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Ordinarily I wouldn't post a puff piece like this, but Duane's quote in there is pretty hilarious.
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No doubt that was seriously harsh. I think there are a bunch of people in the Six Flags organization who are hiding under their desks hoping it will all blow over and people will forget--like tomorrow.
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Slow news day I guess. What the article didn't mention is how the views on SFMM are suddenly getting better. Older rides are seeing new paint and new additions are to the park don't have anything to do with coasters (Thomas Town). Having the most coasters was nothing but bad news for SFMM, they weren't able to handle it. CP just does a better job at having the most roller coasters without letting everything else go to hell in the park.
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Not sure about you, but I always considered CP to be the record holder anyways. Now I have never been to SFMM, but from what I hear, alot of the coaster there are very often SBNO. I know Flashback, Superman, Deja Vu, X and Psyclone have all had extended time of being SBNO. I have been to CP at least 5 or 6 times, and in all my visits, just about every coaster is operational. CP did have some issues with Dragster, but from what I understand, those have been fixed. I go with the number of operating coasters in the park instead of just total number of coasters. If it were just number, what would stop some small park from putting up 20 old and beaten arrow corckscrews and such and just not opening them??
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That is brand new information!
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Superman is a roller coaster?  *puts opened can of worms back on shelf*
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Cedar Point is a "theme park"?
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Duane's comments beat me to the punch...my one and only trip across the country to MM was greeted with an unbelievable number of SBNO rides. X was running and I think the capacity was ~1500 riders per hour (not sure). I checked my watch and did some quick calculations based on the lazy train operators loading and unloading...figured it was really about 300/hr. Sadly, the park was a complete disappointment.
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I can't remember who said it, but one of the ride operations managers happily stated that Cedar Point was proud of their 95% uptime. of course, that was back before Dragster, but even that has been doing better. I also thought they did a wonderful job getting Maverick open so quickly. Thats the great thing about Cedar Fair, they do their best to keep their rides up. They did great work with Geauga Lake as well, minus a couple older attractions. When Six Flags ran Geauga, it was always hit or miss on rides operating. Cedar Fair and Bill Sphen did a great job with operations at Geauga.
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SK610 said: that Flashback, Superman, Deja Vu, X and Psyclone have all had extended time of being SBNO. Flashback is quite easy why that ride is down. Besides the complaint about the waterpark, the ride needs new trains or it can't operate. They didn't get the new trains, and it didn't operate for how long? Superman is been giving them problems for awhile. It's just the technology. Mr. Freeze has had problems, Joker's Jinx probably has problems. I know V2 has had problems. Yes, they aren't all Intamin, but they are all of the new type of technology. Because of new technology, rides have problems. They only run one side of Superman, and I imagine that when it's down, it's most likely down because they need a part, or they need to refurbish that ride. I imagine that they don't even deal with the other side whatsoever. They probably have given up on that side. It's a problematic ride. I wonder if they even have the other sides train. Didn't that ride have a fire? Maybe, the other train was damaged, and they don't ever use that train. Maybe, they are down to one train just like Deja Vu. Besides Deja Vu having regular problems, Deja Vu is only one train. The park isn't closed like every other park in the chain. It's open all year. How do you expect to refurbish at least Deja Vu's train without closing the ride down? Psyclone was just a bad ride to begin with, and I imagine that they were always retracking that ride because it was just horrible, and people were having neck problems, and all that stuff. X is quite simple why in the heck the ride isn't doing that great. The reason is because it's the first, and the first usually has the most problems. Disko' at Cypress Gardens was the first, and it never seems to be open! What problems does CP encounter? I imagine now they are going to have problems with Maverick, and they probably still have problems with Top Thrill Dragster. Someone also said that Max Air is down a lot, and maybe Sky Hawk is down quite a bit. I don't know. Whenever, I'm at the park Disaster Transport seems to broke down.
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Interesting that MM is saying they're going to reclaim the title again soon.
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And I thought my reply said to much. There's reasons why Jeff said, "Ordinarily I wouldn't post a puff piece like this-."
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when was psyclone dismantled? went a few weeks ago and was surprised to see it gone....
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I've been to Magic Mountain three times and have still not managed to ride Superman...
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I went to SFMM on Jan 3rd (first MM trip ever), and every coaster was running except "X" (which I knew about ahead of time) and Viper (paint job). Workers were still in the process of cutting Flashback up on that day, and I would guess about 50% of the track still remained in tact. I assume it's probably completely dismantled at this point. I might get my enthusiast credentials revoked for even saying this, but I actually had a great time at MM. I think the lack of crowds had a lot to do with it, but that's why I picked that week for my SoCal coaster trip!  PS - Tatsu is amazing... Jerry
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Quality will always reign supreme over quantity. I don't care who has the most coasters, what special prize do you get? Over developing parks with more roller coasters really hurt Six Flags. What good is it to say park X has one of the largest collection of coasters, but several are broken down when you make a visit?
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Though MM is not one of my favorite parks. Mostly because of the hills, I consider myself to be pretty lucky to have ridden every coaster there (other than Flashback) in only 2 trips. There were multiple coasters down on both of my visits. They just happened to be different coasters.
