Gazza
Giga Poster
Well, I’m back in LA for my sisters wedding (She’s marrying an American) so naturally I’m hitting up a few of the theme parks. SFMM was open specially for Presidents day on Monday, and apparently the park isn’t too busy on this day, so it presented the perfect opportunity.
I’m still not old enough (Nor confident enough) to be driving a rental car in the US, so public transport was the go. Normally traveling in this manner can be bloody inconvenient in the US, however I’ve finally discovered a reasonable way to get up to Valencia. From the North Hollywood station on the LA Metro Red Line (One stop north of Universal City, where USH is) you can get a 757 bus run by Santa Clarita Transit. It runs express right up the I-5 and to the bus interchange in Valencia in about 35 mins, and the last one back from Valencia doesn’t leave until 8:22pm, so you aren’t stuck leaving early like what some of those organized coach tours make you do. It was perfect for me anyhow since my sisters apartment is a stones throw from North Hollywood anyway.
From the interchange you can taxi, take a local bus (This is less convenient since the frequency and operating hours are limited), or do what I did and go on foot. It’s about a 4km walk, which takes about 30-40 mins, and on the plus side as you walk up to the park you can take photos of X2.
The walk up to the park was nice actually. Last time I was in LA in winter (2008) It was brass monkeys, but today there was not a cloud in the sky and it was quite warm (in the 20s/70s) Plus, last time I walked up to the park I was sprinting across freeway offramp traffic where you walk under the I-5, but now there are pedestrian lights.
So I was at the front gate half an hour before the 10am opening, but was still a little way back from the gate. 10:30 rolled around, and after the obligatory “remember our soldiers” message over PA the gates opened, and I begun my run up to the X2.
I think the term “dropping off like flies” described the situation. I was a bit back in the crowd, but people tended to puff out pretty quickly so the crowd thinned and I was about the 5th person by the time I reached the entrance…No 1 hour plus waits for me
You can almost forgive the GP for thinking it is a brand new ride, since it does look nice and shiny and well finished. I snared the inside seat on the back row, so I got some amazing views of the park on the lift. The new trains are a bit more comfortable, but your legs still flap around a bit, and the rotations still aren’t all that smooth (It was funny when you go around the U turn and you progressively see each row of seats do a shuffle)I don’t really consider it “the best coaster evar!!!” like some people. I guess because it only really does a couple of good tricks with the seat rotations. Still, the first drop is awesome, the soundtrack fits (When you can hear it) and the flamethrowers are a nice trick. Two thumbs up.
After that I headed over to one of my top coasters, Tatsu (Well, I love flying coasters in general). It still is a stunning ride, really graceful, but forceful manouvers, and that pretzel loop is still insane. Last time I was at SFMM in 2007 I was using those paper flashpasses so I had only ridden in the back. The ride was walkon front row was easy to snare this time, yay.
From there I headed over to Terminator. I was really looking forward to this as I have ridden very few woodies to date, and all of them have been fairly average (The ones in SoCal, Gwazi) or fairly old (Historic ones in Australia and at Blackpool) so I guess this was my first ‘modern’ woodie. The theming was fairly well done (Post apocalyptic theming is easy to do, just raid the local junkyard) though it was a bit stereotypical in parts (Eg, words like “High Voltage” and “Danger” randomly stenciled on the fences in places. The preshows were not too boring, lots of deep rumbling and flashing lights. The story starts off with a female operative coming across a base at an abandoned amusement park by the I-5 (Guess which one!), her communications back to ‘human’ command lead her to discover that the base is one ex ‘machine’ held facility one occupied by the ‘humans’. Things turn ugly when command discovers a bunch of human civilians (aka us) have taken refuge there, and the machines are coming back to reclaim the facility. Fortunately the base is connected to a transport system, so we use that to evacuate (And the onboard audio has sounds of the machines in pursuit) The coaster was awesome! It had fast pacing (Which is something I love), lots of directional changes (love) and even a couple of pops of air (love). Heaps of fun! The leaky misters in the tunnels turn this into a water ride. I went around for a second go, the queue had built up to about 20 mins by this point, so at least the preshows didn’t really get in the way. After this subsequent re-rides were a bit out of the question. 1 train operation meant the queue was reaching 90 mins during the day.
