![]() ![]() I notice about 95% of visitors veer left in the direction of X2, Tatsu and Apocalypse, so I make a last second change in plans to go right instead, figuring I’d be wanting to spend the most time with those three anyway, so I shouldn’t rush to check them off my list too quickly and risk anticlimax by going from best to less. When the chains drop, there’s a lively hustle to get our tickets scanned as people flood onto the main midways. I needed to see for myself, and lo, before I’m even inside the gates they’ve already earned a shiny gold star sticker. Thankfully, someone on Six Flags’ board decided the Mountain was still salvageable (and with eighteen coasters, had tremendous potential) and so the story I’ve been reading since 2008 or so has been that Six Flags has been making a sincere effort to turn the place around. The park so forsaken that when the new management took over a couple years ago they considered demolishing the entire premises and selling it off for its real estate rather than to continue attempting to conduct this train wreck. The amusement park where customer service is sent to die. The place that has a reputation for closing a third of its rides to perpetual maintenance, queues running multiple hours for attractions operating at less than 50% their theoretical capacity, and a clientele that enjoys the occasional knife fight just to keep from getting bored. Really? Really really? As easy as that? I mean, it’s a simple and obvious policy to relieve unnecessary bottlenecks at the front gate, but this is Six Flags Magic Mountain we’re talking about. “Well then, if you would like you can show this with your voucher at the gates over there to enter now, and you can come back any time today to get your pass processed up to a half hour after the park closes.” I showed him my black-and-white laser print-out I copied that morning, and he handed me a small red ticket. Now five minutes before they let the chain drop, an older African-American gentleman in a neon yellow uniformed shirt approached me, asking if I had already purchased a voucher. The plaza filled with more and more anxious teens and families, making me wonder if this was an offseason day how packed the entrance must be on a prime season weekend morning it’s not very big. Of course it was no one’s fault but my own, which made it all the more bitter pill to swallow. My plan was to arrive forty-five minutes early to make sure I could get my print-off voucher exchanged for plastic in time so I wouldn’t be late for the early morning rush and get several of the major rides in before the queues fill (I am told this is an especially wise idea if one is serious about riding X2 and Tatsu as often as possible, which I was), but this queue had thrown a fine monkey wrench into those plans. As I was visiting Saturday and Sunday this deal made the most sense, but I quickly regretted it when I arrived at the entrance fifteen minutes prior to opening and discovered a processing queue winding around the wall of the inner courtyard between the ticket booths and main gates that could easily take an hour or two to complete. Six Flags still sells season passes online at a rate that’s less than the combined price of two one-day tickets. ![]() I join the queue for season pass processing.
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