Recently I went to Six Flags Magic Mountain with my cousins from Seattle. Since I've been living in San Diego for a while, I hadn't been to the park frequently, but usually go for the Halloween stuff. It was usually bare-bone staff, but was still a relatively pleasant experience. It was cheap, it was fun, and the lines weren't THAT bad, maybe an hour max.

I went last weekend and BOY things have changed.

The parking situation is REDICULOUS. They've been steadily raising prices that now the price for parking is almost half if not more than half the price of admission! While walking out, I saw lots of broken glass on the ground and some cars with smashed windows. Thank goodness it wasn't mine, but pity for those it was.

Upon entering the park, they make you walk through metal detectors and check your bags. While a seemingly helpful and preventative measure, it seems the real motive for this is to make everyone throw away their outside food. They wouldn't let anyone bring in any kind of food whatsoever, despite my cousin having a special diet. We were told we had to talk to management (which was inside the park) and throw the food away anyways.

They now REQUIRE and CHARGE you to put your bags into "smartcart" lockers. While I appreciate the added security to keep line jumpers from cutting in line, it seems like their sole focus now is to force everyone to use their pay service for 2 hours to stash your items. In the past, you could leave your backpack/purse/hat/etc on the side of the ride, and get it on your way out. Other parks still let you do this. Now, they charge you $1 for 2 hours FOR EVERY MAJOR RIDE. I couldn't beleive that on top of admission, we basically had to pay a dollar for every ride. On top of that, being a credit card kind of guy, I only had a few dollars on me, and they were large bills. The staff enforcing the lockers (smartcart guy + 1 or 2 secutiry guys) don't carry any change and told me if i needed change, i needed to get out of line and then get back in line.

Here's the kicker about the lockers. After 2 hours, they automatically open up. We had a kid puke on the ride after we put our things into the locker and it took a while to clean up the mess, get on the ride, etc. By the time we came back, the locker was WIDE open. luckily our things were still there, but "security" seemingly could have cared less and didn't seem aware of the problem.

*sigh* six flags, despite having great roller coasters and a cheap admission price, I don't think I'll be returning. Hopefully your new incarnation at wahtever new location you get moved to will make you better.