SFMM Photo Trip Report

[Mike Austin]

If you didn't know already, at the moment I'm at the University of California, Riverside, as part of Disney World's International College Programme (I go over to Florida on the 19th). As I'm over here, and probably not coming back here for quite a while, I managed to get in contact with a couple of TPR people who could give me a lift to Six Flags Magic Mountain and back (I knew it would pay off some time if I kept asking in my travel topic if anyone wanted to take me! ). Obviously I took this offer up, and despite one of them having a helicopter pilot exam in the morning, we eventually got to SFMM at about 3pm, giving us still an alright 7 hours in the park...

 

I was rather scared that we were going to pull in and have a day at the :dontswear: that is Scandia instead, but thankfully we continued driving!

 

X2 is the first thing you see as you drive into the park.

 

The view from the car park. How many coasters [creds] can you count here?!

 

We weren't the only people arriving to the park late, as we entered with a decent stream of other cars and the road train thing was still full up to get to the entrance.

 

The classic park entrance.

 

Annoyingly, one of the park's best coasters and one of the main reasons I wanted to go back to the park was closed today.

 

I was going to buy myself a Q-Bot once we got into the park, but most of the rides it had on I wasn't really bothered about doing.

 

First coaster, and first credit of the day was the new for 2011 Green Lantern.

 

The queue was about 80 minutes long and the ride was pretty brutal, really throwing you against the restraints on the drops. Oddly, as you joined the queue a ride attendant gives you a little raffle ticket thing with the word "boarding pass" written on it. Apparently, this is designed to stop queue jumping, but it really didn't work as people were just getting a ticket, leaving the queue and pushing in later, and then the ride ops didn't seem to take note of these tickets anyway! All rather pointless really.

 

The Green Lantern's full sign.

 

After Green Lantern, we made our way over to Colossus. Luckily, the opposite side was running to the last time I came here, so new credit #2 for me. The ride's ok and rather smooth, but is really lacking in airtime.

 

Credit number 3 and new for 2011 number 2, Road Runner Express. +1

 

Look how good Tatsu looks.

 

The revamped Superman is excellent. Both sides are now running, which meant I could pick up my final credit of the day. The launch isn't too forceful, but you really feel it when it does get up to speed. It could do with doing more, but I still liked it.

 

We were going to ride X2 next, but found it was down. We also noticed that Goliath was stuck on the MCBR, so instead we made our way over to Apocalypse, only to find that it was running 1 train and the queue was over an hour long! I noticed someone eating a huuge turkey-leg so decided to get some for myself...

 

Om nom nom.

I decided to eat it whilst walking back over to X2 and must have heard at least 10 comments by people wondering where I got it from and how big it was. SFMM would make a ton of sales if they actually advertised that they have this!

 

Hector and Corey. I'm not too sure what their TPR screen-names are, but they've been to the West Coast Bash every year so you might recognise them.

 

It gets dark so quickly in California, and after about a 90 minute wait we got off X2 at about 9:45pm. The audio wasn't working, which detracts A LOT from the ride, and the ride was extremely bouncy in the final part. It really didn't feel as good as it was riding in 2009, but the first half of the ride is still very good.

 

After a quick dash, we managed to get over to goliath for the last train of the day. Again, this didn't feel as good as 2009 as it felt less forceful and it didn't feel as fast.

 

And that was the end of the day. Overall it was a decent day but was really let down by X2's broken audio, Tatsu being down and Apocalypse only running one train. I would have liked to have a full day there to get on some of the other rides, but apart from Apocalypse and Tatsu I got on everything I wanted to. The day could have been better, but it could also have been a whole lot worse.

 

So that's that. An extremely rare trip report from me, and hope you enjoyed it!

Edited July 11, 2011 by Mike Austin

[cal1br3tto]

I still need a Colossus credit and a Superman credit, plus the new coasters, so hopefully I'll be as lucky as you the next time I go. Glad you were able to get to the park!

[805Andrew]

The first year I rode X2 (was X then) in 2004 they were also giving out those numbered tickets when you entered the line and then they would collect them as you enter the loading station. I don't how useful they were but I think they were more of a way of preventing people from wanting to queue jump. I also tried one of those Turkey legs back in 2004, and to be honest I found it to be a bit of a disappointment. While it wasn't bad, it wasn't nearly as flavorful as it looked or smelled, it was just very filling. I've had way better turkey legs.

 

How many total rides did you get on your time there? I was there last August on a Tuesday and it was pretty crowded. My group and I were there from 11AM to past closing time (9PM) and we got on 11 rides all day (10 coasters, one water ride). The line to buy the tickets and to get through the metal detectors were the worst. We brought the Coke cans in for the Buy One Get One Free ($30 a person). We waited 30 minutes just to buy the tickets and they were yellow jackets swarming around from a spilled coke can on the ground by the ticket booth (we made sure to rinse our cans before we brought them). If I'd had know the ticket line would have been that long I would have payed $5 more and bought my ticket online (now I know, ALWAYS buy the tickets ONLINE). After the ticket line, it was other 15 minutes to get through the security check. The guards confiscated my bag of chips but said my cookies, candy, and soda and water was OK (no salty snacks I guess). What pissed me off more then them taking away my unopened bag of chips was the fact that they just throw them in the trash. I know Raging Waters in San Dimas has a bin where unopened snacks and food go to the LA County Food Bank and SFMM could easily have this too. At least then I would know that unopened food wasn't going to waste. The third line to get in the MM gate was surprisingly quick as they just scan your ticket (which is now a piece of receipt paper). Anyways we went on Viper (30 min wait), Tatsu (60 min), Revolution (walk on), Roaring Rapids (60 min), Deja Vu (45 min), Riddler's Revenge (45 min), Batman the Ride (25 min), Scream (10 min), Colossus (10 min), Goliath (50 min), and X2 (45 min). It was 8:50 PM when we got off of Goliath and three out of the five of us (including me) made the dash to X2 and when got in the line one minute before park closing. We were with a friend from LA who's never been to SFMM before (his parents are Disney fans) so we wanted to make sure he got on X2. It was my first time riding it since it was X and it was a great way to end the night as the on-board sound and flames were working . We were really hungry afterwards and went to In-N-Out . Superman and Apocalypse (it was called Terminator Salvation back then) were the only rides not operating that day so another visit to the Mountain for me is in order sometime this year. I've got Green Lantern and Apocalypse to look forward to plus riding Superman backwards. I've never done the kiddie coaster credits at SFMM, so I may get to them if time (and my group) allots or at least the Roadrunner roller skater one.