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Magic Mountain weekend
So as you may know, I finally got to go to Magic Mountain this Saturday! It was my first time there after TWELVE years! I love roller coasters and they have some great ones, so I'd been wanting to go back for the longest time; the only problem is it's in southern California and a pretty long drive from where I live. But as it turns out, my cousin Daniel also loves roller coasters and Magic Mountain, but no one else in his family does so he has no one to go with. So I found a roller coaster buddy in my cousin :) He lives much closer to the park than I do, so I was able to stay with and visit his family for the weekend as well as go with him to the park.
Anyway, my weekend trip started Friday morning. My aunt inherited a ranch house that has a duck pond in the backyard, so I decided to move the ducks there (mainly because they'd be happier with a big pond than a little wading pool, and because my dad doesn't like the noise they make). Friday morning I cleaned out the dog crate they use as a house and then had to catch them and put them inside. They hate being caught and held, so I had to corner them and grab them as fast as I could. It took a few minutes, but I got them both inside the crate. Then I collapsed their pen and tied that and the crate into the bed of my truck. This took some time since I wanted to make sure both were really secure and wouldn't move at all on the long drive down to Fresno. The drive down went well, and I stopped a couple of times to give the ducks water and lettuce. I got to my aunt's house, picked up her and my uncle, and then we went out to the ranch.
The duck pond there has an island in the middle and a little bridge that leads out to it. I brought the ducks out there and opened the crate to let them out. They didn't move. After waiting a few minutes I finally reached in and pulled Ooishi out, and then Kikumaru followed. They looked really confused and had no idea what to make of things. Before this all they knew of the world was their little pen and plastic pool; now they had an entire pond complete with island to themselves! They slowly checked it out, and I herded them into the water so they could figure out they had lots of room to swim now. They seemed kind of scared at first, but quickly got used to it and started eating the plants that grow in the water. They also found their way back to the low part of the island and climbed out. They've been there for three days now and seem to like it, so I'm glad for that.
Friday night I stayed over with my aunt and uncle and two cousins, and Saturday morning Daniel and I left for Magic Mountain at about 7:20. Google Maps had said it was a 3.5 hour drive, my aunt said it was about a 3 hour drive, but I actually did it in a little over 2.5 hours (because I was going 80 mph almost the entire time ^^; ). We arrived at the park 15 minutes before they were supposed to open, perfect timing. I called![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jaleely and found out that she and Kevin were going to get there about 11 am, so we went ahead and went in.
As expected, most of the rides had changed since the last time I had been there. The first ride Daniel took me to was X, which is only a couple of years old. This is the most bizarre roller coaster I've ever seen or been on, and apparently it's the only one of its kind; they call it a "4th dimensional" roller coaster. Instead of being above or below the train, the seats stick out to each side of the track, two seats on each side. You sit in the seat and have a harness you put your arms through that fastens across your chest; then as the ride starts the seats tilt back so you're looking up at the sky as you climb the first hill. That's not the end of it, though. As you start to go over top (still looking up but falling down head first), the seats flip you completely over backwards so you're now staring straight at the ground as you plummet toward it! And it just keeps going like this. As the train goes along all the loops and turns and rolls of the track, your seat is also flipping you over forwards and backwards at the same time. It's pretty nerve-wracking because you never have any idea which direction you'll be going next. Obviously it's the most popular ride there and has the longest wait to get on (although a lot of that is due to the fact that getting people in and out of the seats takes forever).
Next we thought about going on Viper since it's right next to X, but the line was really long so we decided to do it later. But we metjaleely and Kevin there and started heading toward the other end of the park where there were fewer people. On the way there we went on the log ride and got totally soaked because the weight of four adults in one log make for huge splashes! But this was okay because it was really freaking hot out and the cold water felt good. We continued to the far side of the park and went on what turned out to be both Daniel's and my favorite ride, Goliath. Goliath is a HUGE roller coaster (as you might have guessed from its name, ha), and it had almost no line! Since the wait was so short Daniel and I went for the front seat, and it was awesome. Goliath starts out with a 255 foot drop that's so steep that when you go over it, it looks like it's almost past vertical. Goliath doesn't go upside down at all so it only had lap bars, but it does tons of hills and sideways turns, and it's a totally awesome ride!
