Southern California Parks

[Louisatsweetlou]

Hey all! I recently came back from the West Coast and decided to do some trip reports on the parks that I was there for.  During my trip I went to (in order) Six Flags Magic Mountain, Universal Studios Hollywood, Knotts Berry Farm, Disney's California Adventure and Disneyland. We did more than just the parks on our vacation, however, for the sake of this forum, I will just be going through the parks.

 

Starting with Magic Mountain, we spent two days here. 

 

When you are on the highway to Magic Mountain, depending on the direction you are coming from, you see one of two sights. Either a massive sign that says Six Flags Magic Mountain Gift Shop (which we couldn't actually find their gift shop) or you will see the park on your right with their impressive line up of coasters. Unlike our park, you can see SFMM right from the highway as, in Southern California, there is a lack of trees or any alive plants whatsoever. It is something that we, on the east coast, take for granted. When you pull up to the park, the first ride that is in view is X2. For those of you who have never seen this, definitely look it up as it is a tremendous beast of a coaster. We arrived at the park about an hour before opening and the gates were already open for parking. The parking lot is a little walk from the actual park, but there are shuttles to bring you if you need the assistance. We went through security with a very minimal line. By now, the park wasn't opening for another half hour, but the membership only line was already allowing guests into the park so that they can have first pick at rides. I have a season pass, not a membership, but we decided to try the line anyway. We were allowed to use the membership line and got into the park 25 minutes early. Before the park opens there is a holding pen to keep the members and passholders in before they let them get inside the park. They opened up this holding pen five minutes before the general public and we were allowed to go get on some rides before the lines got long (Take notes SFGA). Most of the people ran left (probably to X2) but we walked right, which led us to our first coaster of the day, Full Throttle. Full Throttle is one of the lower capacity coasters in the park, but is certainly one of my favorites. There was no line as the park had just opened and we loved the ride. The first launch is pretty forceful, the tunnel is really cool, the backwards launch is incredible, and the drop is, well... okay. It's not as bad as most people say it is, but it was probably the weakest element of the whole ride which is pretty comical. We then went over to ride twisted colossus but it was closed (which was strange because every other ride was open) We decided to ride Scream which was right next to Twisted Colossus. Scream is a mirror image of Bizarro- the only difference is that is has become a joke for many coaster enthusiasts as it was built literally over a parking lot; they didn't even cover the parking spot lines. We enjoy Bizarro at our park so we assumed this would be very similar- we could not be more wrong. This ride was the definition of head banging. It was the worst roller coaster we rode the entire trip with not one of us enjoying it. We all came off with headaches. Following Scream-->head bang, we bypassed Twisted Colossus once more for it was still closed and tracked back toward Goliath which we had previously passed. On the way we rode Lex Luthor: Drop of Doom which is very similar to our Zumanjaro. The difference between this ride and Zumanjaro is that there is no mile long queue to walk back to. I love Zumanjaro but not having to walk back to the ride, Lex Luthor definitely takes the cake. That is probably the laziest thing ever but my entire party agreed we would ride Zumanjaro more often if we did not have to walk to it. We then rode Goliath. We had pretty low expectations for this hyper coaster but it shocked us for being much more fun that most people say it is. The only bad part of this ride is the helix- WAY too forceful. It made us all grayout and it just was not fun in the slightest. If they took out the helix we would have ridden this coaster more, but we decided not to. By this time Twisted Colossus was open and we went there to get on the ride that I thought would become my number one. We got on the 3rd row, which was the key. We all got off saying the ride was mediocre. We had ridden Twisted Cyclone last year and that ride has soared to the top of my list right up there with El Toro. This ride did not even come close to my top 10 after my first ride on it. Before I get attacked, we rode it again on the second day in the second to last row and enjoyed it much more. More on that when we get there. We then went to Crazanity, their Giant Frisbee (I think that's what it is called) and it was my favorite non roller coaster I have ever ridden. This ride was in my top five rides at the park, and with all of Magic Mountain's coasters, that is certainly a big feat. I really hope that we get this ride sooner or later. We went up to Ninja, which was a very fun family coaster. It is unfortunate there aren't many of these left as everyone really enjoyed it. The only downfall of this ride was that they were running one train for scheduled maintenance, which for the middle of the Summer, was totally unacceptable in my opinion. This was running one train along with Batman (which I did not ride because of the hour wait). We rode Gold Rusher as well while we were here as there was a minimal wait. This was a lot of fun for a mine train style coaster. After, we headed back up to Superman which we had skipped earlier. We waited around ten minutes for the back row. It was a fun ride but nothing I would wait more then 20 minutes for. I prefer Kingda Ka to this coaster. We then rode their Justice League Dark Ride which is a beefed up version of our own. The way they have it, they have two pre-show rooms. Because of these pre-shows that are about 3-5 minutes each, the line outside never was more than 5 minutes. Once you went inside there was a screen preshow that had many of the same video cuts that we see in the queue. The second room was pretty cool with their Cyborg in front of you telling you information on how to play the game. It was cool to see Cyborg for an extended period of time as opposed to our ride where we only see a few seconds before we board. The ride itself was similar but the layout was different and they added Harley Quinn at the end. I prefer their loading style with the pre-shows to ours but I can see it getting old. We then went to go see their show "Kwerk!" It was, by far, THE BEST theme park show I have ever seen (outside of Disney and Universal). It was a typical cirque type show but the performers were fantastic and there was a bit of a storyline which was very nice. We all left a lot happier than we were due to the Air Conditioning and show! After this, we hit Full Throttle again and then rode The New Revolution. The New Revolution was very similar to the Super Dooper Looper at Hersheypark but I enjoyed it more. After this we had Chop Six, their Chinese food, which was on the food plan and EXCELLENT. Together, we tried their orange chicken, teriyaki chicken, beef? and their rice and lo mein. It was very filling and delicious. We were all very impressed. After this, I checked the line for X2 which only I would go on. The line was over an hour and because we were coming back in two days, I decided I would go to the ride at ropedrop next time. We decided to call it a night at around 7:30 because we were all tired and had an extra day at the park. 

 

I will post Day 2 of Magic Mountain, Universal Studios, Knotts Berry Farm, Disney's California Adventure, and Disneyland at a later date------ 

 

I am hoping  some of you reached this point because I spent a lot of time on this hoping to entertain some of you who are willing to read. Also, should I post the rest under this post or as a new topic?

 

Until Next Time

[Yoshi]

Nice report, sounds like you had a good visit to the park. When I type up a multi part trip report, I like keeping it all in 1 thread rather than create a new topic for each post. You could also create a new topic for each report if you prefer that.

[Louisatsweetlou]

I think that I will post the rest here: Instead of a second Magic Mountain Trip Report I am going to simply do a review of the coasters and move on: I think most of us know Magic Mountain more than, say, Knotts Berry Farm

[The Master]

Were they still operaing only single trains on the coasters ? Last time I was at MM, every coaster only ran one train each. 

[Louisatsweetlou]

Green lantern and apocalypse were closed

Ninja and Batman were running one train

everything else was running two trains except twisted colossus which was running three and they were racing the ride half the time 

 

[harry2004]

that a really good trip report