From there I headed over to Riddlers Revenge. I headed around to the single rider queue, but it turns out that has been taken away since my last vist. Lol, all the time I wasted walking up and back the lengthy exit path I could have just waited 5 mins in the normal queue. I stood at the back, and got my harness low enough so the bicycle seat was well down and not touching, which really made the ride crazy with all the force entirely through my feet. Riddlers is a ride I quite like, the first half has all the old school B&M, fast paced, giant multi looper elements (Dive loops <3 ) and post MCBR its more twisty and turny, so you get that ski slalom feeling. I quite liked the sudden sharp banked turn before it goes up into the MCBR. Another great ride.
I can’t really marathon on large multi loopers that well, so I stopped for lunch at the Papa Johns. Sort of forgot that American theme parks serve boring pizza (Either cheese, or cheese and pepperoni) $7…fail.
Dear Papa Johns, Tomato, Capsicum, Onion, Ham, Cabanossi, Mushroom and Pineapple go on pizza too, please consider!
So after that I skipped the other two loopers on the other side of the park for the time being and went around to Goliath. Pretty decent ride…the tunnel at the bottom of the first drop still got me to duck, and that helix still has its bite. Too bad there is only one airtime hill on the whole ride.
After that I kept heading around, and discovered that Yosamite Sams Sierra Falls were open, which are basically enclosed watersides you ride in a little dinghy. It was fun, and thankfully not to wet.
After that I got a shake from Johnny Rockets and found myself back at Tatsu. Short (10-20 minute) queues all day meant I returned to this many times.
I then headed up the hill to go on the Skytower since that was shut last time I was here. It was broken down and we were told to return in 15 mins or so, so I did an unplanned ride on Superman….It was OK.
I headed back to the tower and went up. They have a museum up there with memorabila…I quite liked the concept art for the theming on some of the rides, and the models of Ninja and GASM. Screams test seat is up there too, so no idea how the fatties are coping at ground level. Got the obligatory photos, and on the lift ride down you can get some great face level photos of Tatsus corkscrew.
After that I went down and had a go on the newly blue painted Batman. I did a back row ride…Forgot how bloody intense this layout can be. Excellent! I sort of prefer short and intense loopers to longer ones actually.
After that I went on Scream. My ride on this in 2007 was front row, so I tried the back middle instead, which made the Zero G roll awesome, and the rest of the coaster is pretty sweet too. I don’t understand why this particular ride is so shaky though….Granted, its relative, and my head never hit the harness, but you’d think if the track and train were the same as other floorless’ there would be no difference, ah well. I reckon this ride would be a good candidate to get Bizzaro’ed too….The colour scheme is pretty much there (Needs a paint though) and everything else around the ride is scrappy enough to warrant a renovation.
I think after that I continued around to Tatsu again, before going on Viper. I rember back in the early naughties when I first became interested in coasters Arrow used to be the one everyone made fun of (“Rough old arrow”), but in reality, none of their rides I’ve fond too bad actually. Quite a lot of fun, and the way they do rather compact loops etc delivers quite a different feeling.
I was doing the day at an easy pace, so that’s why I had been lapping around the park a few times as opposed to doing stuff in sequence. Déjà vu and Ninja were both shut…Déjà vu I didn’t care about much, but Ninja was something that was closed on my last visit, and remains an elusive “credit” (Ugh, sorry to have used the ‘C’ word)
I wandered over to Terminator, discovered the 90 minute line I referred to earlier, and walked away dejected I wasn’t going to be re-riding….Why their newest toy was running 1 train was beyond me. Given GCI trains have shorter maintenance intervals I reckon they should’ve taken the Busch approach and bought an extra train so the ride would always be capable of running to full capacity.
I got some tea (Tenders and Fries…$9, I’m surprised they can get away with that sort of price in the US given how dirt cheap fast food chains are by comparison. I know theme park prices are always higher…In Australia, theme park food is expensive, but regular “High Street” fast food can be relatively expensive too, so there is less of a difference. In conclusion, I miss the UK parks!