After this we were ready for lunch, so we got some extremely expensive food and then continued on to more rides. Next we went on Scream, another fairly new coaster. On this one you seat in seats but there's no floor for your feet, so you're kind of hovering above the track; the ride has tons of loops and it's lots of fun. Next we went on Colossus, an old wooden roller coaster but a really big one. It was fun but has defintely gotten more bumpy than the last time I went on it. We continued on to Batman the ride, which is 100% identical to Top Gun at Great America; so it was fun but definitely not worth the wait since I can ride that anytime back at home. After this Daniel and I split up fromjaleely and Kevin since they wanted to go on the bumper cars and Ninja, and we wanted to go on Riddler's Revenge, which they didn't. We went over to Riddler's Revenge but ended up not going since the line was way too long; instead we went on another water ride, Splashdown or something like that. The line looked fairly short but still took a long time! It was a total rip off too because there was NO splash at the end; the only water I got on me was on the bottom of my pants from the water sloshing around in the bottom of the boat. Ugh.
Next we climbed this huge freaking hill to get to Superman; I was exhausted by the time we got to the top. Luckily the entire line for Superman takes place inside a super-air conditioned building; the wait in line was almost as good as the ride itself because it was so hot out! When we got to the front a couple of guys let us go ahead of them so they could stay with their group, so we went ahead and got on. The Superman ride has a small car that seats 15 people and uses electromagnets to shoot you from a stand still to 100 mph in seven seconds. You get shot out of a little room and straight up a tower that's 41 stories high; then you fall back down and end where you started. Or at least that's what's supposed to happen, as I later found out! When we went on the ride we went up just fine, but when we came back down we shot out backwards past the room where the car is supposed to stop and onto the rest of the track in the back where they do maintainance and stuff. I thought that was just part of the ride, but then all the employees came running out saying things like "Is everyone okay? No one passed out? Anyone having a heart attack, anything like that?" I had no idea what all the commotion was about, but then Daniel told me we weren't supposed to be out there and that we should have stopped inside! We spent the next ten or fifteen minutes sitting in the sun while the car slowly inched its way back into the building (which was only maybe ten feet away). Once we were back inside and they had everything in order, they asked us if we wanted to go again. Everyone said yes so we shot out once again, but this time when we came back we stopped in the building where we were supposed to and everybody cheered. So that was a bit of an adventure. I bet those guys are sorry they let us go ahead of them since they had to wait probably twenty or more minutes for their turn!
Next we had some time to kill before the Batman show was going to start at 5:30, so we went on a small roller coaster called the Gold Rusher. The girl there doing the announcing for it was *way* too cheerful and excited about this mini-coaster. It was all "Gold Rusher!" this and "Gold Rusher!" that; she never shut up, either, she talked the entire time. Luckily the line was really short so we weren't there for very long. Although the ride is pretty tame, it's still fun.
After this we went to get some soft frozen lemonades and went to see the Batman Begins stunt show. I haven't seen Batman Begins yet, so I really had no idea what was going on. Apparently the stunt show is like a condensed version of the movie. It was pretty cool, with a few exceptions. At one point a guy riding a motorcycle slipped and fell off (which wasn't supposed to happen), but continued what he was supposed to do anyway (get off, shoot people, ride away). Except when he picked up the bike and tried to start it nothing happened, so he just smiled and waved and ran off stage on foot with the bike. At the end he got the biggest cheers for all his trouble. The other thing was there's a water cannon that goes off near the end of the show that just *sprays* nearly half the audience for a good minute or so, so if you're in that section (we were) you get soaked. There are some warning signs, but they say "Splash Zone" not "Soak Through All Your Clothes Zone"! I was on the very edge of the spray so I didn't get much water, but Daniel got pretty wet. The other thing that sucked was there was a family sitting behind us with two babies. There are lots of extremely loud bangs and fireballs and stuff that go off in the show, so every time something like that happened the babies would start screaming! I don't know what those idiot parents were thinking by bringing them there.
