I had the pleasure of attending Theme Park Review’s West Coast Bash at Six Flags Magic Mountain yesterday, and along with the exclusive ride time and backstage tours, the “big three” of Magic Mountain did a little Question & Answer session. Questions were submitted via cards given out at lunch, as well as a few “live questions”. I tweeted the session live from my personal account, and have posted the transcript below with some background information to keep it in context. I will give some general thoughts on the day, the session and some pictures of where Magic Mountain’s new roller coaster will be headed.

-The transcript is posted in reverse order, but that does not effect anything as far as information is concerned.

-Clearly the engineers that designed Superman were high school drop outs. (The ride runs so hot when running at 100mph that parts start to fall out.)

-Superman will run both sides together once again. Eventually. Maybe. (They first said yes, it will be returned to its former glory, but then back tracked. I hold firm with my Bizarro rumor.)

-Dropping off into irrelevant questions. Paint, paint and more paint. Great news, just not terribly interesting. (Paint is great, but there are still a lot of operational problems that should hold precedent)

-Claims that a corporate takeover could hurt the park. Yeah, just think of all the charm that would be lost. I love six flags, but come on! (In reference to the Apollo/Cedar Fair deal there was a comment about a corporate atmosphere, which I get (See my Six Flags vs. Cedar Fair post) but there really isn’t THAT much that would be changed. Except for more money to keep the park looking nice.)

-Marketable capital for hurricane harbor to come soon. (No other information. Announcement coming this week.

-He’s asking for a break. Once he turns out a great amusement park, he’ll get one. Still a lot of problems he could fix. (I know I sound harsh, but there are a lot of things that need to be fixed, and a lot that could be without breaking the bank.)

-The Dance Coaster opens memorial day weekend. The height restriction will likely not change. That’s a big blow to Six Flags. (The head engineer said they are working with Vekoma to change the height restriction, but that there are a lot of hoops to jump through thanks to OSHA)

-Claims that running colossus backwards is bad for capacity. So is only running one side of the coaster. (Self explaining.)

-The monorail will never open. Perhaps it’ll be dismantled. Someday. (Definitely not a priority.)

-And they’re still not budging about the lockers. Shock. (Claims that the locker fee is not to make money and is to “train guests to not bring things to the park”. Or to train them not to buy your thirteen dollar drink cups that they can not bring on rides. Or play the games where they can win giant toys. Or buy merchandise. You have to be kidding me.)

-Six Flags is planning on building new flat rides. That’s all they said.

-Six Flags is hoping to put more money into fright fest in 2011. (Hopefully they can bring it up to par with Haunt – shouldn’t be too hard.)

So, that is it for the Q&A. Some nice tidbits of information, but all things considered not a lot was revealed. But boy were people getting excited about… everything. Below are some pictures of the location for Mr. Six’s Dance Coaster, as well as a picture of the track, which is hanging out backstage!

All in all, it was a really fun day. I got to take a tour of X2′s maintenance shop, and had a cool conversation with the head mechanic for that side of the park. I also got to ride Colossus racing (it was awesome) and get some great night rides in on Tatsu, Terminator, Batman and The Riddler. I’d like to thank Robb Alvey, Six Flags Magic Mountain and everyone else who helped make the event a success. I definitely recommend that those of you who are able go next year! I will leave you with a couple miscellaneous pictures of the day!

Thanks for reading!