It was getting dark by this point, so I did a night ride on Riddler, which was really cool. I have literally only been on coasters at night once or twice because late openings aren’t a regular thing at the Aussie parks (Halloween only really) so rushing through the cool night air was really enjoyable.
I finished the night perfectly with a few more rides on Tatsu.
Overall, I had a great time. Lines were non existent, and crews seemed to work much better than on my last visit (Eg stacking only happened because of slow guests, not slow crews) The park is cleaner in parts, and many of the coasters have been repainted. I still do think the Cyclone Bay/Collosus County Fair stretch at the back of the park is a bit of a blight, rebuild all the shabby looking shops along there and you’d have a very nice park actually.
I think the only blights on the day would’ve been.
-1 train on Terminator
-F&B outlets not selling juice, nor Alcohol (I know I’m not 21 for a couple of weeks, but it’s the principle of the matter)
-No single rider queues (Rides like Tatsu had heaps of empty seats going)
-No Taxi rank at the park.
But the park certainly feels much better to when I was there last, and I think the low crowds and easy pace helped things along.
Everyone has seen photos of the place, so I’ll just limit it to a handful of interesting ones:
SFMM is just a gift shop? All this time I thought it was one of the worlds biggest parks.
X2 on the way in.
Shuffle, Shuffle, Shuffle.
The Terminator preshow...better than I'd thought it'd be.
Why GCIs are awesome, it's all the criss crossing and twistyness.
The whole opening sequence of the coaster is pretty good!
****!
Good.
This is why I don't like American English. A savings of over $15.
They likes the plurals in the wrongs places.
Waterslides are fun.
Riddler
Tatsu from the Skytower.
Face to face with its corkscrew.
Benefits of Oxygen: It stops you dying.
Another diving loop <3
I thought this looked funny. Just an inverted coaster support out on its own, holding up a hoist in the Scream! maintenance area. UC, your challenge is to find photographic examples of these on other B&Ms.
The Terminator sign glows a bit after dark
The Tatsu theming budget ran out right about here.
Edit: Images are fixed now.
I’m still not old enough (Nor confident enough) to be driving a rental car in the US, so public transport was the go. Normally traveling in this manner can be bloody inconvenient in the US, however I’ve finally discovered a reasonable way to get up to Valencia. From the North Hollywood station on the LA Metro Red Line (One stop north of Universal City, where USH is) you can get a 757 bus run by Santa Clarita Transit. It runs express right up the I-5 and to the bus interchange in Valencia in about 35 mins, and the last one back from Valencia doesn’t leave until 8:22pm, so you aren’t stuck leaving early like what some of those organized coach tours make you do. It was perfect for me anyhow since my sisters apartment is a stones throw from North Hollywood anyway.
From the interchange you can taxi, take a local bus (This is less convenient since the frequency and operating hours are limited), or do what I did and go on foot. It’s about a 4km walk, which takes about 30-40 mins, and on the plus side as you walk up to the park you can take photos of X2.
The walk up to the park was nice actually. Last time I was in LA in winter (2008) It was brass monkeys, but today there was not a cloud in the sky and it was quite warm (in the 20s/70s) Plus, last time I walked up to the park I was sprinting across freeway offramp traffic where you walk under the I-5, but now there are pedestrian lights.
So I was at the front gate half an hour before the 10am opening, but was still a little way back from the gate. 10:30 rolled around, and after the obligatory “remember our soldiers” message over PA the gates opened, and I begun my run up to the X2.
I think the term “dropping off like flies” described the situation. I was a bit back in the crowd, but people tended to puff out pretty quickly so the crowd thinned and I was about the 5th person by the time I reached the entrance…No 1 hour plus waits for me
You can almost forgive the GP for thinking it is a brand new ride, since it does look nice and shiny and well finished. I snared the inside seat on the back row, so I got some amazing views of the park on the lift. The new trains are a bit more comfortable, but your legs still flap around a bit, and the rotations still aren’t all that smooth (It was funny when you go around the U turn and you progressively see each row of seats do a shuffle)I don’t really consider it “the best coaster evar!!!” like some people. I guess because it only really does a couple of good tricks with the seat rotations. Still, the first drop is awesome, the soundtrack fits (When you can hear it) and the flamethrowers are a nice trick. Two thumbs up.