We gave up and decided to go ahead and wait for Riddler's Revenge; the line wasn't any better and it took a long time to get to the front. While we were waiting in line right ahead of us was a group of loud, young teenagers (probably about 14-15 years old) who were just incredibly annoying. But then about halfway through the line one of the girls got some kind of monstrous nosebleed and started gushing blood all over everything: the ground, the hand rails, her friends...so she and one of her friends left the line to run off to the bathroom, and the rest of them were quiet and behaved after that. By the way, is it some kind of fad among young girls these days to line your eyes completely in dark liner so you look like raccoon? I counted at least five or six girls like that ahead of me in that line that looked just like that, worsened by the fact that a couple of them looked like they were only about 11 or 12 years old! I thought they all looked absolutley ridiculous. Anyway, after a long wait we finally got on Riddler's Revenge. This is a stand-up coaster just like Vortex at Great America (and it's even the same color). I was afraid it'd be exactly like Vortex and would have been a waste of time to wait for, but it turned out to be longer and have more loops than Vortex, so I liked it.
We continued back around to the front of the park where we had started, and we decided to pass up Psyclone and Deja Vu. Psyclone is the bumpiest, most rickety piece of crap wooden coaster I've ever been on so I knew I didn't want to go on that, and Psyclone is just like Invertigo at Great America. So we continued along and by this time the crowd on that side of the park was gone and there were no lines for Viper and Revolution. I love Viper, it's the biggest looping roller coaster in the world, and we got in the front seat for that. Revolution is fun as well, it's the first looping coaster ever built.
After Revolution we went to wait in line to go on X again since the line was now much shorter than before.jaleely and Kevin also came over and got in line for X, but on the opposite side of the train. Although the line was shorter, we ended up waiting just as long as before because all these stupid people with Fast Lane passes kept going ahead of us and kept picking the seats we were waiting for! It was incredibly irritating. Finally we got to go on X again, and after that we went on Viper, Scream, and Goliath for a second time each. We got off of Goliath just before closing time and then headed out to the front of the park where I got a Goliath keychain and a funnel cake (yum!). In the parking lot we took some pictures and said goodbye to jaleely and Kevin and then headed off to the motel. It was a very fun day!
Oh! I forgot to mention that on Thursday night I went withgokumew2 and wasabi_fiend to the circus in San Jose (seeing my Pierrot icon reminded me). The clowns sucked, but the animals and some of the human performances were cool. They had some gorgeous Friesians and Arabians and Norwegian Fjords performing, and I also liked the elephants and tigers (but the tiger trainer was a total nutjob; he had one of the most annoying voices I've ever heard!). I wonder which of the circus people had gone riding at the stable two days before...After the circus we got In N Out for dinner and went back to my house to talk about anime and watch some of the Seki Tomokazu panel from AX this year. 'Twas much fun ^_^
Anyway, my weekend trip started Friday morning. My aunt inherited a ranch house that has a duck pond in the backyard, so I decided to move the ducks there (mainly because they'd be happier with a big pond than a little wading pool, and because my dad doesn't like the noise they make). Friday morning I cleaned out the dog crate they use as a house and then had to catch them and put them inside. They hate being caught and held, so I had to corner them and grab them as fast as I could. It took a few minutes, but I got them both inside the crate. Then I collapsed their pen and tied that and the crate into the bed of my truck. This took some time since I wanted to make sure both were really secure and wouldn't move at all on the long drive down to Fresno. The drive down went well, and I stopped a couple of times to give the ducks water and lettuce. I got to my aunt's house, picked up her and my uncle, and then we went out to the ranch.
The duck pond there has an island in the middle and a little bridge that leads out to it. I brought the ducks out there and opened the crate to let them out. They didn't move. After waiting a few minutes I finally reached in and pulled Ooishi out, and then Kikumaru followed. They looked really confused and had no idea what to make of things. Before this all they knew of the world was their little pen and plastic pool; now they had an entire pond complete with island to themselves! They slowly checked it out, and I herded them into the water so they could figure out they had lots of room to swim now. They seemed kind of scared at first, but quickly got used to it and started eating the plants that grow in the water. They also found their way back to the low part of the island and climbed out. They've been there for three days now and seem to like it, so I'm glad for that.
