Meanwhile at USH this weekend...

[brb1006]

Are there actually people who buy that and proudly strut around proclaiming to the world that they really are a s--- head?

I remember back when Six Flags used to market more to the Looney Tunes in the 80's,90's and early 2000's before Mr.Six existed and were most of there commercials were more family friendly. I remember one commercial mentioning the word "Cartoon Fun". If I remember the date of my first visit to Great Adventure, I'm going to think I seen it alot between 2000-2002 since they were advertising the first Live-Action Scooby Doo movie at the time.

 

[brb1006]

Fix #1: Remove all tacky advertisements for credit cards, candy bars, hair products and R-rated movies. Nahhhhh... never happen...

I remember before "Kingda Ka" existed and before Mr Six become the mascot for a few years. Six Flags used to focus more on the Looney Tunes franchise. I remember one Summer (Possibly in Summer 2001 or 2002) they used to have a daily parade at Six Flags Great Adventure. I vividly remember it, but it gave more attention to the characters from Looney Tunes, that also featured Pinky and the Brain and Yakko,Wakko, and Dot from Animaniacs. I remember the final float (I think it was a bus if I remember correctly) featured Bugs Bunny and Lola Bunny. I still remember following the float and I saw Lola Bunny blow confetti into the crowd.

 

[brb1006]

It looks like a fun ride, but wow... a lot of that stuff seems to be directly ripped right from Spidey at IOA! If you look at Spidey scene-by-scene and compare it to this, it's realllllllllly similar. Even the ending with the villain hanging upside down is the same. Weird!

And no soundtrack or music.

 

[Stevek]

I thought it was a sorting hat.

It's a sharting hat.

 

[Phroobar]

It reminds me of Knott's Voyage to the Iron Reef. The AA Joker is pretty impressive. I guess the tech for Spidey has finally filtered down to the Six Flags level of park. I would love to see more stuff like this at Six Flags. Magic Mountain needs a haunted house again.

 

[Phroobar]

It's a sharting hat.

No. It's a
Shat'ner Hat!

 

[Stevek]

Meanwhile, back at Disneyland...woman on Twitter complaining that there were not enough photo pass photographers for each character during today's Disneyland 10k race. Umm, if you are worried about trying to take pics with characters the whole time, can you really call it a race? But at least she has another medal to add to her collection.

 

[dweezil78]

Well... looks like I will be returning to Six Flags in the near future! All this talk kind of made me want to check it out again and I just saw they are having a crazy sale on APs right now thru 9/5. $79 for rest of 2016 and 2017 including parking and Hurricane Harbor admission. Ridiculous... Kind of hard to pass it up even if I only go a few times! Guess it was meant to be, eh?

https://www.sixflags.com/magicmountain/store/season-passes

 

[TP2000]

Well... looks like I will be returning to Six Flags in the near future! All this talk kind of made me want to check it out again and I just saw they are having a crazy sale on APs right now thru 9/5. $79 for rest of 2016 and 2017 including parking and Hurricane Harbor admission. Ridiculous... Kind of hard to pass it up even if I only go a few times! Guess it was meant to be, eh?

https://www.sixflags.com/magicmountain/store/season-passes

I wish you luck. Please represent me there in my absence, and report back to us how it goes.

 

[Darkbeer1]

Heck, I remember when Magic Mountain opened for the first time (SeaWorld was part owner), and going in 1971.

I do miss the Spillikin Corner, the back area where Apocalypse is now, it was designed as the more Adult area, served Beer (only in that area) and had a lot of tradespersons making crafts for sale (and some are still there, like the Candy Kitchen), and a nice train ride. In 1971, they did have a deal to use the Looney Tunes characters, but as only good for one year, after which, MM decided to make their own character, the Trolls.... I also miss them.

Yikes, did you know that one of the first performers at the park was Barbra Streisand (now the venue is called the Golden Bear Theater). Also most of the opening attractions were made by Arrow, which was a main outside company working with Disneyland.

