Roller Coasters - Magic Mountain 2002
On September 5th we headed down to Burbank with our friends Pete and Chris. We stopped in Silverlake to have dinner with our friend Stephen, then drove to Valencia where Magic Mountain is located. We stayed at the Best Western, right off the freeway. In the morning we had breakfast at Marie Callendar's (including delicious cinnamon roll french toast!).
We arrived at the park around 9:30am, ready to ride the coasters. When the gates opened at 10 we walked (OK, we practically ran) to "X", the newest coaster in the park. Even though they were only running one car, and we had to wait an extra half hour for the 'puker' (see below), it was an awesome ride. None of us had experienced anything like it before.
Afterwards we met up with Karl, who had driven up from San Diego the night before. The rest of the rides in the park were practically deserted. We walked right on to every single ride. In order we did: X, Goliath (2x), Colossus, Batman, Riddler, Sky Coaster, Ninja, Viper, Revolution, Goliath. The weather was perfect, not too hot, no rain.
Karl stayed to ride "X", the rest of us drove back to the Burbank airport (only 25 minutes away) and waited for our flight. After dealing with the 'screamer' (see below), we finally landed back in San Jose. A quick 15 minute drive and we were home. Yay!
You can also see more pictures from Magic Mountain on Pete's website.
The Puker - While waiting to ride "X", two guys moved from the row behind us to right behind us in line. They said that they did not want to be on the same ride as the guy on the other side, who had been throwing up as he was walking up to the ride. Sure enough, he threw up on himself on the ride, which then took about 20 minutes to clean up. There were a number of people in line who really wanted to find the guy and let him know how pleased they were with him...
The Screamer - On the flight home there was a woman sitting right behind us with a very young child with her. Before taking off the kid was kicking Rick's seat, so Rick asked if she could calm her down. She proceeded to tell us that she had been in the airport since early afternoon and there was nothing she could do, the kid couldn't be calmed down. Then the little girl started screaming. Several people asked the mother if she could keep the girl quiet. She said we'd just have to deal with it, then proceeded to tell her daughter to "scream all you want baby", encouraging her to yell! As we were taxiing people were getting really agitated, then all of a sudden the mother let out a blood curdling screech, telling her daughter that everyone else would just have to deal with the two of them yelling! Randy let the flight attendants know that it was the mother that had just yelled, so they went back and told her to quiet down or the plane would go back to the gate. They stayed quiet until just before we landed when the mother started tickling the girl and getting her wound up and screaming again. It's hard to believe there are people like that out there!