Friday night I stayed over with my aunt and uncle and two cousins, and Saturday morning Daniel and I left for Magic Mountain at about 7:20. Google Maps had said it was a 3.5 hour drive, my aunt said it was about a 3 hour drive, but I actually did it in a little over 2.5 hours (because I was going 80 mph almost the entire time ^^; ). We arrived at the park 15 minutes before they were supposed to open, perfect timing. I called
jaleely and found out that she and Kevin were going to get there about 11 am, so we went ahead and went in. As expected, most of the rides had changed since the last time I had been there. The first ride Daniel took me to was X, which is only a couple of years old. This is the most bizarre roller coaster I've ever seen or been on, and apparently it's the only one of its kind; they call it a "4th dimensional" roller coaster. Instead of being above or below the train, the seats stick out to each side of the track, two seats on each side. You sit in the seat and have a harness you put your arms through that fastens across your chest; then as the ride starts the seats tilt back so you're looking up at the sky as you climb the first hill. That's not the end of it, though. As you start to go over top (still looking up but falling down head first), the seats flip you completely over backwards so you're now staring straight at the ground as you plummet toward it! And it just keeps going like this. As the train goes along all the loops and turns and rolls of the track, your seat is also flipping you over forwards and backwards at the same time. It's pretty nerve-wracking because you never have any idea which direction you'll be going next. Obviously it's the most popular ride there and has the longest wait to get on (although a lot of that is due to the fact that getting people in and out of the seats takes forever).
Next we thought about going on Viper since it's right next to X, but the line was really long so we decided to do it later. But we met
jaleely and Kevin there and started heading toward the other end of the park where there were fewer people. On the way there we went on the log ride and got totally soaked because the weight of four adults in one log make for huge splashes! But this was okay because it was really freaking hot out and the cold water felt good. We continued to the far side of the park and went on what turned out to be both Daniel's and my favorite ride, Goliath. Goliath is a HUGE roller coaster (as you might have guessed from its name, ha), and it had almost no line! Since the wait was so short Daniel and I went for the front seat, and it was awesome. Goliath starts out with a 255 foot drop that's so steep that when you go over it, it looks like it's almost past vertical. Goliath doesn't go upside down at all so it only had lap bars, but it does tons of hills and sideways turns, and it's a totally awesome ride!After this we were ready for lunch, so we got some extremely expensive food and then continued on to more rides. Next we went on Scream, another fairly new coaster. On this one you seat in seats but there's no floor for your feet, so you're kind of hovering above the track; the ride has tons of loops and it's lots of fun. Next we went on Colossus, an old wooden roller coaster but a really big one. It was fun but has defintely gotten more bumpy than the last time I went on it. We continued on to Batman the ride, which is 100% identical to Top Gun at Great America; so it was fun but definitely not worth the wait since I can ride that anytime back at home. After this Daniel and I split up from
jaleely and Kevin since they wanted to go on the bumper cars and Ninja, and we wanted to go on Riddler's Revenge, which they didn't. We went over to Riddler's Revenge but ended up not going since the line was way too long; instead we went on another water ride, Splashdown or something like that. The line looked fairly short but still took a long time! It was a total rip off too because there was NO splash at the end; the only water I got on me was on the bottom of my pants from the water sloshing around in the bottom of the boat. Ugh. Next we climbed this huge freaking hill to get to Superman; I was exhausted by the time we got to the top. Luckily the entire line for Superman takes place inside a super-air conditioned building; the wait in line was almost as good as the ride itself because it was so hot out! When we got to the front a couple of guys let us go ahead of them so they could stay with their group, so we went ahead and got on. The Superman ride has a small car that seats 15 people and uses electromagnets to shoot you from a stand still to 100 mph in seven seconds. You get shot out of a little room and straight up a tower that's 41 stories high; then you fall back down and end where you started. Or at least that's what's supposed to happen, as I later found out! When we went on the ride we went up just fine, but when we came back down we shot out backwards past the room where the car is supposed to stop and onto the rest of the track in the back where they do maintainance and stuff. I thought that was just part of the ride, but then all the employees came running out saying things like "Is everyone okay? No one passed out? Anyone having a heart attack, anything like that?" I had no idea what all the commotion was about, but then Daniel told me we weren't supposed to be out there and that we should have stopped inside! We spent the next ten or fifteen minutes sitting in the sun while the car slowly inched its way back into the building (which was only maybe ten feet away). Once we were back inside and they had everything in order, they asked us if we wanted to go again. Everyone said yes so we shot out once again, but this time when we came back we stopped in the building where we were supposed to and everybody cheered. So that was a bit of an adventure. I bet those guys are sorry they let us go ahead of them since they had to wait probably twenty or more minutes for their turn!
