Anatomy of a Magnum Walk-Down (Very Long)

Being an account of the experiences of Tank on the Magnum XL-200 on Opening Day.

Saturday morning. Opening Day 2006, and it’s off to Cedar Point! The wife and daughter have errands and other things they will be doing in the morning, so I am on my own on Opening Day! Cash in pocket, season pass and resort ID in hand, I am soooooo ready to enjoy my day at Cedar Point! My wife drops me near the Resorts Gate, and I’m on my own to ride the Magnum as much as I want. We are to meet at 1:00pm for the PointBuzz picnic.

There was a twenty-odd minute wait, at the resorts gate, during which time Tony, of Tony & Tyler blog fame schmoozed with the crowd and helped the excitement build along with the line of people. I see that Jerry, the Magnum “Candy” Man and Randy from Van Wert are about 50 or so people in front of me. At last, 9am, the gate rolls up, and in we go! It’s off to the Magnum line! Jerry and Randy are already there, as is CrashOverride and another guy I know by sight, but not by name. He works for Microsoft in Seattle. We pass the time talking parks and coasters, waiting for the ride to open. All the while, the continuous, solid, dependable sound of the Magnum lift hill in operation provided an appropriate backdrop to the conversation.

Maggie opens early! At 9:43 the phone rings and the chain comes off, and we cruise through the queue toward the station. How cool! Open early! We’re on the platform, and the trains are arriving with the last of the employee test runs. “Welcome back Sean, how was your ride?”. Everyone on the platform is keyed up! “Attention riders on the platform. We will be loading the next train” The black train arrives, and I achieve my self-set goal: First rider; front seat, right side; first car of the very first guest train of the 2006 season on the Magnum XL-200. Alone in the front of the car, no less! Jerry is in the ejector seat, next to an employee who is grabbing a quick ride on Maggie before reporting to her job on Snake River Falls. Directly behind me in the second row is an infrequent coaster-rider, and his wife, who is making her very first trip on a big coaster, Opening Day on the Magnum XL-200. CrashOverride and Microsoft occupy the front seats on car two. Thus began the first regularly-dispatched guest trip of the 2006 season for the Magnum XL-200.

“Ready”. “Ready…Ready”. “Clear”. The train dispatches, and starts moving forward. All the ride-ops are smiling. The eyes of the foxy girl in the control booth appear to be actually shining at me as the train rolls by. Opening Day, First train. “We’ll see you back here in 2:30.”

As everyone is doubtless aware by now, part way up the lift hill, it started to seem like “in 2:30” was less likely than “at 2:30”! People are chanting “I think I can… I think I can..." as the individual clacks of the anti-rollback start to seem reluctant and almost begrudging. After that, reality on the Magnum began to seem like some computer programming loop gone awry: Start, move x(distance), stop. Watch employee climb hill. Watch maintenance truck arrive. On arrive, repeat sequence until maintenance truck count value = 6. It was cold on the hill, especially when the sun went behind the clouds for extended periods.

But, as has been mentioned elsewhere, I was treated to a spectacular view at one point. On the last stop, the front car stopped dead-level at the crest of the Magnum lift hill. Every other car was still at an angle, but the front car was dead level. And we were there long enough to become very familiar with the view. The horizon did seem to curve a little. Maybe you can’t see the Canadian mainland, but I wondered if I wasn’t seeing some Canadian water. And we didn’t just see it as it went by. We stopped for a bit and admired the view. I had an opportunity to look fairly closely at the anemometer. It was interesting. I’ve always thought it was pretty cool, and I have often wondered who gets the data from it. That’s also when I noticed that last platform ten or fifteen feet below, on the down side of the hill. Never really noticed it much before, usually being caught up in the excitement of the drop and all. I did not relish the idea of having to step out of the train onto that platform from a 60 degree forward angle. Finally, though, after a total lift-hill duration of about 45 minutes, it was time to go. A few more clacks, the familiar release “chunk”, and we were gone.

The ride itself was good. Everyone was pretty cranked up for it, and it was a noisy ride. Not as fast as some, even with the trims off. Of course, this was not entirely comforting, as Jerry and Microsoft had been chatting about second-hill rollbacks, and the mechanics of unloading the train if that were to happen. But, no worrys. We made it fine over the 2nd hill and through the rest of the course. The flash for the camera fired late for the front seat, just like it has for the last two years.

