PeoplemoverMatt

I'll miss the special effect stages. Glad I had a chance to perform every volunteer role they had sans the voice over role in stage 3.

Peeve: Tram crossing guard on a cell phone while guests of all ages are crossing.

Gas stations on the I-5, especially between Grapevine and the 5/99 split and little ways north of that on the I-5 seem to constantly be a good 10-20% more expensive than the stations on the I-5 in Santa Clarita. Today's gas prices info from gasbuddy.com Santa Clarita area: $3.50/avg Grapevine Road: $4.19/avg (immediately before "The Grapevine") Taft Hwy: $4.49/avg (~20miles north of "The Grapevine") It's on the north side of "The Grapevine" where you'll find the "Grapevine Gouge" because they know they have you. It's like theme parks charging $3 for a 20oz. soda I can buy for $1.50 at Wal-Mart. People will pay extra for going over the hill in confidence, especially if they last fueled up in the Sacto area. Conversely, anyone who's been driving from LA and just got over the hill would probably want to fuel up for the run to the Sacto area. So anyone traveling on the I-5 should factor this into their plans, which is what BritShady asked about. Clearly the best move if going south, if you can, is to try to make it over the hill and into Santa Clarita before filling up for the trip into the LA area.

He had a quote in last year's Universal's HHN marketing as well. Last year's quote went from a recommendation of HHN if you're only going to 1 Halloween event over the year, to HHN is the premiere Halloween event possibly in the world. Universal knows and does movies, so it's only natural to have a movie critic-style approving quote like that for HHN. And it's very appropriate quote to use as Robb isn't about movies but is about theme parks and theme park events like this one. Congrats to Robb for the publicity and congrats to HHN for putting on the event that they do.

Well the gas prices here in town are somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.50 for regular. Factor in a healthy grapevine gouge...I'd plan on spending $4/gal if you plan to gas up at Grapevine. I doubt even the gouge would drive it that high, but if it's not, then you have a little extra cash to spend on Fright Fest wristbands.

^ Who crapped in your Cheerios this morning?? Jeez, that was pretty uncalled for...

^ Are you really going to say that you weren't a part of that? Come on now... Fright Fest looks good. Kinda sucks that construction will make it a pain in the rear for anyone trying to get in the park. As for the $5 fee, it's pretty comical that people would complain about that and not about what Knott's or Universal charges, or that $5 buys you 1/3 of that parking space your car's in. It's not anything to really complain about, especially since Fright Fest isn't hard ticket. See the mazes, or don't, your choice.

IMPORTANT NEWS FOR ANYONE PLANNING ON GOING TO MAGIC MOUNTAIN FROM OCT 14 UNTIL OCT 21! Regarding construction taking place at the intersection of Magic Mountain Parkway and The Old Road: I'm not quite sure how anyone's supposed to get into Magic Mountain with the Magic Mtn. Pkwy./The Old Road intersection totally closed, so anyone planning to go between 10/14-10/21 should be prepared for even more construction delay and detours than are currently being seen.

Yes this is when the announcements happen, but I can't recall a time when an announcement happened and no one had found any survey markers (sticks) or spray-painted indicators of something before the announcement was made. That doesn't mean an annoucement is impossible, but it just doesn't seem likely. As for the new charge for haunted maze access, sucks. Sucks hard. But, not really a surprise.

This is so much better than "Year of a Million Dreams" !!!

Ah, the eye roll threw my sarcasm detect-o-meter into chaos.

Yeah I didn't think my sarcasm was detectable enough. All fixed now.

So do I! In fact, I touched on this very subject not too long ago... SFMM Management is clearly not currently being smart with their money here. Personally, I'm all for parks not being smart with their money by running at high capacity! I want more! MORE!!! -- PMM

^ That's because they move/get rid of all the stuff that 'doesn't matter'. Y'know, the stuff that used to give the park its character, like the Haunted Shack. Magic Mountain usually announces their new stuff in the fall, so hopefully within the next 3 months or so we'll have a definitive answer to all this.

At the very least this would be in the local newspaper here today and there's nothing about it. FALSE.