After that I headed over to one of my top coasters, Tatsu (Well, I love flying coasters in general). It still is a stunning ride, really graceful, but forceful manouvers, and that pretzel loop is still insane. Last time I was at SFMM in 2007 I was using those paper flashpasses so I had only ridden in the back. The ride was walkon front row was easy to snare this time, yay.
From there I headed over to Terminator. I was really looking forward to this as I have ridden very few woodies to date, and all of them have been fairly average (The ones in SoCal, Gwazi) or fairly old (Historic ones in Australia and at Blackpool) so I guess this was my first ‘modern’ woodie. The theming was fairly well done (Post apocalyptic theming is easy to do, just raid the local junkyard) though it was a bit stereotypical in parts (Eg, words like “High Voltage” and “Danger” randomly stenciled on the fences in places. The preshows were not too boring, lots of deep rumbling and flashing lights. The story starts off with a female operative coming across a base at an abandoned amusement park by the I-5 (Guess which one!), her communications back to ‘human’ command lead her to discover that the base is one ex ‘machine’ held facility one occupied by the ‘humans’. Things turn ugly when command discovers a bunch of human civilians (aka us) have taken refuge there, and the machines are coming back to reclaim the facility. Fortunately the base is connected to a transport system, so we use that to evacuate (And the onboard audio has sounds of the machines in pursuit) The coaster was awesome! It had fast pacing (Which is something I love), lots of directional changes (love) and even a couple of pops of air (love). Heaps of fun! The leaky misters in the tunnels turn this into a water ride. I went around for a second go, the queue had built up to about 20 mins by this point, so at least the preshows didn’t really get in the way. After this subsequent re-rides were a bit out of the question. 1 train operation meant the queue was reaching 90 mins during the day.
From there I headed over to Riddlers Revenge. I headed around to the single rider queue, but it turns out that has been taken away since my last vist. Lol, all the time I wasted walking up and back the lengthy exit path I could have just waited 5 mins in the normal queue. I stood at the back, and got my harness low enough so the bicycle seat was well down and not touching, which really made the ride crazy with all the force entirely through my feet. Riddlers is a ride I quite like, the first half has all the old school B&M, fast paced, giant multi looper elements (Dive loops <3 ) and post MCBR its more twisty and turny, so you get that ski slalom feeling. I quite liked the sudden sharp banked turn before it goes up into the MCBR. Another great ride.
I can’t really marathon on large multi loopers that well, so I stopped for lunch at the Papa Johns. Sort of forgot that American theme parks serve boring pizza (Either cheese, or cheese and pepperoni) $7…fail.
Dear Papa Johns, Tomato, Capsicum, Onion, Ham, Cabanossi, Mushroom and Pineapple go on pizza too, please consider!
So after that I skipped the other two loopers on the other side of the park for the time being and went around to Goliath. Pretty decent ride…the tunnel at the bottom of the first drop still got me to duck, and that helix still has its bite. Too bad there is only one airtime hill on the whole ride.
After that I kept heading around, and discovered that Yosamite Sams Sierra Falls were open, which are basically enclosed watersides you ride in a little dinghy. It was fun, and thankfully not to wet.
After that I got a shake from Johnny Rockets and found myself back at Tatsu. Short (10-20 minute) queues all day meant I returned to this many times.
I then headed up the hill to go on the Skytower since that was shut last time I was here. It was broken down and we were told to return in 15 mins or so, so I did an unplanned ride on Superman….It was OK.
I headed back to the tower and went up. They have a museum up there with memorabila…I quite liked the concept art for the theming on some of the rides, and the models of Ninja and GASM. Screams test seat is up there too, so no idea how the fatties are coping at ground level. Got the obligatory photos, and on the lift ride down you can get some great face level photos of Tatsus corkscrew.