Arriving at the braking block, were unloaded there, as the train in the station had not been dispatched. A short jump to the catwalk, and we go up to the exit platform, where we provide our names and zip codes to the employee with the clipboard. Then it’s off to see the ride photos! Surely after such a triumph, grabbing the ride photo would be in order. Alas, no. We can see them on the monitor, but are told by the employees that they cannot print them. Says the girl,“We have them in the system, so we can let you see them, we just can’t print them.” The final irony! No picture! Jerry, however, does a quick video snapshot of his on the monitor.

It’s obvious that the Magnum will be closed for a while, so after wishing Jerry & party farewell, I wander off to find other amusements. I stroll over to the Paddlewheel Excursions, figuring this is one ride that won’t get stuck, unless maybe it hits a sand bar. And heck, I can swim. The trip around the lagoon was fun. The animations are all working nicely with lots of steam at the Canfield & Magee feud. Painfully shy Captain Elizabeth did the spiel while the painfully cute Captain Kirby steered the boat. Liz did a nice job, for Opening Day. Especially since her audience consisted of me up front, and a father with his two pre-school daughters at the back of the boat. She did her lines very well, and didn’t seem to miss any. The polish will come later in the season. Captain Kirby is a good boat driver, very smooth.

After my voyage, I noticed that the Magnum was dispatching trains again. As I stood near the Camp Snoopy Store watching it; (and I swear every word of this is true); Monty Jasper walks by about two feet away from me, talking into a radio or phone, and I hear him say “…and Magnum’s cycling OK” in a very positive tone and informative manner, as he walks out of earshot.

Well, you can’t get much better than that on the “Is the ride OK?” question, and since that was my reason for being at Cedar Point this day, I headed for the queue line. I had a one-train wait, and got a a fabulous trims-off screamer in the back car. Plenty of air in the bunnies on this ride. I joked with the crew about how this ride went a lot faster than my first one today. Everything’s great, Maggie’s back! So I make the loop back through the line and into the station again. I arrive as the gates open, and the line for the front seat of the last car empties into the coaster. Great, I’m next out. The black train arrives, and we are seated. This time another single rider takes the left seat, but we are both just kind of into the ride and don’t speak much.

“Clear”. The train dispatches and we’re out of the station, down the small drop and onto the lift hill. The lift sounds as strong as it always does. Then, about a third of the way up, it comes to a dead stop. None of the half-hearted motion of earlier in the day. Just a dead stop. I blurt out, “I hate it when this happens!” I was really just kind of joking, because I wasn’t particularly worried, nor even annoyed. Up the lift hill comes Phil to reassure us. I joked with him about how I should get something special because this was my second time today being stuck. He talks to the guy in the rear of the car ahead of mine, who attends the US Naval Academy. Phil has some friends there and they compare notes to see it the navy guy knows Phil’s friends. Then he gets a call from the phone halfway up, and when he returns, he announces that they’re going to start the train.

Phil issues the usual safety precautions, and is on his way down. A few moments later, the speaker crackles to life, and the ride-op on the mic announces that the ride will be starting. The lift starts fairly smoothly, and we are on the way up the hill. No problems. People are getting cranked up for the drop. Then, again, as the train is a car-length or so from cresting the hill, we bang to a stop. Then starts the long climb for the employee up the hill to the train. This time Kevin is climbing, and it takes him a long time. At one point, the guy in front of Navy looks back at him and says “He’s not getting any bigger”. It was strange to watch. You could see his progress, step after step, but he didn’t appear to get any closer. Only when you looked away, and looked back could you really see the difference. There was much speculation about physics, optics, and most especially, height.

We spent about another 40 minutes or so up there, during which time we were visited by one or another of a succession of winded ride-ops. They took the jokes rather well, I would say. “Are you guys OK?” the ride-op would say. “We’re fine, are you OK? You wanna sit down?” was the usual answer.
The guys behind me were speculating on the possibility of some sort of ride-pass for our trouble, and we passed the time watching a guy motoring along in a small boat about a half-mile off the beach. There was a freighter off in the long distance ahead, just on the horizon. There was a family of geese hanging out in the dry pool at the base of the twin slides in Soak City.

