Tatsu! Gesundheit.

Evan and I couldn't make it to media day for the grand opening of the new Tatsu flying coaster at Magic Mountain, but we did get to the ACE (American Coaster Enthusiasts) event at Magic Mountain today. Two hours before the park opened to the general public, ACE members enjoyed ERT (exclusive ride time) on X, Viper, Revolution, Ninja and Tatsu. We didn't get off to a particularly early start, so we just went up to Tatsu, rode it a couple of times, then had coffee and doughnuts (part of our coaster enthusiast package) and rode Tatsu again. This third time, where we sat in the front seats, is immortalized in the somewhat blurry onride photo seen above. According to the Tatsu webpage:

Aboard the wings of TATSU, experience flight at speeds in excess of 62 miles-per-hour through a series of “butterflies-in-your-stomach” plunges, huge sweeping spirals, stomach wrenching loops and sharp dives, high speed banked curves deliberately designed to enhance the ultimate sensation of flight. With more than 3,602 feet of blazing red, orange and yellow twisted steel track barely visible intertwined through the mountainside, TATSU'S intense three-and-a-half minute flight faces a dramatic 263-foot change in elevation from its highest peak to inches off the ground and spans four separate areas of the Park.

This new coaster is a far cry from the last Magic Mountain effort, Scream, a floorless coaster that tends to be brutal and is built over an unadorned parking lot. They could at least park a few wrecks or old monster cars there to at least try to tie in some kind of theming, but there's not much they can do about the ride itself. It is a mirror image of the Medusa coaster at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey, which Evan and I rode once but saw no point in re-riding. We both agreed that Six Flags would have done better to duplicate their Medusa at Marine World in Northern California, which is also a floorless coaster and even has the same paint scheme (and name, obviously) as the one in New Jersey, but is an excellent ride.

Tatsu, however, is a dream, and by far the best flying coaster I've ridden in the US (I've also ridden Top Gun at Great America in Santa Clara and Batman at Six Flags America near Washington, D.C.). It's even better than Air at Alton Towers in England, which I really liked for its smooth ride. Tatsu has comfortable restraints, except that the corner of the padded leg bars tended to bite into my shins. Once I realized this was an issue, I found it easy enough to adjust for, and the shoulder, chest and seat were quite comfortable. I could almost get the feeling that I was flying, and the scenery was beautiful - mountains, trees, desert, water. It was definitely worth the extra couple of minutes waiting for the first row seats, although you get a pretty good view even further back.

As we were loading for our last ERT ride, the public started to stampede in, and the line formed quickly. By the time we had gotten our ride photo (the third guy in it is also an ACE member, but his wife chickened at the last minute) and left, the queue stretched past a sign proclaiming: Wait Time from This Point 1-1/2 Hours. I'd have thought those people were nuts, but Evan and I waited something like two hours for our first ride on X.

X used to be my favorite roller coaster; I especially loved the skydive element near the beginning, where you go up the lift hill on your back, and then flip face forward as you go over the top so you're diving toward the ground face-down at 89 degrees to vertical. Unfortunately, as coasters often do, X has gotten rough, and I just can't enjoy it the way I used to, since I'm bound to get beaten up in more than one of the turns. In spite of ERT, I passed up the chance to ride it this time.

I also bypassed Colossus, a woody that used to be pretty good but has gotten so rattly that even Evan doesn't much ride it anymore. I did ride Goliath, which I can enjoy if I remember to brace against the g-forces in the later turns (Discovery channel had a show that explained what pilots do, and it helps).

Evan upgraded his Six Flags annual pass to the Xtreme Pass, so he gets four The Flash Pass coupons each visit. These are nice, because he can share them with me even though I don't have any kind of Six Flags annual pass. He convinced me to go on Riddler's Revenge with him, pointing out that I might enjoy it more (or, in fact, at all - I hated it the one and only time I went on before) now that I'm in good physical condition. I wouldn't wait long for it, but with the, pardon me, The Flash Pass, we didn't have that long a wait. We got the back row, too, which is often the best if the coaster is smooth, which Riddler is. It's a stand-up coaster, and if you don't get your straddle seat positioned properly, it can be brutal; the first time Evan rode, he had his too low and walked like Groucho Marx for an hour or two afterward. This time, though, we got our seats adjusted nicely and found the ride quite exhilarating. Losing weight and working out definitely makes riding certain coasters more pleasurable.

It was supposed to rain, and even though it didn't much, Evan and I came equipped with rain ponchos. Under the circumstances, we used them on a couple of water rides. Ironically, on the Whitewater Rapids raft ride, the other four people in our boat got splashed worse than we did, and a couple of them got almost totally drenched. We were still glad of our ponchos.

Perhaps the new owners will change this, but Six Flags parks are not known for much besides their roller coasters. At lunch - a basic fried chicken buffet with ice cream bars for dessert - in one of the picnic pavillions, Magic Mountain put on a raffle (everyone got one raffle ticket), but disappointingly, no one spoke to us about upcoming plans as they have sometimes done in the past. Maybe instead of adding yet another coaster, Magic Mountain will spend some money on maintenance and repair. The Sky Tower observation tower was supposed to have been re-opened, but it wasn't yet, and the Orient Express funicular's tracks are a foot deep in mud in a couple of places following the construction of Tatsu. The Metro monorail is still in place but hasn't been running in probably six years. Elsewhere there are signs of decay - rust, flaking paint, warped wood and so on. Six Flags might also give some consideration to putting in some better eating places. The only full-service restaurant the park has, Mooseburger Lodge, can have some incredibly long waits. In fact, when it came time for dinner, Evan and I left the park and went a couple of miles east on Magic Mountain Parkway to Mimi's, and I expect that the Marie Callendar's across from Magic Mountain's entrance does a lot of business that Magic Mountain could have if it offered better food.