Six Flags Magic Mountain loses an entourage of flat rides.

According to a recent article by the Los Angeles Times, Magic Mountain will be home to a fewer number of flat-rides come Spring 2008.

By May 2008 at the latest, the park will have removed:

- Freefall (Intamin Freefall) [Operational until 12/09/2007]

- Sierra Twist (Schwarzkopf Bayern Kurve)

- Spin Out (Chance Rotor)

- Circus Wheel (Sellner Tilt-a-Whirl)

- Granny Gran Prix (Guided car-ride) [Replaced with Thomas Town)

And according to the park's spokeswoman Sue Carpenter - "Deja Vu, Superman The Escape and Colossus are 'off-limits' to the wreckling ball"...as many rumors began circulating about the removal of these rides as of late.

Article: http://travel.latimes.com/daily-deal-blog/?p=1002

And on a related note...photos of the new X2 vehicles from the IAAPA show this year have gone up. Courtesy of Coaster Crew, you can see that not only are the new vehicles a complete departure from the original trains, but they are also drastically different in design from the Eejanaika trains (which were X's old train design, but utilized lighter metals and materials).

So simply put, X2's trains are really designed "from the ground up."

http://www.coastercrew.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=109&pos=55

The article mentions they love to have both the Tony Hawk and Dark Knight [aka Mack-In-The-Box] coasters added to their line-up.

"We'd love to have both of those rides at Magic Mountain," Carpenter said.

That's the last thing they need! So...which one will it be in 2009?

Sue says they'll "always be a thrill park" but it seems they think only coasters can be thrilling. I hope and pray Jay Thomas puts a stop to new coasters and starts adding some modern flat rides.

Looks like my family and I will be spending our money at Knotts and Disney again next year. And I will continue to persuade my friends and their families to do the same.

*** Edited 11/15/2007 9:23:07 AM UTC by Mamoosh***

Look! Complimentary drink holders while you ride! =) No need to throw away that drink and waste that hard earned cash... just make sure to ask for a lid. =)

http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h161/SScharm/X2Train.jpg

It appers that the holding and rotating beam for the X-seats are much stronger and heavier now. Maybe this will prevent the nasty vibrations.
Even Eejanaika´s seats are attached to a single, comparatively small beam.

To FScottS remark ^^ OMG [harsh laughter], stop [maniacle laughter], it hurts!

Those flats that are going should leave some room for "future" expansion. I just don't think they can sit with those vacant lots for a year or more and not have people wonder if something isn't wrong.

Circus Wheel has been in bad shape for quite some time, Sierra Twist is usually vacant, Freefall (about time), and Spin Out - not a great ride. None of those rides will be missed. Imo, they should remove Swashbuckler as well, for a swing ride, it's an eyesore. It's not really a negative for me to see them move away from basic carnival rides.

I kind of wish they would move away from low end"thrill rides" - Dollywoods Splash Battle attraction - 5 million, and Legoland's interactive shooter ride, seem like perfect additions for SFMM. More theme less carnival atmosphere would help locals view the park a bit differently.

^Six Flags Magic Mountain has flats a lot worse than any carnival I've seen. There Tilt-A-Whirl looks pathetic. Look at the Yo-Yo. How bad does that look also? The Baveryn Kurve also looks pretty rundown. They don't even have a thing around the middle of ride (like a tarp). Who's fault is this? It's SFMM.

They stripped these rides down (especially the Yo-Yo), and made them look ugly as heck.

This is a nice looking carnival (Not amusement park) Yo-Yo. http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/1443576073075345805AdyDSQ

I've never seen an uglier Tilt-A-Whirl than pictures of the one at SFMM. That's a disgrace, and it looks sickening. It looks like a two year old girl came up with the colors for that Tilt-A-Whirl. These are how the Tilts should look:
http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/photo/1401835906044378802gEaiKa
http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/photo/1155867414029999743xtMJpq
http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/1425417980072624853tgOBAd

More flats are leaving? Wow. I went to SFMM for the first time this year in April. There were lots of places in the park that looked abandoned from the removal of rides that were never replaced. I guess the most noticeable places were around Riddler's Revenge, Batman and Scream. That whole portion of the park seemed dead and empty. Granted the park wasn't busy when we went, but there was lots of concrete and empty ride locations where I could tell several were removed.

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Mamoosh said:"We'd love to have both of those rides at Magic Mountain," Carpenter said.

That's the last thing they need! So...which one will it be in 2009?

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Is that more funny or sad...sometimes it's hard to tell. One of the best things about HAVING flat rides is that you can avoid most of the terribly-long coaster lines on a busy day. Apparently that won't be the case at SFMM though.

Top Spin, Chance Revolution, Breakdance? Not sure how SFMM has managed to NOT get something like those in the past decade or so, LOL....

Taking out Sierra Twist totally bites the big one...

News to me about even rumors of Colossus' demise - I hadn't heard that at all in terms of *factuality*, more along the lines of "while you're taking out one terrible wooden coaster"....