I also remember the big lake about where Hurricane Harbor is now, nice seating and some interesting shows, and fireworks were held there.

And now a piece of history is leaving, the original Dolphin Show theater, that got converted to the Stunt Show area for the new Dark Ride coming next year.... (Also interesting to note, Knott's Berry Farm also had a Dolphin Theater about where Pacific Scrambler is located today).

 

[Darkbeer1]

Well... looks like I will be returning to Six Flags in the near future! All this talk kind of made me want to check it out again and I just saw they are having a crazy sale on APs right now thru 9/5. $79 for rest of 2016 and 2017 including parking and Hurricane Harbor admission. Ridiculous... Kind of hard to pass it up even if I only go a few times! Guess it was meant to be, eh?

https://www.sixflags.com/magicmountain/store/season-passes

Heck, I got it down to $71.50, since I already had a SFMM pass, and spent the $80 on the dining package, which includes some fairly good food options, not just burgers and chicken strips. And the dining package also comes with the unlimited soda cup (value about $20), and the merchandise discount pass (20%), also worth about $15. And they are all good, including the parking and dining at any SF park, and since I do travel, if in the Bay Area, it all works at Discovery Kingdom. Also used my Discover Card for an extra 5% rebate.

So my monthly payment for my current pass (which I had to cancel) is equal to what I paid (did it in one bulk purchase to get the Dining Plan so low (It is about $140 if using monthly payments),so I got all the extra perks for the same price. And I would have bought a new Soda cup no matter what.

So my freshly made Fish and Chips (hand battered in front of you) and Chicken Wings are FREEEEEE!

 

[Californian Elitist]

Well... looks like I will be returning to Six Flags in the near future! All this talk kind of made me want to check it out again and I just saw they are having a crazy sale on APs right now thru 9/5. $79 for rest of 2016 and 2017 including parking and Hurricane Harbor admission. Ridiculous... Kind of hard to pass it up even if I only go a few times! Guess it was meant to be, eh?

https://www.sixflags.com/magicmountain/store/season-passes

Sweet!

 

[NobodyElse]

Well... looks like I will be returning to Six Flags in the near future! All this talk kind of made me want to check it out again and I just saw they are having a crazy sale on APs right now thru 9/5. $79 for rest of 2016 and 2017 including parking and Hurricane Harbor admission. Ridiculous... Kind of hard to pass it up even if I only go a few times! Guess it was meant to be, eh?

https://www.sixflags.com/magicmountain/store/season-passes

It's been years since I've visited, and I do need to try to get back at some point. One of my problems is that I know I'll be disappointed by their operations. I assume it's an obvious way to save on maintenance costs, but it drives me nuts that they will run one or two trains on some of their coasters that can likely handle more. (And combine that with those double-play days where you get two laps and you've got wait times that are almost double the normal times.) That last sentence may indicate how long it's been - I don't know when they stopped that periodic promotion.

A rhetorical question (that will likely be answered by one of our experts) but how many trains can and does Disney run on Space Mountain or the Matterhorn? Even California Screamin' (the closest thing to a Six Flags coaster) routinely runs five(?) trains. When was the last time you were on Space Mountain and there wasn't a train waiting directly behind the train currently in load/unload?

 

[Darkbeer1]

Depends on the coaster and what style they are, you have some that run 2 or 3 trains at one time on average, this works so one is at load/unload most of the time. They are pretty efficient nowadays.

New management has made a lot of improvements, including basic park maintenance.

And if waits bug you, you can look at the Flash Pass options (multiple levels with different pricing) to avoid waiting in the queue itself, to almost immediate boarding, depending on your wallet. And they are usually available when you enter the park, so you can make your decision based on the crowd size of that specific day.

 

[NobodyElse]

Depends on the coaster and what style they are, you have some that run 2 or 3 trains at one time on average, this works so one is at load/unload most of the time. They are pretty efficient nowadays.

New management has made a lot of improvements, including basic park maintenance.

