion: Rent a car. Try Enterprise. There is one on Beach and Orangethorpe roughly 2 miles North of KBF, and they will come PICK YOU UP from where you are if you want them to. Are you a Costco Member? Even better. Reserve the car through there in advance and it's even less. I've rented cars for a WEEK through Costco Enterprise, and it was $90. No joke. Screw public transportation, save or spend a little more, and you can save a lot of time and heartache.

To the enthusiast, Goliath is all but a bunch of wasted space. To the GP, Goliath is taller, therefore better. Really no reason for me to ride boring Goliath ever again unless it's practically walk on with Twisted Colossus right around the corner. Funny thing about lift chains...once they're installed, run a cycle a couple times, they're pretty much ready to go. If the trains and everything else are up to snuff, which since nothing else really happened for the coaster to break down, the ride is ready to operate. I'm really interested to know if the "lifthill not up to spec" comments from the park were all a bunch of delay hooplah, and they were really just waiting for the chain. It also makes little sense to me that if a lift chain breaks, they can't just repair what broke and go from there. Waiting for a whole new chain seems silly.

I would say it sounds like Twisted Colossus is a MUST RIDE when visiting the park, and I've gotta agree, IT IS! Glad to hear operations are improving, also that Superman is running both sides. I would also like to second the compliment idea to guest relations, as it's always nice to hear as an employee when you're doing a good job. Hopefully I'll be making it out to the park next week during a weekday and the girl will get to ride Twisted Colossus for the first time. LOL it should be fun.

That's odd. You'd think the new cars would be lighter and put less stress on the track. Guess not. Just clarifying, they weren't replacing the main I-beams the track rides on, they were replacing the middle guide rail. The one that makes all the noise... Although supposedly due to the new guide rail it's now noticeably quieter. Edit: Just listened to the ride, it's really obvious where they replaced the middle rail. It's mercifully not very loud. Very interested to hear this myself. The reason for the noise is because the bogeys on the train have metal wheels, so the noise you hear when the train is going along the track is basically metal wheels on a metal guide rail going 100 mph. I do not recall them ever replacing that guide rail, so maybe it's just something that finally had to be replaced after almost 2 decades. Changing to lighter trains would have virtually no effect on the wear and tear to the guide rail. It's strange that the noise would be quieter if they still used steel? Maybe they have a different material or composite which is making it quieter. Which also begs the question, will the other side be getting this done as well?

To be honest, jist thought I'd mention just because I'm SothernCalifornian, and even though it's not theme park related, Angel Stadium has some of the best fireworks on 4th of July and every Saturday home game. The show lasts about 20-25 minutes, is synchronized with music, and basically anywhere inside or around the stadium (you can hang out near the Amtrack station or around the parking lot, you don't even have to buy a ticket to see them) is a pretty good seat. Just throwing it out there since we're talking fireworks shows, and Angel Stadium is some of the best I've ever seen.

I think today was just crowded because people take the Friday off to have a 3 day weekend. I wouldn't expect next Friday to be as bad as some of you mentioned today was.

If they play Looney Toons on those monitors in TC's queue, I will be ECSTATIC. That's what they USED to do when I visited in the 90's, and I loved every single second of it. Which is so dumb on part of the person in charge of getting this ride open, because who has watched Looney Toons recently? Who DOESN'T love Looney Toons? Wouldn't that be an awesome NOSTALGIC way to incorporate guest riding procedures with the cartoons? What if Daffy and Bugs were telling you to leave your lapbar up, and only buckle your seatbelt between cartoons? What if they told you to put your stuff in a locker? Too difficult for this park, huh? This ride doesn't even have a station spiel! Is this 2015? Am I a genius? Or are these park higher ups just absolutely brain dead? Unfortunately, I'm afraid they're going to go the X2/Full Throttle route at a volume WAY too loud, with people I don't know yelling annoying "motivational life lesson" quotes at me, playing annoying top 40 music I've already heard a million times, and it'll be on a 20 minute loop so you hear the same crap over and over while you're standing in line. If that's the case, I'd pass on the monitors, as I'd honestly prefer peace and silence in the station. Maybe if the park learned something after opening attractions for the past 40 years, they'd know how to prep for a ride opening appropriately. Instead of opening the ride early, maybe they should get some training and ride operating procedures down first. Get an audio spiel in the station that tells people no loose articles are allowed on the ride. Open up a locker station where the old left side of the ride viewing plaza is. There are so many things they could do and time and time again this park fails like it's a brand new astonishing concept, like they have no clue how to deal with guests, or loose articles, or ride capacity, or training. I love this park, I want them to succeed and do well, and I want to give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to budgets and time constraints, but goddammit it's been 20+ years I've been visiting this park and still when I go it's like neanderthals are running the place. /rant

