u/doeeyedfinalgirl

thanks for any advice, looking to buy for the first time

anyone know where this is located? was told my driver's side door but i don't see it anywhere

hi all,

i just had a quick question for anyone who's seen the utena show and movie. i was invited to see the move tonight, and i have my a-list so i don't mind the slot, but i've never seen the anime. well, i just watched the first episode (and i would have watched way earlier if i knew it was gay!!) but i of course won't get through the show by 7 pm tonight.

as i understand it from trying to search, the movie is somewhere between a condensed retelling and other-world reimagining of the show, with maybe a bit of sequel material? i read it's intended by the creators to be standalone, but it seems like a lot of the show's fans don't agree? anyway, if i can get through a few more set-up episodes before tonight will i have enough of a grounding to watch the movie, or am i going to be hopelessly lost without seeing the full show? i don't mind a bit of confusion

thanks in advance to anyone who can help! kind of an awkward place to ask but i think the a-list sub would understand the desire to see the movie in the brief period it's available in theatres (and it's a two-day event, 6/21 and 6/22, so if anyone wants to see it today's your chance)

Hi all! Strap in but do NOT pull down your lap bars for an extremely long trip report from my most recent MM trip, along with some of my thoughts about the park's current direction since the merger.

My partner and I got up Sunday and decided to go to Magic Mountain on a whim. We usually like to get an earlier start, but we didn’t end up getting on the road until around 9:25. Traffic took a bit less than an hour at that point, so we arrived and parked in the preferred lot around 10:20. We speedwalked up to the front gate, unfortunately my partner was stopped by security but I breezed through the preferred entrance a few minutes before rope drop. (I know they’ve been changing around rope drop procedures lately, I’m not sure if they had an early rope drop for prestige but it seemed like they did). They were holding people in front of the carousel on the park’s left side. I used the bathroom and waited for my partner to catch up, and we got going for X2 as soon as they dropped the rope. There was a bit of a glut of people rope dropping, even though the park ended up being pretty empty most of our time there.

We ended up on the third train of the day for X2—I believe the first was prestige, as it wasn’t full. They left at least one empty row on both sides of the train for each car I saw, and had an issue that caused a several-minute delay where they couldn’t get a restraint to unlock on the train ahead of us. Two train ops can’t come soon enough. No fire on our ride, but X2 was running incredibly, one of the best rides I’ve had.

Following that we moved toward Tatsu, noticing that The Great American Revolution had a pretty long wait, which seemed to persist throughout the day. I grabbed an icee from the stand right there (still feels weird to see boysenberry here), and we basically walked on Tatsu as the train rolled into the station. One train ops.

From there we wanted to go to Ninja, unfortunately missing the gate just past Tatsu and having to backtrack a bit. Two train ops here, and they seemed to move relatively quickly…unlike the lift, both into the station and up the hill. We came down the hill by Gold Rusher, opting to go toward West Coast Racers instead. A station wait there, too, and then we went back toward Apocalypse, which had two train ops and was a near walk-on. At that point it was a few before noon; my partner went to get food while I did one more lap on the other Apocalypse train, and then I got my food as well. The carnitas tacos from Twin Charged Tacos seemed solid, although they could be toasting the tortillas longer (similar to Casa California at Knott’s; they also have the same salsa).

Crazanity appeared to be down for the day, as they had the crane parked next to the ride, so we went over to Wonder Woman, only having to wait from the bottom of the stairs. Batman was a walk on, and it was a pretty boring ride that day unfortunately. It’s slipped in my park rankings. From there we moved over to Twisted Colossus, which had a 15-minute wait, probably our longest for a coaster of the day. Ops are ridiculously bad here, in a number of ways. The guy they had grouping appeared unable to count the rows, constantly leaving open rows past the airgates opening, and despite that also felt the need to deny row requests for “the flow.” When we finished our second lap the next train was still in the station. Embarrassing for the park.

Scream was a decent ride that afternoon…idk if it’s me but I really wish they’d get rid of the air horn. Unnecessary and also loud enough that it can and will damage employees’ hearing if they keep playing it 30 times an hour all shift. From there we used our prestige fast pass on Goliath, which seemed to have the longest line we saw all day. That’s in part because ops are also quite slow here; I’ve been on Titan at SFoT and they actually use the timer in their station. A reminder that this ride has a stated capacity of 1,600 riders per hour, which would require a dispatch every 67.5 seconds. I think MM is lucky if they’re getting a train out in twice that interval. Particularly given that this was a light day, and operations only get slower on busy days with the time it takes them to accommodate their patched-together ADA system, I think the park’s failure on this front is galling when they’re working on the guest experience in a lot of other facets. It was a great lap; I wish I’d got to experience Goliath without the exuberant mid-course brake run, but I don’t understand the hate it gets. I gray out on the helix every time!

From there, my partner went to the restroom, and I went to grab an icee from Food etc. (the name of which will always crack me up). Well, I tried to, only to learn that they removed that icee machine in favor of an alcoholic slushee machine. I’m fine with moving it to that spot, but they could have placed that machine somewhere else in that cafeteria…Instead they just removed it entirely, and I was told that the closest remaining icee machine is by Big Belly Burgers, which is easily 1,500 feet away. What a crappy way to treat guests, especially those who paid for the drink plan.

