Saturday, February 23, 2008

*** Magic Mountain Update ***

A little update on today's Magic Mountain post. Major, yes I rode it backwards, that was nutty and forwards before they "fixed" it was crazy fun as well. I still ride Goldrusher at least once each visit and it still gives me the biggest smile. Good MM ephemera is scarce. I do have a decent collection however, you haven't seen it all yet!

Viewliner, I'm glad these bring back memories, they sure do for me.

Jed asked a good question "Where are the cars". The following three photo's come from David Michael or "Darkbeer" as he is known to Disneyland fans. Check out his great theme park pictures at: http://darkbeer.smugmug.com/

Here are the cars at the maintenance building with Flashback shown for reference. The main Metro station is in the lower left hand side of the photo.




Here is a close up of the cars. They sure look fine to me, I believe they are fiberglass. They used to be solid colors, I'm not sure when they changed. The People Mover did a similar color change in the 1980's.



And this is the exit cue for the Main Metro Station, just waiting to be used.

From everything I have read the reason the Metro is currently not running is the company that made the Metro is out of business and no parts are available. This is true, BUT....

Six Flags Over Georgia has the exact same Monorail system (actually a few years older than Magic Mountains, but the same thing) and it's still running! I imagine they fabricate the parts they need. These systems are not that complicated. They don't have any side "banking" to worry about and they were fully automatic in 1971 (a new car every two minutes) so how complex of a ride system is needed?

Can you tell I am passionate about the Metro? I once rode it once for 2 hours straight, round and round the park. I'd do it again in a heart beat!

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