West Coast Bash

Last weekend I flew out to Southern California for West Coast Bash with Theme Park Review. It's a coaster event at Six Flags Magic Mountain and Knott's Berry Farm where we get exclusive ride time and behind the scenes tours. I've been on a couple of other bashes (Deep South Bash, New Texas Giant Bash), and a tour (Europe 2012) with TPR. I saw a cheap(ish) flight to LA and jumped on the chance to meet up with old friends and ride some coasters. I hadn't been to Magic Mountain since 2001 and Knott's Berry Farm since 2011, so I picked up several credits along the way. In fact, I surpassed my target for the year, which was to reach 550 coasters. I'm up to 551! Maybe next year's target will be 600...

Matt and I stopped by Pacific Park in Santa Monica on Friday night to get the credit. It's a fun little park with a zippy Morgan family coaster. After the 40 minute drive up to Valencia, we grabbed dinner and drinks at BJ's (seriously... BJ's brewpub) and caught some shut-eye for the busy weekend ahead.

Saturday started with some ERT at Magic Mountain. We went straight to Full Throttle, the new coaster. It's a very fun ride. The best part is the giant loop - there is some serious upside down hang-time. It's probably one of the best coasters at Magic Mountain, but could use a little more length and re-configuring of the brakes so they don't stop you in the middle of the ride's biggest drop. Another new ride for me was Tatsu. This is my favorite B&M flying coaster. It's really neat how it swoops over the mountain top, and the pretzel loop is insane. The new-ish wood coaster, Apocalypse (formerly Terminator), was a mixed bag. When I rode near the front of the train in the morning, it was just an OK ride, a bit rough with not much airtime. When I rode at night in the back of the train, it was a really fun out of control experience.

Magic Mountain is a decent park, but they could use some serious customer service training, and need to work on ride reliability. X2 was down, Scream and Apocalypse were only running one train, my friends got stuck on a malfunctioning Superman coaster, and both Tatsu and Apocalypse broke down during ERT. The loading on Tatsu and Green Lantern seemed to take ages. But since the park wasn't very crowded and we had plenty of ERT, we still rode everything and got multiple rides on our favorites.

In contrast to Magic Mountain, Knott's really rolled out the red carpet for us. The staff was amazing. We got a behind the scenes tour of the log ride and a special tour of the Calico mine ride narrated by a hilarious Knott's historian. The day started with morning ERT, which included the entire Boardwalk section plus Xcelerator. I think Xcelerator may be my favorite coaster in Southern California. I love the intense launch and top hat, comfortable trains, and smooth ride. Silver Bullet was running much better than when I rode it last. It was glass smooth and actually had some decent forces in the final helix. At lunch we got a full buffet with Mrs. Knott's fried chicken (huge improvement on the previous day's lunch!), complete with old west bandit actors who "robbed" our table. Unfortunately I had to leave after lunch to catch my flight. I wish I could have stayed longer to enjoy this excellent park!

On to the pictures:

Great weather and atmosphere at Pacific Park.

Full Throttle's launch and loop.

Full Throttle's dive loop - forwards and backwards!

Kiddie credit!

Tatsu's first drop swoops over the path

ANOTHER kiddie credit? No shame.

Full Throttle goes through the loop...

...and over the loop!

Some creepy dolls outside Knott's Berry Farm.

The inside drop on the log flume (sans water).

We got to walk in the actual flume trough!

The TPR group on the log flume tour.

Just saying hi to Bert the donkey.

Creepy animatronic characters.

Boat storage area.

Outside flume drop without water.

The Calico Mine Ride may be getting a major update soon!

I love special coaster events like these, and I'm hoping to be able to do a TPR tour or at least a bash event next year. I'm really looking forward to a trip to Missouri in October with the Metro Atlanta Coaster Club.We'll be going on Outlaw Run, which I've heard is one of the best coasters on earth.