Finally, Navy is looking down the hill and says “There’s a group coming”. We all look down, and indeed there is a group coming. Five or six people on their way up to see us. Two of them are wearing ties and carrying radios. The short girl with the fluffy dark hair and really cool sunglasses in the red jacket had a radio also. I don’t know if she was a ride-op or a higher up from another area of responsibility.

We had all pretty much come to the conclusion when the guys with ties started climbing the hill that we would probably be walking back down the hill ourselves. That was indeed confirmed when the guy in the tie and dark blue jacket went to the front of the train and made that general announcement. I do not know his name. I recall that he wears glasses. There was also another official type person, kind of burly, but very friendly. They unloaded a group from mid-train first, and I watched them go past. They were quiet, orderly and didn’t say much to us. I am of the understanding that of the passengers, they were most uncomfortable with the situation, and it was decided that they should evac first.

Fine with me. That means I got to see how they got themselves out of the coaster, because the minute it was announced that we were walking down, that single problem loomed largest in my mind. How the heck to get my body out of the coaster and onto the steps without incident, while canted at an insane reverse angle, 180 or so feet in the air? Physical Science, a class in which I did poorly, reared its ugly head, and I realized that I had to move very carefully in order to avoid offending Sir Isaac Newton. You cannot simply stand up and step to the right, as if you are going to exit the coaster in a normal fashion.

It was hard to convince my head that the step I was stretching for outside the roller coaster car was only 8 or 10 inches down from my foot, and not 180 feet down. I managed it. It took about four tries, experimenting with varying degrees of motion and leverage, as well as the most intelligent places to put my hands for safety and power. After all, the thick parts of my body were now passing reluctantly through areas which really only accommodate the thinner parts. The crew let me do it myself, and I got out of the car onto the step unassisted without extreme difficulty. I stepped down several steps and stopped behind Kevin, who was going to lead this group down the hill. The rest of the car unloaded behind me, and once everyone was lined up, the entire group started down the hill together.

I don’t like heights. I never have, so I avoid them whenever possible. It was a triumph of fear-suppression to get me to even consider riding roller coasters in the first place, much less the biggest ones. After a Blue Streak ride in the mid-1980’s on which I foolishly closed my eyes, I didn’t want to ever ride a coaster again. I just didn’t like the idea and I didn’t fit on them anyway. Deciding to ride coasters again was a real victory for me, and Cedar Point’s reputation for reliability is a huge factor in my confidence level. I honestly don’t know how I would feel on coasters in other parks.

I won’t say that I was nearly overcome with fear or anything, but it was an intense situation that required a very high level of concentration on task. Actually, during the evac, fear simply became a non-issue in the face of following the ride-op instructions and proceeding to the next step in the process. I know that there are others who would covet a chance for a close look at the anemometer and a leisurely stroll back down the lift-hill. I’m just not one of them. My world shrank to the five or six cubic feet that was my feet on the steps and my hand, or hands, as it was at times, on the guardrail. Brown and gray metal. Punched holes for traction. One step after another, and no landings to pause on. Here comes another light on the guardrail, and a now speaker, too. One step behind Kevin the whole time. Gosh I’m glad it’s pushing noon on a sunny morning in May with light winds. I thought about some of those Halloweekends night rides, along about 11:00 on an October Saturday night, when the rollers on Lake Erie are making more noise than the coaster, and the wind is stiff enough to make the train run in slow motion over the second hill. Laughing in the face of the pelting rain as we crest the second hill. Forget that and just keep stepping down.

I engaged in a running conversation with Kevin on the way down. He’s telling me about how much they’ve been up and down the hill the past couple of days, doing E-Stop drills and such. “Oh, with real people in the cars, having to walk them down?” I ask. Well no, but simulated that way. I commented that they must have gone over it pretty well, as this was a very orderly process. We walk ever downwards. On occasion he would slow down, turn a bit and ask if everyone was still OK. The group was pretty cheerful, and everyone always said yes.

