May 12 - Six Flags Magic Mountain

"Warm-up" stop: Home Turf. Six Flags Magic Mountain

In order to get our feet wet for our trip, our first stop was our "local" park: Magic Mountain.  A beautiful day, except just slightly windy. Unfortunately, just windy enough to keep one of our favorite 'coasters, X-2, closed for the day.  No big deal; they have so many more great rides!

Very small crowd on this Monday. We got in early with our gold passes.

We started out on an old favorite: Colossus. This great wooden roller coaster opened in 1978. (Gordon was there 2 days after it opened.) To keep up interest, they are running the ride with the cars facing BACKWARDS!  This makes an already jarring ride even more surprising.

We tried their new ride, Full Throttle. Massive acceleration (linear motor), good hang at the top of the loop, and a surprise in the tunnel.

"Batman" is another ride they were running with the chairs backwards. P and I felt it would have been better if they weren't.

Right after that, we tried "Green Lantern." This is a truly unique ride, with a car that translates vertically on a track while the seat assemblies rotate. Very odd feelings, but a rough ride. Gordon actually bruised his calf on this one. (But it goes in the category of "Any ride that can hurt you is a good ride.")

Did you know that Magic Mountain has geese wandering around? We didn't!

We rode several other attractions (Goliath, Apocalypse, Tatsu), with the gold medal going to Tatsu.

A wonderful kick-off day!