Of Mice and Men

Would it scare you to be stuck at the tippy top of one of the largest wood roller coasters ever constructed? Would it make it worse if it was called “Colossus” and while stuck at the top, you started noticing that a wood roller coaster built 25 yrs earlier loses its nails? Yeah.

That happened to me and my friends last week at Magic Mountain. Second ride of the day. Sun is out. Front car on the Colossus. “Click Click Click Click,” All the way to the top of the first, and highest hill. Then stop. Right as we crested the pinnacle. Frozen. Which is how we remained for the next 15 minutes. And while we were stuck, we looked over to the coaster next door, Goliath, and there was car also stuck on the big climb up the first hill. WTF?

A park employee walked up to let us know that there was another train car stuck down below and that was holding everything up. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get it to work so we had to GET OUT AND WALK DOWN THE ROLLER COASTER.

As we walked down the bowed planks with exposed nails, we found a handful of loose nails that had just worked their way out of the wood over time. Nice.

And can you believe all we got was a pass to cut straight to the front of the line on a choice of other park roller coasters (excluding the three hot, new coasters where the lines are actually long).

It was definitely an experience. Check out this YouTube clip of us stuck at the top. Poor Wilma was a little freaked out and confessed at the bottom that he thought he was going to hyper-ventilate on the walk down. He made it down fine…I’m glad he didn’t panic.