Six Flags Magic Mountain, how do you retain this terrible aftertaste that leaves me yearning for more?

     So, I went to Six Flags Magic Mountain only just a few days ago, and my overall experience has left me with a feeling that I am not quite used to.  The operations were terrible, everything seemed to take an unnecessary amount of time and whenever someone did something for you it was more or less a chore that they had to do beyond what they were there to do: Auto-piloted maneuvers to look busy.  I had actually left the park around 5:30 that night, and had gotten so frustrated with how everything went that I swore I would start screaming and yelling at how meaningless their 'effort" (for lack of a better word) was in trying to ensure those attending the park were having fun.

This seems innocent enough, but is actually just the beginning of a let down

     The overall "Magic" the Mountain had, was nowhere in sight, and I was certain the enthusiast community must be doing a massive amount of drugs to be giving this place anything but terrible reviews.  It was a wonder how the place manages to be compared to Cedar Point in Sandusky, OH, and I have since been thinking that I must be missing out on something.  Something has to be there that gives this park some semblance of popularity that some groups online rant and rave about.  Let us see if I can figure this out by the end of what might be one of my more interesting blog notes (not like you all read this).

     So, I pulled up to what I had hoped would be one of the most magical days I have ever had!  Got to the Park and was subsequently met with a pretty decent line of cars (as seen in the photo above).  Made it up to the til and paid my 17 bucks to park and was given a stack of coupons.  I guess this year Six Flags is sponsoring Ortega (I wish I was kidding, but I have a stack of 20 manufacturer coupons (with more swimming around in my Sonic murse somewhere)) as before I was handed my receipt and let go to park, I was handed not just one or two, but rather a small handful from the overly dull employee collecting my money.  I get it, you have these and need to get rid of them.  Don't need to hand me the amount you did to get rid of them.  Only plus side is now I can stock up on the wondrous sauce they have and pay $1 less than before, so yay?  Thankfully after leaving, Bob and I were given a very decent place to park.  Yes, you read that right, we were told where to park.  This was a major first for me as even going to a few of Magic Mountains sister parks in the past, I was always granted a choice of parking wherever a spot may be open.  Going to my local fair back home I am told where to park, so long as I chose to park on the property and enter the Fairgrounds from there.  So this has already given me an odd taste of what to expect.  Any who, we pulled into our spot in a pretty close place to the park, A3, and gathered what we would need and proceeded to head on back to the front gate area.  Cause, you know, the main gate is only just a few feet behind from where you pay to park at.  This just strikes me a seriously odd.

This was taken near the car.  I have no clue why you park so far away from the entrance.

     Note that I really have no issue with how they have set up the park entrance, it just strikes me as a very odd decision for them to only have one there, and not build another elsewhere to help with one of their dead ends you walk into just to get on Scream!, Riddler's Revenge and Colossus.  Okay, where was I...oh yes!  So, we park, walk back to the entrance and bypass the ticket booths, head through the security and hop in line to the most awesome attraction the park has to offer: Season Pass Processing!  I have only had 1 season pass before my current one I got Sunday, but there was no line to get it done.  I don't have enough prior knowledge to how most parks handle this endeavor, nor have I really ever required one, but I get the feeling that waiting nearly 2 hours to get a plastic card is a bit ridiculous.  Adding onto this that they were literally giving us the option of entering the park then and dealing with the line and wait later kind of sent a red flag up in my mind.  Those of you that visit other popular parks, please comment on this.

This was taken as I was leaving, but the line was wrapped around the island earlier.  Glad I decided to wait.

     Got the Season Pass, grabbed my coupon book and headed on out to enter this park.  Almost Noon at this point so I am feeling a bit behind, so put off taking pictures with my camera and decided to just store it in a locker til I was done with the ride portion and then get the pictures later.  This is where I am met with my first happy experience with the park, the lockers.  They were easily found and in a nice area that wouldn't see to heavy of traffic, basically meaning I could get in and get out later on without trying to fight off a crowd of other customers.  $12 for a small locker was a nice price, and having gone to Six Flags Great Adventure back in 2011, I did not really want to pay for a locker at every ride.  Good investment overall and headed off towards my first coaster choice for the day, Goliath.  What the ride lacks in airtime, it makes up for it with some pretty intense forces for a coaster that effectively kills your gullet with its mid-course brake run.  The restraints were surprisingly fat person friendly, and I had no issue getting it down.  An interesting note for the ride, they actually stop the lift as the first three cars start the crest the hill.  I have no clue if this is new or if this has always been done, but it added to the otherwise lacking attraction, a sense of foreboding.  If I had not been paying attention to the ride as I was waiting, I honestly would have thought we were going to stall and end up staying up there due to a power outage of some form.  Cresting the hill gave a nice pop of floater airtime, and that was roughly it.  You keep at a fast enough pace to not stall, but any place that should have had airtime, lacked it.  Thankfully the helix after the mid-course made up for the lack of airtime I was expecting on the ride.  Seriously, I had more airtime on Avalanche at Kings Dominion than I did on this ride.

