Six Flags Magic Mountain

So part of travel includes visits to amusement parks. I don't have any good pictures from this day, but I will review the day.

Background: I am a roller coaster fanatic, and yet it had been at least 5 years since my last visit to Six Flags. The last "new" roller coaster I rode was Deja-Vu. So the goal of this romp was to ride everything else that has appeared since then. That goal was mostly achieved and it was a fun day despite the crowds.

Even before the trip I knew West Coast coaster bash was going on, and that it was spring break for the school crowd. Those two factors alone would make this a day for line standing. We entered the amusement park and met some friends at the lockers. We made our trek around counter-clockwise after that.

We started at the awe inspiring Goliath. I had been on Goliath maybe twice before and can say it really hasn't changed. Still fast and that first drop is a monster! Excellent roller coaster. I always have fun on this one, and big ++ is it only has lap bars! We waited maybe 20 minutes to ride Goliath. This probably gave me the most feeling of lightness once we got up off the coaster on this day.

The next stop was Riddler's Revenge. The green stand-up coaster. We waited in line maybe 15 minutes, and then rode the beast. We literally walked straight up to the loading queues for this one. Riddler's was slightly rough and provided a little bit of head-banging, but otherwise was fun.

Our non-official guide took us past Terminator due to his disdain of wooden coasters, I guess that "new" coaster would have to wait for another time for me. We went to Deja-Vu. After waiting for 30 minutes, the coaster broke down. We decided to keep on moving rather than wait.

We finally hit some of the new coasters I was looking forward to! First up, the flying coaster, Tatsu! This coaster is supposed to mimic flying like a dragon, or maybe riding a dragon. You start in a sitting position, then in the station, they flip you down to superman position. You go up the lift hill like this, watching as the floor below slowly gets further and smaller. After a relatively quick lift hill, the coaster starts with a "freefall" type drop which was amazing given the position you were in, it felt somewhat how I would assume skydiving feels except you are strapped in. I couldn't tell you about the rest of the ride, but it was definitely smooth and felt like you were flying. My favorite coaster of the day! Too bad it was an hour plus wait time.

For our last coaster of the day we went to X2 - the 4D coaster. This line was 90 minutes or even longer. The fourth dimension in this sitting coaster is that the seats rotate also while you are on the tracks. This one, you go up the lift hill backwards and down and up the first little hump backwards before the seats rotate you facing straight downwards for the initial drop. Similar to Tatsu, this initial drop is flying straight down almost like skydiving before leveling out. After that, the coaster takes various turns and curves at over 70 MPH, and this was the only coaster that actually made me grab the restraints a couple times. It just felt out of control at times. That would normally make me give this coaster the highest of marks... but all the head-banging I experienced here knocked its score down. Great coaster, just wished it was smoother. I also missed the effects, I wonder if there are minimal fire and fog effects during the day, those things being more visible at night/dusk.

My wife and I had to go home early this day, so we stopped for a churro (wasn't very good), and they took off. 4 rides in 6 hours. Sounds like a typical summer day at Six Flags and yet it was in spring. Overall fun times, and probably satisfies my coaster fix until I have kids that are grown up enough to go.