For our last ride of the day we went on Full Throttle, which surprisingly had probably a 10 minute wait. Another great lap, though the ending brake upsets me every time. If they could have figured out a way to have 50 more feet of track on this ride it’d definitely be in the top 5 at the park. At that point it was about 1:40, and we felt we’d done pretty well. Tweety was out in front of the new sign, and we decided to take a picture. To our delight Tweety pointed to my shirt and did a little dance—Tweety is a MUNA fan!! Glad to see some love for the greatest band in the world;)

We decided to go on the carousel to end the day, which proved to be a mistake because we waited 20 minutes for one cycle. They had a deeply apathetic, slow as molasses employee working there, which I find an interesting choice for families at a point when most of Looney Tunes land is still closed. I could have ran up the hill and gotten on Viper (too rough for my partner) in the time we waited; as it is I walked over to main street, grabbed a soda, came back, and we drank most of it before the next cycle had even started. 

Ultimately, we were to the car and on the road by 2:15. The total comes to 11 coasters (plus my extra lap on Apocalypse), the carousel, and two meals. Overall it was a great, quiet day at the park, but every time I go I seem to be reminded about how much better Magic Mountain could be. I’ve been going to the park for two years at this point; in probably a dozen trips I’ve never had a day without at least one encounter with an outright rude employee. That’s not to say there aren’t a lot of great employees, to be clear, but it’s frustrating this is a throughline in my experience of the park. The food has improved substantially in the time I’ve been going, though petty annoyances like moving the icee machine and being a “straw-free park” except for icees (and paid starbucks drinks) are further detractors. 

In terms of the ride experiences: Ride ops are slow, and too many rides are on one train. X2’s capacity bottleneck is well-documented and hopefully at an end, but the park clearly is not that bothered by it—otherwise they could have deprogrammed out the pre-brake run stop 18 months ago. Too many employees are obviously chatting while guests wait, leaving the lion’s share of the work to those employees who are clearly more invested in their positions. It’s evident Cedar Fair’s executives have worked to change the culture of Six Flags, and part of that simply must be fostering a culture where more employees take pride in their work. One thing the park could do in this regard is employing more people, in several aspects. A dedicated power-washing team would go a long way to making some rides (Tatsu) look less disgusting.

Magic Mountain is at a crossroads. They’re no longer the coaster capitol of the world, and probably never will be again—they’re not going to build more kiddie coasters they can’t staff, and it’s hard to imagine any new coasters coming in the foreseeable future without a corresponding removal—i.e. once they remove and replace Superman, they’ll probably also take out Ninja; if they don’t retrack Viper, it’s an easy candidate for a big up-front coaster. There’s plenty the park could do, to be clear—imagine how well a “boardwalk” area like they’re constructing at SFGA would go on what’s now Samurai Summit (looking up the park's lands for the next section just informed me there is a boardwalk...to which i ask WHERE?)! Any or all of screampunk, dcu, baja ridge, or the "boardwalk" could use a new flat. Of the five rides SFGA is putting in there, the park lacks three (Mouse coaster, gliders, nebulaZ) and of the two they do have (swings and roundup) one is extremely outdated and the other is barely ever manned.

Idk, I hope the park’s future includes substantially more care and investment than the meager amounts the park has seen lately. It’s not like the park lacks for land—Samurai Summit is huge and mostly abandoned; the go-karts and daredevil dive are likely not long for this world; Pistachio Park is finally no more! With CraZanity and Lex Luthor being down, there were like three flat ride options available at all that day in the park. I get that staffing is an issue here, but the park just eliminated a half-dozen or more daily ops slots to fill in Looney Tunes world and it’s time they use that space to make the park a better space for families of all ages (not just young kids). What does  a 10-year-old who’s slightly suspicious of big coasters have to do in this park? This should not be a hard question to answer and I feel this is basically a unique quandry within the chain.

Magic Mountain has needed to change its reputation for a long time, and that remains true. It’s clear they’re working on effecting that change, and perhaps Looney Tunes World will be a step in that direction. But I can’t help but notice that the park has contracted substantially in the last few years. Closed forever since 2025: three coasters and two flat rides (scrambler and tweety’s). Added: literally nothing whatsoever. Looney Tunes World is going to look substantially nicer, but won’t actually offer anything for guests to do that requires staffing. What was the last thing Magic Mountain did open in the park? I seriously hope that once the current project is completed, the park returns to additions that actually offer guests something new, especially since they now have some shifts open that they didn’t previously. If the permanent closures/redesign weren’t just about cost cutting, then why, for instance, has Teen Titans been closed so often? The percentage of kids who would have been in Bugs Bunny World and would have ridden that instead is plenty high.

Hopefully as the park moves into summer operations can improve, as can maintenance and uptime for often-closed rides. But two years after the merger, Magic Mountain simply hasn’t changed as much as the new name on the marquee up front might have you believe.

last but not least, i'll do my ranking of the park's coasters i rode sunday: 1) x2 2) tatsu 3) twisted 4) WW 5) Goliath 6) Full Throttle 7) WCR 8) Apocalypse 9) Scream 10) Batman 11) Ninja (of the ones we didn't do: Viper between 8&9, Riddler and TGAR in that order between 10&11, Gold Rusher at the bottom.

per Our Knott's Adventure on instagram (best knott's source).

I'll note that at the start of this month, the OC register reported montezooma's was expected to open "by summer 2026 or sooner." Summer starts on June 21, so that seems to imply that as soon as four weeks ago knott's hoped to open the ride in June. There's still a *lot* of station work to be done but it seems at this point that's the main obstacle.