Finally we approach the bottom, and Kevin points out Jerry on the concrete, camera in hand. I expanded my world a bit, and there he was near the Magnum exit, where the track crosses the midway.. I waved at him. How brave of me! By then we were almost to the catwalk. As we walk past Chad at the base of the steps, we hear him say “Welcome back Magnum riders! How was your ride?” This generates some laughs and actually helps break the tension of the walk. Down the catwalk, up the ramp and a couple of steps onto the platform where once again we give our names and zip codes. I told the ride-op he should just get my name off the front page, since I was there for the second time that day.

Finally I was out of the exit gate and onto the concrete, to encounter Jerry in the midst of his video taping of the latter parts of the still-proceeding walk-down. I stood and chatted with the group as the rest of my group came down from the hill, and the ride-ops started back up for the next group in line.

I have nothing but good and complimentary things to say about the performance of the ride-op crew for the Magnum XL-200 during the early parts of the Opening Day. They did a wonderful, professional job of keeping the passengers calm, and ultimately, safe, when they had to evacuate the train. They are a credit to Cedar Point and an example for ride-ops everywhere.

.
*** Edited 5/10/2006 1:49:22 PM UTC by Tank***

That was awesome.

aren't they doing ride-again passes this year?

I've heard that they are not.

Oh wow! I get to take that walk on training day... which is approximately 20 days from now... I'm so nervous and excited at the same time! How long did it take you guys to walk down from the top?

greetings tank, i just wanted to say hi because i was also on the train that got stuck for the walkdown on magnum on opening day with you. my brother is the guy from the naval acadmey and i was the one who said "he's not getting any bigger" haha, well i certainly enjoyed your post and that walk down will be an experience i'll never forget and i do agree that the ride ops did an outstanding job making sure everyone got off the ride safely and professionally.
*** Edited 5/10/2006 6:33:02 PM UTC by joey bats***

Nope, no ride agains. Just name and zip code, on you go.

Ah, Tank, thanks for remembering me! ;) Now come visit SRF!

So what is the point of taking the name and zip?

Name and zip? wow... that must be how they're cutting that $5 ticket reduction cost, they're not printing ride agains???

Seems like bad pr to me.

Great story. I've come to the conclusion that if I haven't gotten a walk down yet I will never get one.

Wait so what did you get in return? Another ride from Magnum, but you got to go on first, or what?

Luckily, I have. It was pretty scary going down those steps. There are just so many of them. I do have a quick question, that I'm sure if not answered now I will be asking around EVERYWHERE.

"The ride itself was good. Everyone was pretty cranked up for it, and it was a noisy ride. Not as fast as some, even with the trims off."

You mentioned this in your post. WHERE DO YOU GUYS KEEP GETTING TRIMMLESS RIDES FROM? I have Joe Cool club on my pass, so maybe they do it if you arrive at Magnum in the early hours?

Overall, good post read the whole thing.

Why do people always expect something in return when a problem arises, and I'm just talking life in general.

magnum_shawn said:
WHERE DO YOU GUYS KEEP GETTING TRIMMLESS RIDES FROM? I have Joe Cool club on my pass, so maybe they do it if you arrive at Magnum in the early hours?

When its cold and or windy you can get trimless rides. The elements are doing enough to slow the train down that braking it any further would risk a rollback. Which would be very not good.

^But i thought there were only trims on the pretzel turn. If the train stopped where would it have to roll back other than one of the bunny hills? Or is there another set of trims im missing?

^But i thought there were only trims on the pretzel turn. If the train stopped where would it have to roll back other than one of the bunny hills? Or is there another set of trims im missing?

^But i thought there were only trims on the pretzel turn. If the train stopped where would it have to roll back other than one of the bunny hills? Or is there another set of trims im missing?

Yes the trims are only right before the pretzel, but if the wind is blowing just right and the trims are applied, it can slow the train enough that it can't make it back. The trims wouldn't actually stop the train like a block brake would though.

JuggaLotus said:
So what is the point of taking the name and zip?

Probably to make it seem like they're actually doing something to correct the situation.

They can adjust the amount of braking of trims to the train. I will never forget during one of the Millennium Mania days for the first half of the day they ran it wide open. Then they got the call to turn them on and forwhater reason they weren't set. I was in the first train that went through through with the trims on, and I swear it was the longest ride I have ever had on Magnum. I didn't think that we were going to make it to the third tunnel it was running so slow. The look on Andy's face was priceless when we came back to the station becasue he didn't think the train was going to make it back either.