     Pulling back into the station left me with a sense of utter blandness.  I was not too excited for the ride as a whole, but it got the blood started for what was still a pretty decent day.  Now, as I had made mention of above, they have lockers for items in the front of the park and for most of their attractions as well.  What I wasn't aware of, was that they have a section marked off as well as cubbies on some of their rides, that you can place any items you are not allowed to take on the ride.  This strikes me as odd since the other Six Flags Parks no longer allow that, in any manner.  They must go in a locker or chill with a non-rider within your group.  Why Magic Mountain still allows this confuses me, and just helped hammer in a sense of dread for the rest of my day.  Leaving the attraction we needed a quick restroom stop, which slightly annoyed me at the lack of signs in the park to somewhat usher you in the proper direction, but I dealt with it as I never used the map I had grabbed at the beginning of the park.  Quick use and wash later, we were off towards the DC area to lay claim to the rides there and have a wonderful time.  First up on the list was the year old Zac-Spin, Green Lantern: First Flight.

     The wait before getting onto the ride was the shortest I had in the park, at around 25 minutes tops.  The station was fairly well done, and was interesting to look at while waiting.  Bob and I went towards the left side and waited til it was our turn to board.  The ride op there was a pretty cool person to talk to, and when I told him about my concerns towards me not fitting he assured me that I would get to ride.  What ensued was quite possibly the most entertaining portion of my entire trip to this Mountain of "Magic".  I hopped up into the seat, pulled the restraint down and had an issue getting it buckled.  Joseph, the ride-op who I had talked to, came over and started to push on my restraint trying to get the blasted buckle in.  I was SO close to getting it in and was beginning to fear that I was going to have to walk away from the ride.  Instead of calling it quits, he kept working at it, with another ride-op coming over to help and eventually a quick message over the intercom system that they were having a technical difficulty and sorry for the delay.  By the time my restraint was locked in, I had 2 female ride-ops pulling down near the buckle portion, and after a quick 3 minutes struggle, it locked into place, huzzah!  I looked at Bob and even told him before we were out of the station that our side was going to be facing straight down due to how terribly over-weighted our side was (500 compared to the maybe 240 on the opposite side), and the resulting ride has embedded itself as one of the Greatest Moments of my Life.  While we didn't flip over quite often (I believe we only flipped twice), we were upside down a good portion of the ride and had the couple opposite us screaming in terror at the forces they were being subjected to.  Hitting the mid-course, we got a breather and I was able to stop laughing to brace myself for the eventual flip into the brake run.  We ended up facing straight down, again, and the rides self centering system was nothing short of a joke at that point.  We had to wait roughly 5 minutes before a mechanic was there to push our gondola into the proper position for us to exit.  Normally, I would be embarrassed, but the overall joy and utter ridiculousness I had while riding it, made this ending the icing to the cake.  The ride has safely made a spot in my Top 10 at the tenth position.  Exiting the ride, we headed over to what I had considered the most important piece of the trip, Lex Luthor: Drop of Doom.

Admit it, you want this suit

     I will keep this short, as the ride itself is something you need to experience.  We entered the building that houses part of the line area and was met with air conditioning.  Waiting roughly 40 minutes was pretty annoying, but it was air conditioned, so who really cared at this point?  The clouds had broken and the sun was out in full force, so any shade and cool air was a welcomed part to this paler-than-Edward-Cullen red-head.  Finally ended up out of the building and the wait after that was pretty quick.  Going up to the loading area, I noticed that only one side of Superman was running, so I was pretty much prepared to end all hope of getting onto the ride.  I will say this about the ride overall, it left me shaking and my adrenaline pumping.  Going up, we had to deal with Superman launching (we were thankfully on the side that was running), so whatever fun decent I was used to, turned into one of shaking and wonder.  The wait was beyond shorter than what I was used to (Pit Fall was exactly a 12 second wait before you were dropped), and the drop was one of utter amazement.

     Wonders will never cease to amaze me at this point.  The ride was beyond expectations and left me with a very good feeling that unfortunately didn't last long.  We decided to head towards Riddler's Revenge and Scream! to enjoy some good, old fashioned B&M goodness.  Now, this is where my entire issue with the park begins.  We headed to Scream! first, and are basically met with a 2 hour wait, I did not put much thought into it as we were there at a surprisingly busy day, but I decided to wait and watch how the ride was running, and basically saw a singular train operation for both Scream! and Riddler's Revenge as well when I decided to look at it before moving elsewhere.  Now, this started to irk me and made my mood into one of a foul setting.  Bob and I both decided to skip them and headed towards Colossus.  Unfortunately, it was only doing 1 train operation on 1 side of the track, which made me really start to lose my cool.

