Sorry for the no-news bump, but I think I've finally figured out what bugged me the most about West Coast Racer: The inversions.
It is not a very impressive coaster stat-wise. Top speed of 90-ish km/h, a little over a kilometer of track, ride time of a couple minutes, racing for added fun, it's bigger than the kiddie rides at the park, but smaller than the headliners, and all in all a good stepping stone to the big coa-
...oh, hold on, that's Gemini at Cedar Point. West Coast Racers does mostly the same, but with four inversions. That places it firmly outside of stepping stone territory, as the mere presence of an inversion makes any coaster more daunting for new riders. RCDB has it classified in the Extreme category, whereas Gemini is Thrill. West Coast racers is clearly meant to be in the "big league", a job at which it fails spectacularly, as per the reactions in this thread. It doesn't have the raw size of Scream, Goliath or Riddler, not the white-knuckle factor of X2 or Tatsu, or even the speed of Full Throttle or Superman. Whether or not it has the forcefulness of Twisted Colossus remains to be seen, but at best it's redundant with that coaster.
As far as its stats go, it is more in line with Cedar Point's Gemini, or possibly Verbolten at BGW. Those that are smaller than the big thrill machines at its park, but definitely not kiddie rides. They're the ones you take the kids on when they're big enough to ride the big coasters, but still scared of going upside down. Essentially high-caliber family rides, but no teen would be ashamed of being seen on them either. They go fast (but not too fast), they have some of the markings of high-intensity coasters, but no sheer drops, nor do they throw you heels-over-head.
Except West Coast Racers does. The inversions put it outside the category of stepping stone, in which it could have excelled, and into the Extreme category where it doesn't impress. It seems too small to stand out among the powerhouses of Magic Mountain, yet too "scary" to be a treat for the families. It falls between chairs in a slightly awkward way. As such, it doesn't fill a niche, it doesn't do more than what other coasters at the park do better, and it fails to do the job it could have been really good at. I think it would have been much better received if it hadn't tried to pass off as a white-knuckle ride.