Not-so-lost rides at SFMM...

I spent a few unproductive hours at Magic Mountain today and left with some questions about Samurai Summit...

1) The Monorail
It looks like the monorail is almost completely intact, including its stations. Is this some weird homage to Disneyland's Rocket Rods or something? Is the ride still there? Any idea why they don't use it or if there is any future for it?

2) The Sky Ride
It is painfully obvious that the building on top of the hill opposite Superman was a Skyride building. On closer examination, it looks like it had separate entry and exit points, implying that it was a triangular layout like the ones at Busch Gardens. Anybody know where the other stations were?

3) The ???
As I was entering the Ninja queue house, the first thing I noticed was that the ride's queue house was buily for two parallel queues. As I was trying to figure that out (that ride can't move more than 2,400 PPH, can it?) I noticed that the floor of the queue house appears to be a disused turntable. As I was riding, I noticed that near the bottom of the hill is a large disused pavilion that looks a bit like the Ninja queue house might have at one time, complete with a long stairway on the high side of the building. Anybody remember what this thing was?

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

1- The Metro, which was the name of the Monorail, was closed years ago when the park realised it cost so much to run and they just could not get new spare parts. Modifying the ride, making it ADA and California rules friendly is cost prohibitive, so they're waiting for the budget to remove it.

2- It was a strange Arrow cable car ride. The cars went slowly up and down the hill, pulled by a cable on the ground. The top station is indeed the one for Ninja and the bottom one near Gold Rusher.

3- One station was in the county fair area, the other where Riddler's Revenge is right now.

Did you notice the dual pads that has an Intamin swiging ship and Chance Yo-Yo in front of Goliath? Those two pads were used for an old Intamin double wheel back in the 70's. When it was removed, the park installed 2 flats.

The Sky Ride, which was called Eagle's Flight, had a station located next to Food Etc., near the current location of Goliath's queue.

The exact location of the lower station for Eagles Flight (skyride) that was near "Food Etc.", is the area where the Superman tower now sits.

The ride that went up the hill from the two stations you pointed out was called the Dragon Car and was continuous moving cars that very slowly transported you to the top or bottom of the hill. It had a Chinese theme and the cars themselves had a dragon head on the front of each of them.

You can still see a bit of the remaining track of the Dragon Car in a couple of different areas. It is visible when you are going up the lift at the end of Ninja. It looks like a small cement road with a slot in the center of it (which is where the chain was that pulled the cars like a cable car).

Also, right next to Ninja's building was another attraction called "The Magic Pagoda." The building is still there, the entrance was right near to where you exit off of Ninja. This was a fun house type attraction and it is still used for one of their Halloween mazes during Halloween season (at least it was as of a couple of years ago, but the building still remains no matter what). When they use the Magic Pagoda as a Halloween attraction, you enter in what was the exit, and exit what was the entrance - the path inside is exactly the same as the Magic Pagoda's, and you can still see all of the original rooms and hallway's structures and designs if you remember what the original was like.

Ninja's station is one that was reused from a previous attraction, that's what it's a bit peculiar.

RideMan said:
I noticed that the floor of the queue house appears to be a disused turntable.

While we were out west for IAAPA last month we thought we would stop by LA to do the parks. While at Magic Mountain, we spent most of the day trying to figure out what the heck could have been where Ninja sits now. After we saw the turntable in the queue, it bugged us the rest of the trip because it had to have been for something. We even did the Sky Tower (or whatever its called) to check out the museum to see if it offered up any clues. Still don't know.

A couple photo's of the Dragon ride can be found here towards the bottom (along with some other defunct rides at MM) - :
http://www.members.tripod.com/heylownine/oldride.htm

Here are some pictures of the "dragon" ride at sfmm(middle of the page)

http://heylownine.tripod.com/oldride.htm

For those who are familiar, I think Dragon Car was a similar ride system to that of Astro World's Alpine Sleigh.

It's too bad the ride was so slow because they could really use a way to get up that side of the mountain!

Yeah, the walk up that side of the mountain can be brutal, especially late in the day, after walking for hours before that. I usually try to avoid it. There are enough hills and stairs everywhere else.

^^ The cars sure look similar to the Alpine Sleigh. They also incorporated the turntable loading system they used for some their log flumes too. Interesting how Arrow would slap together all these hybrid rides to meet the needs of their various park clients.

Could the turntable be part of the defunct Crazy Barrels ride? Just a thought.

GoliathKills said:
For those who are familiar, I think Dragon Car was a similar ride system to that of Astro World's Alpine Sleigh.

Nope. SFMM's Dragon used a continuous chain. As you can see by the pictures and information in this article Alpine Sleight did not.

Was that hillside ride a "funicular" (have no idea if I spelled that right). I remember riding that as a kid. They have a couple of different funiculars in Pittsburgh on Mt Washington.

^^^ No. The Crazy Barrels were not located there. They were at the other side of the park.

Yes, ther are 2 funiculars(inclines) in Pittsburgh that are still working the Monongahela to Mt. Washington and the Ohio river south bank to Mt. Washington residential. No operators! They are pulled by cables, instead of chains.

MM Funicular was/is on the other side of the mountain if I remember correctly....and I think it still operates.

Crazy Barrels operated opposite the large games area that still exists between Gotham City and Movie Land (Riddler).

Magic Mountain's funicular IS on the other side of the mountain, and has been operating every time I have visited the park. I understand that did not used to be the case.

As for the Dragon Car, thanks for the photo. Looking at the site, though, it seems rather weird and I can kind of see why it closed. Not only is the lower station positioned halfway up the hill, but the stairs are on the high side of the station. So if you were going up, you would apparently have to walk halfway up the hill, then take the stairs down to within 10' of the bottom, ride to the top, then climb the stairs out of the station. Going down, you walk down the stairs to the sunken platform, ride down, then climb the stairs back up to exit on the high side of the station. Maybe it wasn't that bad, but that's what it looks like from today's midway. I'd think it would have made more sense to pull the lower station away from the mountain a bit and elevate it over the midway, with stairs *down* from the lower station to the midway.

I do think it interesting that the park once had three different ways to ride to the top of the hill, and only one major attraction up there. Now there is only one ride up, but four big rides on top.*

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

*Entrances. Rides that run up there from down below don't count. :)

--DCAjr

There are actually only two rides on top of the mountain. The only rides which require you to go up there to enter are Ninja and Superman: TE.