Next we had some time to kill before the Batman show was going to start at 5:30, so we went on a small roller coaster called the Gold Rusher. The girl there doing the announcing for it was *way* too cheerful and excited about this mini-coaster. It was all "Gold Rusher!" this and "Gold Rusher!" that; she never shut up, either, she talked the entire time. Luckily the line was really short so we weren't there for very long. Although the ride is pretty tame, it's still fun.
After this we went to get some soft frozen lemonades and went to see the Batman Begins stunt show. I haven't seen Batman Begins yet, so I really had no idea what was going on. Apparently the stunt show is like a condensed version of the movie. It was pretty cool, with a few exceptions. At one point a guy riding a motorcycle slipped and fell off (which wasn't supposed to happen), but continued what he was supposed to do anyway (get off, shoot people, ride away). Except when he picked up the bike and tried to start it nothing happened, so he just smiled and waved and ran off stage on foot with the bike. At the end he got the biggest cheers for all his trouble. The other thing was there's a water cannon that goes off near the end of the show that just *sprays* nearly half the audience for a good minute or so, so if you're in that section (we were) you get soaked. There are some warning signs, but they say "Splash Zone" not "Soak Through All Your Clothes Zone"! I was on the very edge of the spray so I didn't get much water, but Daniel got pretty wet. The other thing that sucked was there was a family sitting behind us with two babies. There are lots of extremely loud bangs and fireballs and stuff that go off in the show, so every time something like that happened the babies would start screaming! I don't know what those idiot parents were thinking by bringing them there.
We gave up and decided to go ahead and wait for Riddler's Revenge; the line wasn't any better and it took a long time to get to the front. While we were waiting in line right ahead of us was a group of loud, young teenagers (probably about 14-15 years old) who were just incredibly annoying. But then about halfway through the line one of the girls got some kind of monstrous nosebleed and started gushing blood all over everything: the ground, the hand rails, her friends...so she and one of her friends left the line to run off to the bathroom, and the rest of them were quiet and behaved after that. By the way, is it some kind of fad among young girls these days to line your eyes completely in dark liner so you look like raccoon? I counted at least five or six girls like that ahead of me in that line that looked just like that, worsened by the fact that a couple of them looked like they were only about 11 or 12 years old! I thought they all looked absolutley ridiculous. Anyway, after a long wait we finally got on Riddler's Revenge. This is a stand-up coaster just like Vortex at Great America (and it's even the same color). I was afraid it'd be exactly like Vortex and would have been a waste of time to wait for, but it turned out to be longer and have more loops than Vortex, so I liked it.
We continued back around to the front of the park where we had started, and we decided to pass up Psyclone and Deja Vu. Psyclone is the bumpiest, most rickety piece of crap wooden coaster I've ever been on so I knew I didn't want to go on that, and Psyclone is just like Invertigo at Great America. So we continued along and by this time the crowd on that side of the park was gone and there were no lines for Viper and Revolution. I love Viper, it's the biggest looping roller coaster in the world, and we got in the front seat for that. Revolution is fun as well, it's the first looping coaster ever built.
After Revolution we went to wait in line to go on X again since the line was now much shorter than before.
jaleely and Kevin also came over and got in line for X, but on the opposite side of the train. Although the line was shorter, we ended up waiting just as long as before because all these stupid people with Fast Lane passes kept going ahead of us and kept picking the seats we were waiting for! It was incredibly irritating. Finally we got to go on X again, and after that we went on Viper, Scream, and Goliath for a second time each. We got off of Goliath just before closing time and then headed out to the front of the park where I got a Goliath keychain and a funnel cake (yum!). In the parking lot we took some pictures and said goodbye to jaleely and Kevin and then headed off to the motel. It was a very fun day!Oh! I forgot to mention that on Thursday night I went with
gokumew2 and wasabi_fiend to the circus in San Jose (seeing my Pierrot icon reminded me). The clowns sucked, but the animals and some of the human performances were cool. They had some gorgeous Friesians and Arabians and Norwegian Fjords performing, and I also liked the elephants and tigers (but the tiger trainer was a total nutjob; he had one of the most annoying voices I've ever heard!). I wonder which of the circus people had gone riding at the stable two days before...After the circus we got In N Out for dinner and went back to my house to talk about anime and watch some of the Seki Tomokazu panel from AX this year. 'Twas much fun ^_^