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Van Gorder. After offering my sincere praises for what is still one of Intamin’s best creations, I cautiously told him, “Now, this is just a dream of mine Terry, but what I envision for Magic Mountain is a major wooden rollercoaster, and a racer to boot.” “Well Gary,” he smiled at me, “your dream just well may come true.” We both let it go at that. I didn’t tell Terry that my dream was the return of the Long Beach Cyclone Racer. Why, just the promotion alone could knock Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm out of the park, at least as far as the locals. A veteran movie star like Kim Novak could attend the opening, as one of the many film stars who had ridden the original Cyclone Racer in so many films, such as It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.


Montana Magic? Terry Van Gorder kept in constant touch throughout the next year, and he finally revealed to me that the wooden racer he had in mind would be patterned after La Montana Rusa in Mexico City’s Chapultepec Park, a 1964 ride designed by Aurel Vaszin and Edward Leis of International Amusement Devices in Dayton, Ohio. Van Gorder had ridden it and loved it. He wanted to change two things, he said. One was to make the first drop directly off the lift hill, unlike the Montana Rusa, which made a U-turn prior to the first drop. The other was not to use the “Mobius” track, which is one continuous track that wraps around twice to create the racing track (a good move, so that if one side is down for a reason, then at least the other side can still run). I was dismayed with his choice to pattern his coaster


after La Montana Rusa and, moreover, to use International Amusement Devices. I hadn’t ridden La Montana Rusa, and still haven’t, but those that had told me “you’d better hold on tight or you’ll go flying,” and while the first recognised rollercoaster expert Robert Cartmell rated it in 1974 as the 8th best rollercoaster in North America, he said it was the “most brutal.”


I made a polite attempt to get Terry Van Gorder to change his mind. Or, if he didn’t want to duplicate the Cyclone Racer, at least build a racer fashioned after what John Allen had so successfully done, and use PTC. Their coasters were tried and true, all of them smooth, comfortable, and highly successful with families that visited theme parks. Also, International Amusement Devices hadn’t done anything since the Montana Rusa, and their trains (which I had ridden in elsewhere) were heavy and uncomfortable. Why take such a chance? But Van Gorder had made up his mind, I respected that, and as our film company shot Colossus’ construction throughout 1977 and early ’78 for the TV series America Screams, I watched and wondered. And I worried. I noticed steel I-beams were used as ledgers, the first time I’d seen it on a wooden coaster; would that ruin the wooden feel? Most significantly, I saw the two extreme 100ft+ drops and sharply designed smaller hills, which looked nothing like the more gradual large drops and smooth parabolas of John Allen’s deft design. I knew something was off, but only time would tell.


I first rode Colossus on media day. Brutal, painful, NOVEMBER 2014 45


and truly frightening is the only way I can describe my first ride in June of 1978. Even the journey up the lift to its 115ft peak was uncomfortable. If the first drop was bad, the second drop into a small hill was worse. At the top of that small hill we were thrown up against the lap bar, our thighs painfully pressed against it for five seconds as the train then plunged below ground level, to a double-up that again threw us up into the lap bar. After that, it was just a matter of getting it over with. Six months later, a young woman tragically died on Colossus. Her short stature and unusually large girth caused her to be ejected at the top of that infamous small hill at the bottom of the second drop. Colossus was shut down.


Six Flags purchased Magic Mountain just after this


tragedy, and immediately went to work redesigning the ride. The large drops were given more gradual transitions, and the sharp speed hills were lowered into the parabolas that John Allen was famous for. The International Amusement Device trains were replaced with PTC’s standard four-car trains.


Colossal Hit Upon riding the “new” Colossus, it was as wonderful as I had originally hoped. The steel I-beams had no noticeable effect. The ride compared favourably with, and even exceeded, Kings Island’s Racer, Six Flags Over Georgia’s ‘Great American Scream Machine,’ and Six Flags Mid-America’s Screamin’ Eagle. The trains raced wonderfully throughout the ride, and a new top-five coaster had arrived (top five on my list anyway). Most importantly, the new Colossus was a hit with the public, and Six Flags Magic Mountain never had to look back.


Not through its own fault, however, Colossus’ slow descent began almost immediately. In 1981, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, Building and Safety advised Magic Mountain that it could no longer race the trains, they’d have to be dispatched separately. The reason for this was never made clear, but Magic Mountain complied. The ride still rode smoothly, but without the race the excitement was lessened. In 1987 the classic Philadelphia Toboggan Company trains were replaced by trains from Morgan Manufacturing. In 1991, the effective double-down drop of the third run was levelled off to provide a





The ride


compared favourably with, and even exceeded, Kings Island’s Racer, Six Flags Over Georgia’s ‘Great


American Scream


Machine’ and Six Flags Mid- America’s Screamin’ Eagle. The trains raced wonderfully throughout the ride, and a new top- five coaster had arrived (top five on my list anyway)





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