     Annoyed, I turned around and decided to head towards Superman, as I wanted to see if it would be worth doing.  Heading up there is a hike, something I was warned about from my friend Jeff, but in all honesty didn't expect.  This was like hiking up to Castle Neueschwanstein over in Germany, not just a heavily inclined walk as I had assumed, so my bad on that end.  Finally made it up to the Plaza area without stopping (yay me!) and promptly turned around and went elsewhere with what greeted me.  The line was snaking halfway beyond the Plaza, so I scratched that from my list of rides I needed to hit and headed towards the next closest coaster, Ninja.  While the ride was sub-par, a few things stood out to me.  Firstly, it was running 2 trains, which made it one of the 5 rides there that were running more than 1 train.  Second, it was lacking something of frustration with me when I rode Flight Deck at Kings Island, the seat belt.  That alone astounded me, considering the park has over the shoulder restraints on Revolution, a ride whose entire family only has a single lap bar on the trains.  So, this was a complete shock to me, but it made the ride just that much more enjoyable for me, as well as lightening my mood up slightly.  The jerking motion the ride had on straight sections was expected, but did not really effect the overall sense of happiness I had when it was done.  While waiting, I did notice that one train looked like it had been given some much needed TLC and that the train I got on was actually starting that sequence.  You can see the difference between the two restraints in the picture.

     By this point, while I had cooled down some, I was still rightly ticked off, and for very good reasons.  I had decided to enjoy some wooden deliciousness, so we traversed down to the other dead end of the park to reach Apocalypse: The Ride.  It was slated for a 90 minute wait, which added MORE fuel to my ire, so while waiting in line and only seeing 1 train operations, again, we promptly left and trekked towards Tatsu.  Now, by this point in my day, I was still willing to ride the last few rides, go take pictures after collecting my things and call it a day, but seeing the length of the line for Tatsu and how they were only doing 1 train operation AGAIN on one of their most popular attractions just made me call it quits with the park.  I was so angry at how they were running their park that I no longer wanted to even be there!  As some of you know, the maker of Tatsu, Riddler's Revenge, Scream! and Batman: The Ride had designed those rides to be able to run with maximum efficiency at all times, allowing the line for them to be relatively small compared to the amount of people in the park that day.  Forcing those rides to do 1 train operations and have a wait time of over 2 hours is just ridiculous.  You are literally ruining the day most people are trying to have inside your park, and forcing them to pay more than what they may want to JUST so they can enjoy their day there.  It is a bass ackwards system that you have to buy now if you want to even deal with place!

     I know that the operations could have been running far better than what they were doing, and while it had ruined my day, it got me upset that it was also ruining Bobs.  I just wanted to get the last two coasters there and leave.  No picture taking or walking around the park and enjoying the atmosphere, just ride and get the hell out of this park.  With this thought in mind, we followed the path to Viper, which I have mixed feelings for overall.  The line was VERY short, and the way they have it setup itself is something that really struck me as odd, but in a good way.  When you enter the queue, you are given the choice of going into three separate lines: the first 3 cars, the middle 3 cars or the last cars.  The line wasn't too long, but it helped keep the clutter more organized once we had reached the station and were waiting to board.  Like Ninja, they have no seat belts added to the restraints and apparently never have (thanks to some digging on Youtube for early video footage).  The over the shoulder restraints looked like they were just recently done compared to older pictures as well, so props to Six Flags.  The ride is basically what you would expect from an Arrow Looper: Intense, fun and painful.  So, I kind of enjoyed it, but if I were to ever get back to the park, I would skip it in a heartbeat.  Leaving this ride, we headed over to our last destination: X2

Look at this beast.  SO much awesome is contained here.

     This ride is by far the best attraction you can find inside Six Flags Magic Mountain, and while none of the 5th dimension items were running, the ride experience as a whole just wowed me.  This ride made me more than just anxious, it made me nervous.  We eagerly joined the queue and were given a ticket before we reached the main bull pen.  Now, this confused me since I had never dealt with this before, and quite frankly, it seemed really pointless overall.  It had to be used for something, but coming from this park of utter oddness and nonsense, I just figured it was something else they did at random, so I left it at that.  The wait, while easily the longest wait I had in the park, was beyond worth it in the end.  The restraints are a bit odd, but surprisingly comfortable and made me feel less secure than the other rides I had ridden that day.  The drop on this thing is something you just need to experience, and feels like it goes on for far longer than what it really does.  It had me so frightened that going down it I swear I hit a high F an octave above high C.  The ride is unfortunately over before you really get an idea of what is happening to you, but it left me wanting more.  I was willing to forgo leaving just to ride this beast again, but we had decided to do the prior option and just left the park; however, I did get an on-ride photo so you all can see just how terrified I really was on the ride!

 That handsome man on the left is me :3

Note that I am not crying, just screaming in absolute terror at this point of the ride.

     So this was my trip to Six Flags Magic Mountain.  A place of wonder and mixed feelings that even now, a few days later, I am still trying to sort out.  The bad operations of the park itself and overall lack of joy I found within were very unsettling, and quite frankly the only redeeming feature this place has is on the coaster front.  I really don't see how a majority of the enthusiast community can claim that this is a proper competition to Cedar Point, the other power house amusement park in America.  Everything just felt forced when I was there, and the few ride ops that I had encountered that were awesome, were vastly outnumbered by the drones that were working that day.  In my opinion, the park needs a lot of help in the employment division, as the kids working barely did the required work and made it seem like a massive chore whenever it involved the patron.  As the title of this topic goes, how did it retain this awful aftertaste that has left me yearning for more.

The park is beautiful to look at from afar at least