*** Edited 11/15/2007 4:52:33 PM UTC by rollergator***

Flats are probably an age thing - since about 8 years, I have hated practically every flat ride that I was on.
So, in my personal opinion good riddance!
On another note, the world definitely needs more pirate ships!
:o)

The last adult flat ADDED to the park was a Condor. That was right around the time Ninja was added so it had to be sometime from 1987-1989. That ride lasted one season and was removed.

Since then the park has continued to remove flat rides* without adding any. The loss of these five brings the total to a ridiculously low level.

I doubt we'll see any of those rides replace in 08 with the cap ex going to fix X and for the new Thomas Town area. If, in 2009, the park again adds coasters instead of replacing the flats then they'll officially have their heads up their collective @sses.

(*I'm defining flat rides as any non-coaster, non-water ride) *** Edited 11/15/2007 6:03:00 PM UTC by Mamoosh***

What happened to the chain's family focus? Their definition of "family" attractions seems to be limited to things for 3-5 year olds to ride while mom and dad stand by the fence and wave. Aren't Shapiro's kids around the same age? Maybe they're picking out what rides should go in.

As has been observed, though, SFMM is perhaps the park least likely to succeed in the "a more convenient alternative to Disney" approach, since Disney is only another hour or three down the freeway.

Not that this excuses moving away from flats and towards more coasters, but still... *** Edited 11/15/2007 6:57:11 PM UTC by Brian Noble***

What...? Manufacturers aren't offering any thrilling flats? A ride like maXair isn't thrilling? Coasters are the only way to appeal to teens and thrillseekers?

This line of thinking is what's f'ed up SFMM in my opinion.

During the SF conference call, Shapiro was railing about how Tilt-a-Whirls were great back in the olden days, but now they're pretty much only good for scrap.

Meanwhile, my girlfriend (who had never boarded a coaster prior to meeting me) rode a GCII, a hyper (fine, only a Morgan) and an Arrow Screamin' Swing. She thought the flat was scarier than anything else I dragged her on. By FAR.

But that's just my story.

-'Playa

It's all about the bottomline to him. It's about money. Cedar Point get 245,000 a year for that ride. If you think that's low, you also have to remember where in the heck the ride is located. I didn't even know the park had a Tilt-A-Whirl until someone mentioned it. Not all intermediate rides should be classified as a kids ride.

If you are going to that, than they should put the big swings, Calypso, and the Monster in the kids section too. Maybe, it's because I don't go in the kids areas for no reason. How are other people that aren't really little kids going to go on that ride either if they don't know about? Go to Dorney Park, and you will see absolutely nothing wrong with that one. It's perfectly spotted, and it looks good too.

Anyway, 245,000 people doesn't seem like nothing even though it should be higher because of the location is pushing it down a little bit. The fact is this. The Tilt in my opinion is not a piece of garbage. It makes tons of money at carnivals, and the real reason they are getting rid of it, is because of capacity. If the Tilt-A-Whirl is full, there still might only be 14 people on the ride. This doesn't mean that no one wants to ride the ride, but rather it has a low capacity, and that's all he cares about. At SFMM, it probably had about the same amount of people going on it because of the way it looks.

CPs problem is that it's in the kids section, and SFMM's problem is that it looks ugly as heck to me, and probably to a lot more people other than me feel the same way.

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Mamoosh said:

Looks like my family and I will be spending our money at Knotts and Disney again next year. And I will continue to persuade my friends and their families to do the same.

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We are so lucky to have alternatives like these two parks. Magic Molehill? Forget it. And when they finally finish pimping out DCA, I'm not sure I'll ever go again. Then again, in about 10 years, I'll have a kid who'll need to go. But that's when we but plan tickets to Indiana. ;)

Here we go again, more rides taken out, won't be replaced, and tons of dead areas around the park. Keep up the good work Shapiro!!

Why is it that he has to replace rides instead of maybe refurbishing them?

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rollergator said:

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Mamoosh said:"We'd love to have both of those rides at Magic Mountain," Carpenter said.

That's the last thing they need! So...which one will it be in 2009?

---

Is that more funny or sad...sometimes it's hard to tell. One of the best things about HAVING flat rides is that you can avoid most of the terribly-long coaster lines on a busy day. Apparently that won't be the case at SFMM though.

Top Spin, Chance Revolution, Breakdance? Not sure how SFMM has managed to NOT get something like those in the past decade or so, LOL....

Taking out Sierra Twist totally bites the big one...

News to me about even rumors of Colossus' demise - I hadn't heard that at all in terms of *factuality*, more along the lines of "while you're taking out one terrible wooden coaster"....

*** Edited 11/15/2007 4:52:33 PM UTC by rollergator***

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Yeah but what can you expect when the previous management(both corporate & the park's GM) decided it would be more profitable to go on a coaster building spree over the past several seasons at the expense of the flat rides just so they could get on discovery channel's coaster shows year after year?