Six Flags Magic Mountain announces Twisted Colossus

I'm intrigued by this ride, and really like that get to ride both "halves" during each cycle. I'm really hoping to make a trek to ride one of these RMC conversions next summer.

In theory if they want both sides to race every time they will need to send out a train every two minutes all day long. That does not seem possible for a park with good operations, let alone Magic Mountain. I guess they could hold the train that is half way through on the lift until the next train is ready for dispatch.

Dual loading station?

Man this looks sweet! Looks like plenty of airtime for all. I can't wait!

It's such a shame that when a park sees a racing coaster these days instead of thinking, "high-capacity people-munching machine with guaranteed high availability" they see "double the staffing costs."

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

By far my favorite coaster announcement of the year. This is such an innovative, brilliant idea RMC has come up with for this faded coaster. Everything was just flawlessly thought out, from the colors that pop, to the double elements, to the low to the ground speed. I am in love!

Am I seeing this correctly that you ride both sides of the track? Does the first train do a station fly-through as the second is dispatched? Was Colossus always a möbius coaster? I love how the trains twist under, over, and around each other... This is a really cool looking coaster. Makes me want to get back to SFMM!

Never a möbius coaster. Not a fly through but apparently a fly around (from what I can make out, others will know more).

No idea on the loading process. I see huge slow lines hear unless there's something we're missing.

Here are my quick thoughts. At first look I thought this was awesome. I love the idea behind bringing both sides together to make a longer coaster. This will be fun and everyone will enjoy it.

On the other hand this could have been so much more. Here are my reasons. The original Colossus on just one side was 4,325 ft long. So they put both sides together and only barely get 5,000 ft….not even that if you look at RCDB. They are promoting 4 minutes of ride time but 3 min (exaggerating here, but only a little) will be spent on the lift hill as you go up both sides. Yes you will be in the coaster train for quite a while but your actual coaster ride will be pretty quick.

Not that records are a big deal but SFMM could have had the longest coaster record easily with this new twist and an easy win for their PR department.

I do like where this idea is going and it would be cool to see what they do on some other racers...

Yeah sorry but a lot of this 4,300ft of track you mention was spent slowly lumbering around big, boring turns. This new ride is lean and exciting. So no, I don't really agree.

Yea, its lean alright. Lean on coasting time. For a ride with two lift hills you could have gotten a lot more than a hop, turn, high five, a barrel roll, hop, turn, rinse, & repeat. I agree this will be a better ride than the old Colossus and I am not trying to be a hater. I just think they left a lot on the drawing board when they had the opportunity to easily do something even bigger.

Good Lord, have many seats! The ride looks amazing. Its probably lean because RM wanted the coaster to be nonstop speed. Not everything has to be taken to the superlative.

Exactly! Bigger doesn't always mean better. I would have thought we would've learned that by now. I love the fact that it looks like SFMM is finally going for quality over records.

It doesn't, but with that said, I don't see why it can't. At first I thought that each track was going to be nearly 5000 feet in length and expected we'd see the next great step in racing coaster evolution. Instead, I come to find out it's only one track.

I think it looks very cool, but I'm just surprised they didn't shell out the cash to keep the tracks separate and make them both longer.

I can't speak to Medusa, but the other two hybrid conversions (Rattler and Giant) both cut track length significantly (chopping out extra helices) and both are better for it. Both old layouts had parts which were boring, painful, or both and now neither ride has any.

A little track length being cut is no biggie. It's more that two tracks morphed into one that isn't much longer than each individual track was to begin with. To use your New Texas Giant example, the new version is less than 800 feet shorter than the old. That seems like a reasonable cut. Ditching several thousand feet of track just seems like it's cutting a bit more than is needed.

It still looks cool, don't get me wrong. I just have to wonder if they could've run it out a bit.

Why is track length an issue? A single ride is 665 feet longer than a single ride on the original, but now it has an extra lift. It's a wash, if we're just discussing length. It's a huge win when you consider what the track will do vs. what it used to. What's the big fuss?

Ooooh, right. Capacity!

sirloindude -

I totally get your reasoning, but then again all the previous RMC conversions to date were single-circuit coasters, with less than 5,500 feet of track.

Colossus' twin tracks combined nearly approaches 9,000'...with a LOT of that coming from flat portions of track leading from the station to the lift and blocks entering the station...as well as elongated bunny hills and the flat turns at both ends of the coaster's layout. I was actually delighted to see that they were able to keep most of the large sections of the original structure and integrate it in the new layout.

I'm assuming the track reduction is related to cost. Any part of the existing structure that needs to be modified or added to accommodate additional track only adds to the cost of the project.

With that all said, Colossus will be the longest coaster at the park by far.

Actually, capacity wasn't even an item I was concerned about. One could argue that given the single track, they can't ever shut one side of the ride down, so this ride will be forced to have high capacity all the time. ;)

True. Then I ask again: what's the big fuss?