After that I went down and had a go on the newly blue painted Batman. I did a back row ride…Forgot how bloody intense this layout can be. Excellent! I sort of prefer short and intense loopers to longer ones actually.
After that I went on Scream. My ride on this in 2007 was front row, so I tried the back middle instead, which made the Zero G roll awesome, and the rest of the coaster is pretty sweet too. I don’t understand why this particular ride is so shaky though….Granted, its relative, and my head never hit the harness, but you’d think if the track and train were the same as other floorless’ there would be no difference, ah well. I reckon this ride would be a good candidate to get Bizzaro’ed too….The colour scheme is pretty much there (Needs a paint though) and everything else around the ride is scrappy enough to warrant a renovation.
I think after that I continued around to Tatsu again, before going on Viper. I rember back in the early naughties when I first became interested in coasters Arrow used to be the one everyone made fun of (“Rough old arrow”), but in reality, none of their rides I’ve fond too bad actually. Quite a lot of fun, and the way they do rather compact loops etc delivers quite a different feeling.
I was doing the day at an easy pace, so that’s why I had been lapping around the park a few times as opposed to doing stuff in sequence. Déjà vu and Ninja were both shut…Déjà vu I didn’t care about much, but Ninja was something that was closed on my last visit, and remains an elusive “credit” (Ugh, sorry to have used the ‘C’ word)
I wandered over to Terminator, discovered the 90 minute line I referred to earlier, and walked away dejected I wasn’t going to be re-riding….Why their newest toy was running 1 train was beyond me. Given GCI trains have shorter maintenance intervals I reckon they should’ve taken the Busch approach and bought an extra train so the ride would always be capable of running to full capacity.
I got some tea (Tenders and Fries…$9, I’m surprised they can get away with that sort of price in the US given how dirt cheap fast food chains are by comparison. I know theme park prices are always higher…In Australia, theme park food is expensive, but regular “High Street” fast food can be relatively expensive too, so there is less of a difference. In conclusion, I miss the UK parks!
It was getting dark by this point, so I did a night ride on Riddler, which was really cool. I have literally only been on coasters at night once or twice because late openings aren’t a regular thing at the Aussie parks (Halloween only really) so rushing through the cool night air was really enjoyable.
I finished the night perfectly with a few more rides on Tatsu.
Overall, I had a great time. Lines were non existent, and crews seemed to work much better than on my last visit (Eg stacking only happened because of slow guests, not slow crews) The park is cleaner in parts, and many of the coasters have been repainted. I still do think the Cyclone Bay/Collosus County Fair stretch at the back of the park is a bit of a blight, rebuild all the shabby looking shops along there and you’d have a very nice park actually.
I think the only blights on the day would’ve been.
-1 train on Terminator
-F&B outlets not selling juice, nor Alcohol (I know I’m not 21 for a couple of weeks, but it’s the principle of the matter)
-No single rider queues (Rides like Tatsu had heaps of empty seats going)
-No Taxi rank at the park.
But the park certainly feels much better to when I was there last, and I think the low crowds and easy pace helped things along.
Everyone has seen photos of the place, so I’ll just limit it to a handful of interesting ones:
SFMM is just a gift shop? All this time I thought it was one of the worlds biggest parks.
X2 on the way in.
Shuffle, Shuffle, Shuffle.
The Terminator preshow...better than I'd thought it'd be.
Why GCIs are awesome, it's all the criss crossing and twistyness.
The whole opening sequence of the coaster is pretty good!
****!
Good.
This is why I don't like American English. A savings of over $15.
They likes the plurals in the wrongs places.
Waterslides are fun.
Riddler
Tatsu from the Skytower.
Face to face with its corkscrew.
Benefits of Oxygen: It stops you dying.
Another diving loop <3
I thought this looked funny. Just an inverted coaster support out on its own, holding up a hoist in the Scream! maintenance area. UC, your challenge is to find photographic examples of these on other B&Ms.
The Terminator sign glows a bit after dark
The Tatsu theming budget ran out right about here.
Edit: Images are fixed now.
