SFMM- 1/5/06- A New Year And Attitude For SFMM?

So I went with the family to SFMM today. I decided to buy a pass this year since they are so darn cheap and Tatsu opens this Spring.

The park was empty. No waits or two train waits were as long as the queues got today, aside from X. X was about 45 minutes this afternoon, which isn't all that bad for that ride.

The big difference was the emphasis on customer service today. I hadn't seen SFMM employees be this friendly in... ever, to be honest. From the parking attendant to the ride ops on Scream, there were a lot of friendly people working today. And this time, I didn't feel like friendly employees were the exception to the rule. There were still a couple of bad apples (did somebody pee in the Scrambler operator's cereal this morning?), but they were few and far between.

And on a day with no waits, you'd expect 1 train operation all around, right? Not today. With one to two train waits, nearly every ride that was able ran two trains including Riddlers, Batman, Goliath, Scream and Viper (except for Ninja, Psyclone and X) had two trains on the track.

If you haven't gone into cardiac arrest already, I should add that these second trains were not stacking on any of these rides. Finally, nearly every flat ride was open, except for Circus Wheel which appeared to be in rehab. SFMM had excellent operations today, and that is a pretty cool thing to behold.

So what was going on today? Heck, there was even an employee near Psyclone who appeared to be stationed there just to tell people that the path from Psyclone through the Rapids Camp was closed. In fact, there were a lot of "shirt and tie" employees walking around, including Del Holland. Even a girl selling drinks at the entrance of Scream made sure to tell us "have a great ride" as we entered the queue (if Scream really has a queue ;).

All in all, it was an excellent day at SFMM. If this is the direction they are heading, count me in, because everything I experienced today was very impressive.

Two Trains on Riddler and Batman?!?!?!?!?
All flats open?!?!?!
I must be in a parallel universe

Nice to see you finally post, delan, my friend.

A few years ago my dream of visiting MM slowly disolved because of very bad trip reports. If positive reports like this keep coming, I'll have to find my way out there.

It would be nice to have that dream back.

Nice to see a postive trip report. I will heading to SFMM during late June, I can't wait. It will be my first vist to the park. I just hope that all of the coaters are open including X and Flashback. The reason why I added Flashback inthere due to the fact the ride is just sitting there and not being used and has been in the same sate now for a couple of years. I would be truly impressed if they get that ride runing. I hope that the park along & the rest of the chain can turn around. I don't want to see any park or company fail but six flags needed a shake up and I hope that it will be enough to change there rep.

All of those coasters (didn't go by Psyclone) had two-train operation when I was there for Solace and loaded very quickly except for Riddler, so this isn't impressive at all to me. I'm glad the X line wasn't bad, but I'd generally expect most of the rest. It's my favorite major coaster park after that visit and I didn't even get on X.

+Danny

I agree with +Danny, SFMM has a kick butt collection of coasters. I really hope that CoasterFanMatt's TR is just the beginning of a change at all SF parks. Those parks have the potential to be freaking awesome if they took care of that little problem called customer service.

~Rob Willi

No crowds and multiple trains probably kept the staff busy, but not overworked. My opinion from someone who wasn't even there!

Glad to hear you had fun, I hope to make there someday, and California in general.

I'm so glad to finally see a true positive post about six flags, and about Magic Mountain especially! That is excellent that staff are getting it together and making the atmosphere a little more enjoyable for everyone.

I had a similar experience last week. The lines were quite long however because of the busy week but things moved well. The only ride that didn't have two trains running was Psylone but that was a walk-up anyway.

I was expecting a horrible experience since it seemed like most trip reports had said the coaster selection was great but everything else sucked. The only thing that bothered me was that two rides (Ninja and Revolution) were closed for Tatsu's construction. But hey they are building for the future so that's quite alright.

The staff was fine. Nobody was overly "friendly" but I didn't experience any rude staff either. I was expecting the staff at Knott's to MM's staff to shame but that didn't happen.

If Flashback opens too, it will be the end of the world... :)

I put up some somewhat positve stuff in the Tatsu Announcement news post back from November if you'd care to look for it.

Agreed. I went to the park this past Sunday for the first time (i'll probably post a full TR later), and I had no clue why everyone makes such negative comments about the park. Everything was open except the stuff around Tatsu. The only ride I saw not running two trains was X, but they even had a sign at the entrance of the ride saying "we are sorry but X's wait will be long today due to scheduled maitenance." I dunno if that is always there, but I assumed it was because of a rehab on the other train? The crew was awesome - literally running to check their seats and the train was loaded in like a minute. Everything else was on two trains, properly staffed, and not ever stacking - despite there being no one in line. On Scream, there were only four people on our train including my friend and I. Great day!

It's just amazing to me that what is considered a "new attitude" at SFMM, would be considered a normal day at most parks. All the stuff mentioned above should be a given 90 percent of the time.

Still, nothing would please me more than to actually desire to go out to the Mountain again.

Its not justifying the way the park has been run the past several years, but hoping that things are changing for the better.

SFMM is probably the biggest "underachiever" park I've ever been to. It should be one of the best in the world, but has a bunch of operational issues that keeps it from accomplishing that. Here's hoping the park can take its place among the best.

---

dexter said:
Nice to see you finally post, delan, my friend.

A few years ago my dream of visiting MM slowly disolved because of very bad trip reports. If positive reports like this keep coming, I'll have to find my way out there.

It would be nice to have that dream back.

---

That is probably the worst reason to not visit a park. Hope you're still not like that.

---

DWeaver said:
It's just amazing to me that what is considered a "new attitude" at SFMM, would be considered a normal day at most parks. All the stuff mentioned above should be a given 90 percent of the time.

---

Yeah, that may be true - but the crowds (or lack of) at Knott's on Monday (9th) were similar to the level of crowds at Magic Mountain on Sunday. Neither parks needed to run two trains, but Knott's had everything on one and MM ran two...

I was at SFMM this past Saturday and Sunday and I also was very impressed as to how well the park was run, with the exception of one train operation on X. Everything else though, except for Batman, had two trains running and there was no noticable stacking. The employees were nice and efficient. It reminded me of my home park, SFGAm. Will 2006 be the year SFMM begins to turn it around? If they can maintain the levels of customer service and park management that I saw this past weekend, along with operating their great ride selection that they already have, SFMM may easily become one of the most well-rounded parks in the country. We will have to wait and see.