So here's a few looks from a few hours at a relatively empty Six Flags...Somewhere. Enjoy! Good night Six Flags...Somewhere! Colossus light show! This is probably the billionth-and-1 time someone's taken this, but twilight shots look nice... Took one last brutally rough ride on X2 and headed out. From the X2 bridge, the other side of the park looks like it's about a mile away... It's about 6pm now, so maybe more parents with kids were here earlier, but there's no one around now. It's strange. This is not seen with other Thomas areas in other parks. I don't really know what to say... Not a whole heck of a lot... What's going on in Jay Thomas Town? Not sure if this is the sign Jahan mentioned or what, but it looks recently painted, and all the lights were on and working! Looked nice! Why am I always at Riddler's during sunset? Weird... Since everything needs a hip-looking graphic... Gold Rusher makes me happy. Spin Out is now a wood fence and an ad board. =( Sign looks great! Now we just need one of these in the front of the park, and in the pathway going past the stairs just past Tatsu's entrance. Increased awareness of this will bring increased attendance. People are interested in seeing this stuff, they just need to know it's there! Finally a sign!!! YAAAAAAAAAY! Lighter trains means increased reliability, but actually a rougher ride due to the unique design. Old & new trains together means only 2 trains are running. However this is an improvement since this time of year in year's past would only have 1 train op for X assuming it was open at all. Former unload turned stacking wait area looks like a cool Mars base looking thing. Now I can personally vouch for the fact that these trains are by no means AT ALL smoother. My spleen approves this message. This looks nice. Hopefully in a year or so it'll still be running... This coliseum looks a lot like a coaster loading house but ok... These signs hanging all over the place are a welcome addition IMO. Loading looked pretty bare before... Because Every Word Of A Sentence Must Be Capitalized. *sigh* Guys...a few seconds with a pressure washer... Here's a shot I'm sure you've NEVER seen before! CYA queue signage Jay really wants you to know that 'Red' is the thing here. Interesting use of money here... The working TVs in the queue were nice to look at. It'll be nice if all the queues of the future have these, and the queues of the present eventually receive them. This way to a much improved coaster! New/old look since that arch always reminds me of that scene from National Lampoon's Vacation. Amazing how that little area remains unchanged even though just about everything else in the park has since that movie was filmed. Time for my first trip on X2! I know, I know, but I said before that I was going to ride it when I ride it. Well, today's that day. I hadn't seen how stuff is marked off by these painted lines before. In some ride queue's there is a similar red line saying "no loose articles beyond this point". While I appreciate the effort, it's going to be for naught once people realize enforcement isn't quite there. Sometime's a picture's worth 15 pages of discussion... Stacking? On Tatsu??? Can't be! I MUST be seeing things! Can't really be happy about what I saw. 2 trains, 1 station, about 6 minutes of sitting in transfer per cycle. Blame it on the fact that the line's not very long if you want to, but I really don't see why guests deserve that kind of operation simply because the queue's not astronomically long. Time to check out how the Tatsu crew is doing this afternoon... Hey Robb! Six Flags Media Network: Bringing down the debt one ad at a time. I have to say this paint job looks awesome. Revvy seemed smoother to me as well somehow. Maybe I'm nuts, and my head does go above the restraints, but it was nice to have a somewhat smooth ride on that for once. Revolution go ZOOOOOOOMMM!!! Yeah I know, but hey, at least that stage is being used for something again. Arrows of fury!! Cyber Cafe looking very cyberish today... Yes, do make it a great day. If you don't, a kitten will die somewhere in the world. Do you really want to be responsible for that?? DO YOU?!! Random electronic sign on the wall. I guess it's good know exactly how warm it is, even though the temp was still showing at 93 more than 3 hours later... Recycle bins? At Magic Mountain?? What's next? Clean bathrooms? =P Want some Thomas Town advertising? Here it is. Trouble is this is about it... Because trash cans have families too... I took the first picture, did a little a dance, came up right in front of him to take this picture, and the dude never looked up! He probably never knew I did any of it, AND THIS IS THE TRAM CROSSING GUARD!!! The worst part about it was when I turned around behind me to find a little brother and sister walking in the tram route right next to the fence around what's a blind curve for the tram. They were ready to get hit, but that guard certainly won't be saving them when he's texting! 4 minutes into my visit, and the very first park employee I see is on a cell phone. *facepalm* It's a beautiful day in Valencia today!

I might be oversimplifying things here, but my sense is that we see improvements and we're all for them, but we do not like inconsistency where and when we see that. We want the park to be running well consistently. Spotty good performance is great, but it doesn't cover over when the poor performance rears its head. I'm going to head over to the Mountain tomorrow and see how things are going on a late August weekday.

Castles n' Coasters wins for its arcade as well as its two credits.

Having a 3rd train alone won't do anything to improve dispatch times. Why would you expect that? Trains don't dispatch themselves. That's what the ride op crew is there to do. The ride crew should understand that 3-train op is their busiest time, and they need to do their absolute best to do their job as quickly and accurately as possible since they no longer have any time luxuries at all. If they are incapable of doing an accurate and safe job in the busiest times as well as the easy times, or cannot be bothered to do so, then they should not be employed at that position. My .02 -- PMM

The conclusion: A lot of crap at Magic Mountain's rides doesn't work due to neglect, and a lot of the ride op's don't give a crap. The ones who do are usually the only ones at their ride who do, and thus stick out but not in the good way that should be how they stick out. Didn't we know all this years ago??

I move for renaming the show "Extreme Terror Amateur Stock Footage and Retarded Guests" when it reairs.

I'm shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, that Travel Channel made a show with embarassing people riding coasters on camera, POV full of stock footage from years ago, and Cedar Point boasting its mouth off with blatent disregard for accuracy. [/sarcasm]

I was thinking more of having a mandatory cell phone check at the employee security gate. Since it's ok to put guests through metal detectors, employees should have no qualms about being put through them themselves, and would be required to surrender the cell phone at that time. Once outside the security gate, the celly will be returned, and the employee can call for a ride or whatever there where its outside and away from the public eye. Might seem a little extreme, but when there's a rampant cell phone abuse while on the job - texting, charging at the ride (mooching off electricity Six Flags is paying for), etc, it's time to put something like this in place.

Dude, trust me, you've got about 8 years of flame war on that particular issue that has come before you. S:TE is a roller coaster, just like Wicked Twister is, just like any other shuttle coaster is.

Is there a reason SFMM employees need to be wearing cell phones while on the job?