And if waits bug you, you can look at the Flash Pass options (multiple levels with different pricing) to avoid waiting in the queue itself, to almost immediate boarding, depending on your wallet. And they are usually available when you enter the park, so you can make your decision based on the crowd size of that specific day.

Waits don't bug me as much as seemingly unnecessarily long waits. In my perfect Six Flags fantasy would, the queues would be scenic, ant there'd be as many trains running as there are break zones. (And rival gang members would skip hand in hand from ride to ride.)

 

[Phroobar]

Something that bugs me at MM is they still use paper posted wait times and they never update them. You have no idea without looking at the app how long the line is. I've seen things posted for two hours that are really half hour. I've seen 15 minutes posted that is really hour and half.

 

[dweezil78]

I wish you luck. Please represent me there in my absence, and report back to us how it goes.

Alright... so mini-trip report / random park thoughts from today as I drove up for a few hours to get my pass and do a lap to see how the park has changed in the 10 years or so since I've been.

The Good(ish?)

• Last time I was there they had a run down tram which has now been upgraded to an extra-long double bus thing. That was cool. There appeared to be three running and the wait was still long when I got there a little after 1pm, so I walked. It was a long walk.
  
• Twisted Colossus looks rad. Did not get a chance to ride, but I definitely will as soon as I can. It looks like a hurricane came through, smashed the old coaster around, and they built this crazy steel contraption on it.
  
• On that same note, when you go to SFMM you have to accept that you are going to a COASTER park. Not a theme park. Not even really an amusement park (though they do have other amusementy rides). But no, you go here because you have a love for crazy insane roller coasters and the ones they have are among the best. The twisted, intertwining coaster track really is a thing of beauty onto itself.
  
• Landscaping. The grounds themselves, literally, really do look quite nice and there is a LOT of ground to cover. So kudos to whoever is in charge of maintaining the landscaping there because it looks pretty solid especially given how hot it is up in Santa Clarita.
  
• The kids area. While not Fantasyland, I thought the Looney Tunes area had a lot of fun little kid rides with low wait times and there were also some fun carnivally type attractions scattered around the rest of the park that were fun too for those thrill-seekers in training.
  
• The food. I didn't really eat much other than an ice cream and a candied apple, but the food offering seemed ok for what it was. Nothing mind blowing, but fun amusement park stuff. Was nice to see a lot of food being cooked outdoors on real BBQs in some places, I dig that.

The Bad

• Advertisements EVERYWHERE. Was this always the way it was? I honestly do not remember! It's ridiculous. From the moment you are at the security booth, you are just blasted with all sorts of ads for all sorts of products. It was like being on a bad spammy website and just cheapens the experience so much.
  
• The buildings. Is Six Flags intentionally letting all their buildings completely rot? Because seriously, it looks like Six Flags is intentionally letting all their buildings rot. From the ticket booths to the shops to the queues, there is visible roof damage almost everywhere on every structure, signs not just faded but falling apart, paint peeling where there is paint left. It really makes you question the care that goes into maintaining the coasters themselves.
  
• Interiors. The interior of just about every one of the aforementioned buildings made me want to go take a shower. Dirty, grimy, out of date looking, and just blechh. I get they're not going for theming here, but c'mon, at least make an attempt to make some of these shops look like they've been touched since 1985 both in maintenance and design.
  
• Staffing/Operations. Ack. Please hire some more people (the park is very understaffed overall) and have someone better train them. No one is guiding guests anywhere in line, everything just seems terribly inefficient, everyone looks miserable, trains took forever to load/unload, it was just bad bad bad.
  
• The Crowd. If management doesn't respect their park, you can't expect guests to either. I guess...
  
• The Restrooms. Yeah, these are not Disneyland restrooms. Do whatever you can to not have to spend much time there
• Lines. Honestly, I will wait until my next visit to more fairly judge this because it is Labor Day weekend and I fully expected it to be busy. But pretty much any coaster worth riding had at least an hour wait by 1pm today.