If anything it seems the design of the track needs to be changed to avoid the ride from valleying (which from I read had problems before this incident) in and out of the cobra roll. IMO the track should have been changed when they knew the cobra roll element was troublesome, and I think that could have aided in avoiding this problem in the first place. However rare, it would be interesting if trains began to be designed to "absorb" impact in the instance of a crash. I know they have the "bumpers" on the front and back of the trains, but those don't seem to be intended for high speed impact, more in case they're swapping trains and there's an accident in maintenance mode. A hydraulic bumper or something that could avoid serious collision and injury to riders could easily be incorporated into the trains.

That flat looks insane, and would probably actually make me sick. What if Riddler and Scream swapped trains? Probably not feasible but just a thought.

Last I heard was "late June." And welp, it's June 28th and here we are. Wouldn't be surprised if they just ditched the idea, we won't get a 4th train, and down the line they'll let it become something of the past that never happened. Oh Magic Mountain, stop letting your reputation proceed you... And BTW, I haven't ridden Riddlers in years, but I've heard it's been rather rough as of late. Could it be because of the train which has been passed back and forth like an unwanted stepchild? Riddlers was never the smoothest ride in the world anyway, the wheel compound was always pretty hard which made riders feel the vibrations of the track, and even riding it's rather loud. Probably has to do with those big heavy trains. Would it be pushing it to get 2 new B&M sit down (not floorless) trains like Hulk/The Time Machine? I don't think it would take much from the ride.

Park with some of the best variety of coasters on the planet in one place: Check Park that continually pushes the limits on coasters & rides: Check Park that makes the GP and Enthusiasts alike salivating for more: Check Park with the (by far) largest thread on TPR: Check I'd say Magic Mountain has earned it's reputation for wowing thrillseekers left and right, who knows what they'll do? People talk about this park, people want to visit this park from thousands of miles away. Even I like to visit every couple months just to take a cruise around and get on some rides to get away from every day life. So the sky is the limit and people can dream forever. Who knows whats up their sleeves and what's coming next? Too bad they can't get a couple BIG things right. This could easily be a worldwide destination if they got operations and staffing up to snuff. Six Flags California Resort and Hotel is what I hope they could become.

This exactly reminds me of TWISTER, the coaster in Grona Lund park, Stockholm Sweden. Lots of corners and sweet tight turns with a very articulated train. Much fun! I cannot believe I missed Twister at Grona Lund. Was there 2 years too early! Man theme parks in Europe are so much different than here in the US. Loving the updates on this ride! Keep 'em up. Gonna be in this thread in a couple of months watching that sa-weeet POV!

That's the thing, nobody visiting the park trying to enjoy their day gives a flying s*** about a stupid YouTube channel, or the outward facing shots they're trying to make. It's just obnoxious, in the way and downright inconsiderate. People these days are inconsiderate enough as it is with their stupid phones and bluetooth headsets, we don't need yet ANOTHER piece of equipment to become accepted as "normal" to add to the idiocity. Thank GOD Disney is banning these and i hope this happens at more parks and in general public places as well. Although I kinda wish some asshat pulling out a selfie stick on a ride would have impaled them self first just to incorporate some sort of Darwinism into these retarded things. #banselfiesticks everywhere 4 life

If they're going to go the hyper/giga route I just don't want one of those dumb forceless cookie cutter out and back B&M Coasters. If they install anything I hope it's Intamin and I hope it concentrates on forces, laterals, and airtime rather than just boring floater air after floater air. The idea of putting it in the back of the park is fine, its station could be where Deja Vu used to sit, but there's especially no reason to remove the iconic, photogenic, and still very fun to ride Viper. Whatever the issue is on Goliath I understand how the inspectors in California are and what not, but I guess I don't get why Magic Mountain do a run through on the ride to find this issue when the chain broke? This way they could fix the issue with the lift hill during the 3 months they've been waiting for the chain! That's what frustrates me. Goliath isn't even one of my must rides in the park when I go, so personally it makes no difference to me. I just wish they'd have the forethought to kinda get their s*** together because I remember being younger and getting 1 trip a year during the summer to the park, and if one of my favorite rides was unexpectedly down, it kinda sucked!