Six Flags Magic Mountain announces tallest and fastest single-rail coaster, Wonder Woman

Jeff said:

I doubt we'll ever see another B&M flyer. I don't think they actually rate highly among most guests.

Do you mean in the US? My impression is they’re still getting built somewhat regularly in Asia.

Edit: upon actual research (gasp!), the last one of the 11 built was in 2016.

I don't buy the location leads diversity argument. Kings Island has four wood coasters in a major market, and isn't completely without competition. Heck, most of the big Cedar Fair parks have more than one non-inverting steel coaster. I doubt very much that John Q. Public would care if a new coaster is similar to an existing coaster.

For which I’m very grateful. Six flags hasn’t done that, instead, as a chain, they have been very keen on doing the exact opposite. Only exception i can think of now (while in the middle of a transcon flight) is the third woodie in St Louis. That one truly broke with tradition. I would posit that it has more to do with that section of the middle of the country (SFStL, Holiday World, Kings Island, Kentucky Kingdom and Indiana Beach), and not any change of heart for SF.

I think CF put the two non inverting steels in KI, CW and Carowinds simply because they saw huge reliable capacity devouring machines that the public ate up. Easy to replicate with something even bigger. Did you love intimidator, you’ll lose your kind over Fury. The omission of same for their other four major market parks is surprising. (Looking at you Knott’s!!!). .

If SFMM were an independent park (like Hershey) who knows what their lineup would look like. Instead/unfortunately they are one of the top 2 or 3 parks in a chain of at one time nearly 20, and one that is predicated on new/different ride systems that can then be rolled out to their other parks. I rag on Full Throttle a lot but it was truly unique (a mid-course reversing launch, and then the tallest part of the ride in the last 200 feet), yet they didn’t roll out any more Premier rides to any other park afterwards.

i guess the simple answer is actually not location but simply “Six Flags” and we can shake our heads in confusion as to why they do what they do.

I'd much rather have a B&M hyper and giga in the same park over a hyper or giga and a flyer. No question.

Totally. The kids on PointBuzz are all suggesting CP will build a flyer, just because they don't have one. That's not a very good reason.

Tell them to get off your lawn. But to save me one of those retro juice sippers.

CreditWh0re said:

I think CF put the two non inverting steels in KI, CW and Carowinds simply because they saw huge reliable capacity devouring machines that the public ate up. Easy to replicate with something even bigger. Did you love intimidator, you’ll lose your kind over Fury. The omission of same for their other four major market parks is surprising. (Looking at you Knott’s!!!). .

What I find interesting is that in all three cases, the Hyper had the 2+2 "V" shaped seating, and then they went back to the standard 4-across for the Giga. Maybe the difference in seating configuration is enough for the GP to see it as a unique ride.

Later,
EV

Well, those are also the Paramount parks that got hypers quickly after the CF acquisition, so it's probably more correlation than causation.

CreditWh0re said:

so, sadly, they have to have something that they can market, and sometimes that means a crappy ride or one that doesn’t complement the current line-up (looking at you “Scream” and “West Coast Racers” and the defunct Green Lantern).

how does west coast racers not compliment the others? That was one of my favs at SFMM- a totally fun surprising unique ride!

So, this is practically a duplicate of Jersey Devil Coaster? The only differences I see are the station and brake run are oriented 90°, and one additional hill and left turn into the brake run.

My daughter and I rode JDC on membership/season pass holder preview weekend. We both agreed it was a fun ride, but not spectacular. The lessons RMC learned from Wonder Woman Golden Lasso and RailBlazer were evident, as the borderline uncomfortable ejector air is not present on JDC. That said, it almost seemed as though it was too tamed down, and IMHO, it was a good ride, but not a great one. However, with the maneuvers they incorporated into the ride, I am looking forward to RMC's next Raptor design. And for that reason, I am disappointed that SF decided to reuse the JDC layout for Wonder Woman Flight of Courage, even though I understand their reasoning. Being the parks are on opposite coasts and most of the GP will never visit both parks, it makes sense to save money by using an existing design instead of paying for a completely new design.

As far as the next coaster at Cedar Point, I would venture to guess it will be where Forbidden Frontier is located. In August, I saw some Cedar Point executives walking around there. One of the younger guys was carrying an isometric drawing that had a coaster shown in red, and I overheard them looking for existing utilities. As I think about the brief view I had of the drawing, it very well could be a raptor. I guess only time will tell.

So which company do you work for? Lemon Chill or Dippin' Dots?

CP is going to build a clone of Steel Vengeance where Wicked Twister was and will be for FastLane Lane+ only (that's where you pay $15 per ride on top of your existing $200 FL band). You heard it first.

Sucks

No, I'm the plush vendor. 😉

Got it. No unconfirmed information or speculation is allowed to ensure too much fun is not had here.

Egad. What a cringeworthy ad. Fitting they're in a PT Cruiser convertible, though.

That ad is cringeworthy by late-80s standards, much less 2004.

It was Kinzel's first step in his mad scheme to close it.!

Disappointed to hear that JD doesn't have the same type of ejector airtime that the v1 single rail rides do. The back seat on RailBlazer provides an amazing first drop experience. It's figuratively like being thrown to the ground.

Yup. Railblazer is my only experience with single rail and I thought it was fairly scary. Even watching from the ground gave me the feeling something wasn’t quite normal.