Basic takeaway is that SFMM is a giant dump with some really impressive coasters. I'd been to SFMM many times in the early 2000s and was previously an AP holder, so I definitely was not going in expecting Disneyland or Universal quality here. I thought my expectations were properly in check. That said, I felt the park had really gone downhill since I last set foot there (or maybe my memory was just tainted) both in park maintenance/operations and the amount of tacky advertising you are hit with. There are some great looking new rides I'm excited to try out and I'm ok with my decision to buy an $80 top tier pass, but seriously, it is a bummer to see a company have such little respect and pride in what is probably their most popular park.

Furthermore, I legitimately question how they plan to maintain a more advanced dark ride with far more moving parts if they are unable to even have adequate upkeep of an ice cream shop. I would expect this thing to open to much fanfare and quickly deteriorate over the next few years to the point where it hardly even resembles itself. I honestly cannot see anyway this place can give this type of attraction the love it needs to make it last longer than a few years at most.

I would happily pay a little more for the AP if they would put those $$$ into renovating the buildings/structures on property and making things look good/safe again. It's a park with so much potential (if you like coasters, which I do), and is a bummer to see it so neglected.

 

[Phroobar]

If you think it is bad now you should have saw it 5-10 years ago. They have actually improved the park a lot in the last few years. There use to be trash everywhere. Now it is a lot cleaner. I think park management is working on fixing buildings. They are working their way across the park. The section with Twisted Colossus and Scream look brand new. The DC Universe area also looks great. As you move across the back half of the park things look worst and worst. The top of the mountain where Ninja and Superman are are probably the worst offenders. They really need to refurbish those buildings and put a restaurant back up there. The Roaring Rapids camp and Baja Ridge are acceptable. The Riddler's Revenge area should look great next year.

Remember this is not Disneyland were they constantly refurbishing stuff. They have 18 parks to keep up to date and very little money to maintain them.

 

[TP2000]

Labor Day, the traditional end of the American summer. And most AP's are unblocked at both Universal and Disneyland Resort, with weather a bit cooler than normal for September and temps only around 75. One more time, here are the wait times at both parks around two in the afternoon, via the official apps.

Universal Studios - 9am to 9pm
Tram Tour - 30 Minutes (last tram at 7:45)
Simpsons Ride - 40 Minutes
Despicable Me - 20 Minutes
Harry Potter - 30 Minutes
Hippogriff Coaster - 25 Minutes
Jurassic Park - 30 Minutes
Transformers - Temporarily Closed

Disneyland Resort - Disneyland 8am to Midnight, DCA 8am to 10pm
Radiator Springs Racers - 120 Minutes
Soarin' Around The World - 120 Minutes
Splash Mountain - 105 Minutes
Hyperspace Mountain - 90 Minutes
Tower of Terror - 75 Minutes
Grizzly River Run - 65 Minutes
California Screamin' - 65 Minutes
Midway Mania - 60 Minutes
Matterhorn Bobsleds - 45 Minutes
Alice In Wonderland - 45 Minutes
Big Thunder Mountain - 45 Minutes
Star Tours - 45 Minutes
Luigi's Rollickin' Roadsters - 40 Minutes
Mater's Junkyard Jamboree - 30 Minutes
Little Mermaid - 25 Minutes

So... Universal Studios seems a bit busier than it had been this summer, and Disneyland Resort seems absolutely packed. When Mater's and Little Mermaid have wait times around 30 minutes, with many E Tickets 90 to 120 minutes, you know the place is busy! Likely all the AP's trying to rush to see the Diamond Celebration close in style.

But my goodness, I'm glad I went last Thursday and saw the 60th shows one last time then.

 

[TP2000]

Now at 3pm things are getting even busier at Disneyland. Wait times have increased further, and now stuff like Flik's Flyers and Casey Jr. Circus Train have at least 30 minute waits. Mermaid went up to 35 minutes. Pirates is 45 minutes. Mickey's Fun Wheel of Death is an hour.

Universal Studios is seeing wait times moderate slightly lower. Simpsons is down to 30 minutes. Hippogriff and the Tram Tour and Jurassic Park are all down to 20 minutes.