PeoplemoverMatt

Wow, this is something I've seen a lot of. I don't bring a lot with me. I brought my wallet, car keys, phone, and a camera. These are things I cannot afford to lose on a ride when I'm 2,500 miles from home. I'd rather them be kept safe rather than lose them going through a loop. The fact that the just had to nickel and dime us for this security ticked me off. The cubby holes at KBF were perfectly fine (and secure) and Disney never told us that we "absolutely must" remove all loose articles, so why SF can't extend the same common courtesy is beyond me. I highly suggest obtaining multiple pairs of pants/shorts that have zippered pockets. Perfect for when you absolutely cannot lose important stuff on rides, but don't want to have to worry about what you can't lose while you're trying to have a great time.

Oh no, I mentioned many times how the rides are good and the park has great potential. The way the park is run, the unsupervised teenagers wreaking havoc, the absence of any sense of cleanliness (we saw one sweeper in the entire park. One.), and the use of single train operation on their most popular rides was inexcusable. I know it is a year round park, but so is Disneyland and Knott's and we had no problems with ride operation at either of those parks. Knott's had single train operation on its two most popular rides, as well (Silver Bullet and Xcelerator), but those ones were actually undergoing maintenance. You'll see in the pics from Knott's that the second Silver Bullet train is literally in pieces on the transfer track. Xcelerator was being repainted. I never saw anything remotely resembling maintenance on the single-train rides at Magic Mountain. Once again, good rides, even a few great ones, but the overall park experience is horrible. The majority of coaster maintenance done at SFMM is not visible to the general public.

Does Cn'C still have that big screen DDR machine for 50 cents/play? That thing was awesome.

Who noticed some pre-show audio while in the "green room" waiting to board Superman? If you missed it before, try keeping your ears open past all the random chatter echoing off the walls. You might be pleasantly surprised.

There's always the chance that the media and/or the park will edit/blur out any non-SFMM/SFMM-affiliated logos from anything that makes it to TV/print media.

No exaggeration here - I gleamed more information from 5 minutes of watching NHK World than I did from 5 hours of CNN. I actually turned my TV off and watched a live feed of NHK World online.

Which means that 90% of the employees don't know even that because they've either forgotten or weren't paying attention in the first place. Those of us who do work in the theme park industry should watch these videos and adopt these exact procedures for earthquakes. CalTech has told us that SoCal could be hit by a magnitude 8 or higher quake. This could be us tomorrow. We should be doing everything we can to be prepared for it.

...and by "damaged" Eric means the structure & station got its stuff messed up pretty badly. "Trashed" would also be a good way to describe it.

Sooooo jealous of you guys having Xcelerator ERT! Would love to be there for Knotts day but can't afford to take off work. Have a GREAT time!

For me, Deja Vu in the very last row has always been a great ride. The vertical drop after being pulled up the tower is very fun. Hard to believe Vu turns 10 this year. Where does the time go??

My favorite on that list is La Ronde's $5 upcharge for "fireworks view" parking. "Honey, we gotta leave during fireworks time so we can see the fireworks from the parking lot. Gotta get our $5 worth!"

There's a BJs and a TGI Fridays about 5 minutes down Magic Mountain Parkway away from SFMM. BJs closes at 1am on Friday & Saturday night, and Fridays usually closes after midnight so either one would likely be good locations for a TPR Happy Hour Invasion of sorts. BJs, I'm told, has a fantastic beer menu. Valencia desperately needs a Buffalo Wild Wings...

Never fails. Every year a few people come up and say how WCB is going to suck/not be worth its price because of this or that reason, and every year those pessimists are proven 100% WRONG and everyone has a tremendously great time. There are a limited number of tickets available for this for a reason. Those who go will enjoy every bit of the event from the ERT to the Q&A to everything else. I still have my piece of Apocalypse from WCB 2009. There are surprises every year. WCB is not to be missed!

That's putting a bit of a spin on things. The cost of one ride on those three approaches the online admission to Six Flags Magic Mountain, home of 18 coasters in 2011. That said, Joey's right in theory. The land values are far too high for a park to really work long-term now, to say nothing about what will happen once the Nevada real estate market comes out of the giant crater it's currently in. A park not only needs to be built, but needs room to grow over time so its ability to "never be complete" can sustain its existence over more than one generation. Grand Adventures never had that ability. Adventure Dome doesn't have that ability, but fortunately it's already there, and it has managers who can come up with creative solutions to how to use & re-use its space to keep people coming back. Even though people do come back, Adventure Dome is not the money-maker that other properties on the strip are. I'd guess that a major Cirque show brings in more revenue in ticket sales than Adventure Dome does. I like the part about "how do we reinvent the strip?" Weren't they asking that question 20 years ago? Las Vegas tried to be family-friendly and found that it could make a whole lot more money by being more friendly to other demographics, and by being a player on the adult world destination stage. Vegas is a place for the super rich, the global conglomerate business moguls. That's where it really excels, and at this point, using the land for other means is to give up too much in opportunity cost. Off-strip, however, is another story. I don't think we've seen a theme park developer really go 'all-in' with a Las Vegas park. An off-strip site, if done right, might have possibilities, but there's still the question of where is there enough land to be close enough to the Strip to bring in the people, yet be far enough away to avoid the brunt of the location cost?

LOL. Now they've hidden the thread from public view. Like what they've done won't be known/will be forgotten. Also Robb, are you still re-adding FB friends?

Regulations are a big part of any park's thought process as to what their next attraction project will be.

Speaking strictly from a structural POV, it's more difficult to build something really tall, such as a giga or strata coaster in CA than Ohio. CA's earthquakes & corresponding building codes require coasters, and any other structure, built here to be much more "beefy" than you'd find in other parts of the country. Just look at the insane amount of structure going into the Cars Land Cadillac Range for example. More structure means more cost, and often times that additional cost sends the cost of adding a giga or strata coaster into a cost prohibitive area.

I'm in the new preshow. You can see me in the last room's show. I'm the scavenger who lobs a grenade at the girl, and you. That was all really awesome to be a part of. Makes me wonder if 20ish years from now I'll be able to see myself as I am today in that video?

Yes, Apocalypse began today. I am in the new pre-show.

Theme park burger is still theme park burger.

I never thought I'd see Magic Mountain in the snow, much less actually be there. That was amazing, and beautiful.

I couldn't make it over to the park today, but ABC News was reporting from the front of the park and they said the park had closed at 3:00 pm. Can anyone confirm that? Yes, the park closed at 3pm today.

Do people even read TPR's disclaimer anymore?

Dammit...was looking forward to riding that in a few weeks...