Whiplash Weekend

Six Flags Magic Mountain, originally uploaded by hellfroze.

I haven't been to Magic Mountain in a few years and since then some new, exciting rides have popped up, so some friends and I headed there on Saturday to relive our younger years. Either we're getting old or those rides are getting more violent. By the middle of the day I had a crick in my neck and a battered head.

It didn't help that it was so easy to get on the rides early in the day. There were no lines when we got there. Within the first hour and a half we had ridden Goliath, Colossus, Scream (twice), Batman, and Riddler's Revenge. I usually do well on rollercoasters, but during Batman I briefly felt that vomiting was a possibility. Batman was also where I suffered whiplash and banged my head a couple of times on the headrest.

After lunch, the lines got longer. It took us over an hour to get on Deja Vu--but it was worth it. We waited for an hour on X only to have it shut down on us. We left the line and rode Ninja (still sucks) and checked out X again. It was up and running and the line shorter. It was a crazy, intense ride. You don't know which way is up sometimes. We rode it back-to-back, which only aggravated my kinked out neck. We also rode Viper, one of my old favorites, and it's still a good ride but compared to the newer rides it's pretty much a walk in the park. The most fun ride of the day, though, was Tatsu. The line was long, but well worth it. Compared to the other rides it's actually a smooth, exhilarating ride--like you're soaring over the park. I wish we could have ridden that one again but it was late and the line was too long. We closed out the night on Deja Vu, one of my favorites, and tried to get on Goliath again but they were shutting down.

All in all, a fun day. We were there when the park opened to when it just about closed. Our legs ached but it was a well-earned exhaustion. Surprisingly, the ride that got the better of most of us wasn't the extreme rides--it was the kid-friendly SpinOut where you stand against the wall of a centrifuge and it spins and spins until you stick to the wall and can't move. Afterwards most of us didn't want to go on it again. It took minutes for the spinning to stop.

We got a little nostalgic afterwards when we remembered that there's a possibility the park might be sold and torn down since the land would be valuable to build on. Hopefully with the downturn in real estate, they will be dissuaded and this will not be the last time we get to go to Magic Mountain.

I'll post pictures when I get the chance.