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Actually it was Monty Jasper, then VP of maintenance and construction at CP, now corporate VP of safety and maintenance, who quoted the up time to us, ironically enough on a Dragster construction tour. I think he said it was like 96% or higher. If only he knew the hell he'd have to endure later that year.
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I agree with JKPark as to quality vs quantity. I do still think that CP has better quality coasters than SFMM. Now in second place with SFMM vs Canada's Wonderland, SFMM has much more quality than CW. Most of the coasters at CW are the cheap models like the vekoma SLC and the zamperla flying coaster and such. I'm not trying to make this into CP vs SFMM, but I still think that the overall quality at CP is better than that at SFMM. Plus, the real interesting rides at SFMM just don't seem to run all that well like X and Deja Vu
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^^^Aw man, the hills are the one thing I like about Magic Mountain. I guess they should have called it Magic Hill instead eh? And speaking of eh, what's this about Canada's Wonderland?
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Yeah...nothing worse than having interesting terrain on which to build coasters. Flat land is much better...not!
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“Someday we will reclaim the title,” vowed Magic Mountain spokeswoman Sue Carpenter. “We’ll be back.”
Isn't this how the company got run into the ground in the first place? Here's a thought: just worry about making your own parks better, and not about what a park that is not even a competitor is doing.
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She did not say tomorrow they will reclaim the title. She said someday, which could be pretty far away.
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There aren't that many hills at Magic Mountain. It's just that one giant hill near Superman which is the pain in the behind to me.
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Well, there used to be a funicular, cable car, sky ride, and monorail to help. *** This post was edited by janfrederick 1/17/2008 2:44:32 PM ***
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The "Magic Mountain has so many closed coasters at a given time each day" argument is really no longer valid. Those that have been to the park within the past two years will know this is true. It is rare now that you'll go to the park and find any of the park's coasters closed without a very good reason (unlike in the past). The park's biggest problem right now is outdated infrastructure, lousy guest services, and still shaky ride operations efficiency.
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Went to SFMM last year for the first time and every coaster was running. Even got to ride Deja Vu and Superman. Now the park was slammed and it took a hour to get from the highway to the toll booth. Never even got close to riding X or Tatsu, because 3 hr wait time. CP seems to me that I got to ride all the coasters in a full day. NOw SFMM no chance. That's a big Plus when you are going 3000 miles to ride roller coasters. Now Will SFMM now be on the block? It's worth more than any park they own and it's been talked about.
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SFMM might be worth a lot, but its needs a lot of TLC. Who would buy that? Cedar Fair? They just got burned with Paramount. I don't think they are in the market... but they would be able to do a killer job with SFMM.
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Spinout saidSuperman is been giving them problems for awhile. It's just the technology. Mr. Freeze has had problems, Joker's Jinx probably has problems. I know V2 has had problems. Yes, they aren't all Intamin, but they are all of the new type of technology. Because of new technology, rides have problems.
I think at this point to call any of those new rides "new technology" would be way off. Flight of Fear debuted in 1996. I'm sure that there was at least a two to three-year development period beforehand to get it ready for market. Superman the Escape debuted in 97', and Mr. Freeze in 98'. You called out Joker's Jinx as a ride possibly having a lot of downtime. I would dispute that. While I wouldn't call it rock-solid, it's usually running with both trains, except for in year's past when they would have to shut it down in fall for the neighbors (does anyone know if they still do that? ).
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Our Mr. Freeze (SFoT) runs like a champ. I've never seen it down except for the safety concern with other premier launchers (like when Chiller went insane). As for "It is rare now that you'll go to the park and find any of the park's coasters closed without a very good reason (unlike in the past)" I honestly couldn't give a rat's butt about their reasons for closing things. Whether it's for maintanence, puke, weather, safety, laziness...if a ride is open I ride it and have a good time, if not, I don't and don't have a good time. I don't go to a park with a bunch of closed rides and say "Well, even though I flew 3000 miles out here to ride some stuff, I'm glad they're closed for preventative maintenance." Whatever the reasons for closure, in my expereince (3 trips to CP, 4 to MM) CP consistantly has more rides open and I consistantly have a better time at that park.
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I still don't get the whole "coaster capital of the world" concept... seems to be a kind of male macho/alpha animal/"there can only be one boss"/quasi-fascist spasmic brain paradigm... What's so hard about getting beyond the hierarchical perspective into a post-structuralist point of view:All coaster-parks are nodes in a network, they are all different in their interior- and microstructures as well as their tendencies.
The elements of our world aren't measured on a monodimensional scale, they actually form multidimensional networks of nodes, each with their own rules, hierarchies, and systems of meaning - connected and feeding of-of and into one another on every level.:o)
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...And MM is all the better since they stepped out of that inane coaster count race. That park is 100 percent on it's way back, as evident in my last visit.
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Did you guys go to MM last season because I defiantly noticed improvements, everything was open the park was dead and the right side of the park is always dead empty and I think Tatsu is probably one of the best coasters of all time. The park still has work but you guys described the park prior to last season.
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DO you think they're trying to counter the previous article with this one?
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