Terminator themed GCI to open at Magic Mountain on Memorial Day weekend 2009

Rotten Tomato scores:

Fresh: 39%
Rotten: 78%

Not a good sign.

That's where I got my info too, Moosh.

Although I have no problem with the rides theme is does beg the question: why theme a coaster to a movie that hasn't already played on screens and received a reaction from the public? Seems like an awfully big gamble. What if the movie truly does suck? How long do you wait until you remove the theming or retheme?

SFMM should have taken a cue from Universal. I can't remember a single attraction at a Universal park that didn't open until years after the movie.

Are we really using Rotten Tomatoes ratings to predict whether the theme of a roller coaster is a safe bet?

Man, I'm too old for this ****.

If I'm Shapiro, I'm kicking myself for doing the X2 re-theme one year too early. Now I have to put flame throwers and speakers on a wooden coaster to cash in on Terminator synergy.

I'm guessing a solid 30% of riders are going to think it's just a re-themed Psyclone anyway.

^^No. I was merely playing devils advocate and asking a general question.

But you still love me, right?

Of course...just not as much ;)

Mamoosh said:
Although I have no problem with the rides theme is does beg the question: why theme a coaster to a movie that hasn't already played on screens and received a reaction from the public? Seems like an awfully big gamble. What if the movie truly does suck? How long do you wait until you remove the theming or retheme?

I don't think it will matter only because this movie is part of a franchise that has been around for 25 years. It's still Terminator.

They did the same thing with the Dark Knight coasters opening them up before the movie released. It is still Batman regardless.

Just got home from riding Terminator. Boy we had a blast! The theming is a little over the top, and after a couple of rides I just wanted to skip it all together.

However, I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED the audio on the coaster itself. Great job whoever was in charge of that. I've experienced nothing quite like that before (even on X2, which I also like). Just the sensory of it was so fun, it begs for re-rides. It is loud, and older riders may be annoyed by it.

The coaster itself is a solid GCI ride. Not too intense, but very fun, and it had great pops of airtime that aren't visible by looking at the layout. Most people were calling it a baby Thunderhead with audio. I liken it more to a baby Gwazi, only smooth.

Say what you will about the surrounding theming or the film, this coaster is going to be a major hit for SFMM.

Nine inch nails music has clear lyrics and even discernible melodies on occasion. This is accidental, play with audio equipment in your basement in 7th grade garbage.

Egh egh egh! Egh rumble egh egh boom rumble egh egh boom egh EGH egh boom rumble rumble rumble egh egh boom egh egh boom egh egh EGH! Random boom. Okay we get it.

Egh egh boom egh egh boom random egh random egh boom egh egh boom egh egh boom egh RANDOME egh! Boom. Kind of fades out. Blah.

It's like a percussive headache made by someone playing with a synthesizer for the first time.

John Knotts said:
However, I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED the audio on the coaster itself. Great job whoever was in charge of that.

Can you hum the soundtrack for us? ;)

Actually, I can.

I completely disagree with you regarding the audio part of this ride. But, that's what discussion boards are for. I say, great job GCI and SFMM! :)

Why go to such great lengths to tell a dramatic story in the preshow, and then have a soundtrack that refuses to convey any new information with a discernable throughline including changes in emotion, tempo, rythmn, instrumentation or tone?

Even percussion performance art has more of an emotional range than this. But this ride soundtrack ends the same way it starts, like the bad music that repeats over and over at the start of Grand Theft Auto. Or the bad 1990's commercials with Chyron all-cap words punctuated by loud, echoey percusion. You! (Boom!) Need! (Boom!) This! (Boom!) Truck! (Boom!).

The soundtrack lacks range, it's absurdly almost paranoically percussive, lacks cohesion, and doesn't appreciably add to the story, the sense of beginning middle and end, or overall story experience . For example, when the ride comes to the emotional brake run at the end, where the participants in the story have survived and conquered, presumably, what do they hear? A passionate melody? A sense of closure? Nope. Just more random single strokes on snares in an echo chamber, like we heard at the beginning. Huh? I thought it was over. More gunfire like explosions. I thought the experience ended. Were the composers looking at the same ride script? Are they feeling something we can't see? So confusing and so unsatisfying. It's disjointed and easy to dismiss as an error, just like the excessive explosions and continual, almost ridiculous background noise covering up the weak dialogue and lack of appearance by the villain in the video segments.

^ My God dude, it's a theme park ride. LOL

I guess I can get where you're coming from if I were to nitpick. But this ride was a blast. This is something never really attempted before and I think the park really pulled it off. I had several ride in the back seat and I gotta tell ya, I though the audio was terrific, and really added an extra element to the coaster that I wasn't expecting. I loved it, pure and simple.

And at night? So much fun. As with most wooden coasters, it kicked up quite a bit during night rides. I just love what the park has done this time around.

Bill. Wow, just WOW!!!

As John pointed out, why get anal about the whole thing. Seriously. It's Six Flags and I feel they are doing right with these new installations like this coaster and Buccaneer Battle at SFGAm.

You won't see CF doing this. Shapiro is trying to create an experience with new rides and re-creating existing rides. He is on the right track IMO.

I agree with Chitown and John Knott's.

Christ, they went above and beyond your typical bread and butter GCI installation and tied it in with a major Hollywood movie. The on-board audio, the fire effects, the enclosed tunnels with mist, the movie-studio quality queue show elements...? All great effort on Six Flags' part.

They could have just given it a generic name like Renegade or Prowler, with bare bones nothing. Would that have made people less likely to whine about it?

There are always people there to b*tch about SOMETHING. If it has no theme, Six Flags gets bashed for being "predictable, lazy, or cheap." If it has a theme, Six Flags gets bashed for not pairing the theme with the right kind of ride.

Seriously. Ugh.

Oh, BTW. I saw Terminator Salvation: THE MOVIE, tonight. Let's just say while it's not terrible, it's not great either. Definitely a C+, or a B- at best. However, I can see it becoming a box-office success this summer due to it being part of such a well known film franchise, despite lackluster reviews.

No doubt the movie will do well at the box office. I mean look how well Paul Blart Mall Cop did, lol ;)

As for the coaster and theming, add me to the Chitown/JKnott/kRaX corner. By all accounts it looks like a solid job by Six Flags. Let's hope everything is still working when I visit the park later this year.

I think Bill's criticism of the theme elements is warranted. I mean, it seems to me that the execution of theme is just as worthy of our critical attention as airtime.

If you're going to storify (I coined a word - heh!) a theme, then the story better work. This is why rides such as Space Mountain or Matterhorn work. These attractions are heavily themed, without falling into the trap of having to tell a story or put you into a narrative.

If you're going to attempt this sort of thing, you better make it work -- see Haunted Mansion or Tower of Terror as successful examples. For not so successful examples, see Disaster Transport or Flight of Fear (though both were actually not horrible in their opening day primes). Also in the not quite so hot "you're in a story" theme -- Exterminator.

I think this is why the theming for Maverick works so well. It doesn't make you 'Bart' or 'Bret' or whatever. You're just along for the ride, and it succeeds.