Ugh, the *awful* Intamin ZacSpin - Green Lantern: First Flight

Ugghhh..... Six Flags Magic Mountian and Intamin have built one of the worst coasters I've ever ridden.... and they've named it....
 Green Lantern: First Flight.

So Six Flags, and Magic Mountain with its need to add coasters and stay ahead of the "coaster capital" record crap... plopped down one of the most pointless, violent, terrible coasters I've come across so far. The rare Intamin ZacSpin / Ball Coaster. The ride is a production model and sold for around 7mil. Its hard to think Six Flags put much effort into the ride and didn't get it just to add one more coaster over Cedar Point.

After my one and only ride on it... I can see why only four were ever built and didn't really care if I ever rode it again. That being said.. I was kinda looking forward to the ride at first and maybe a little more so seeing is how I missed being able to ride a smaller model of the same ride by a few days back in 2007..... But once the ride opened to the public, months late, the reviews started coming in saying it was crap. Oh well....

Yup.... Green Lantern: First Flight.

825 feet of pain

 Walking up to the ride.. it looks like it might be fun.. or at least it looks, uh unique?

And its a little strange that Six Flags built a green and black coaster right next to the parks only other green and black coaster.

Sadly, it beats the living crap out of you... and manages to slam your entire body forward and back with its free spinning car. Once was more than enough although I had originally wanted to ride it twice to try leaving the station both forward and backwards as well as trying the left and right sides of the arm. Jeff refused (I also got placed with some random other single rider...)
(but.. but... +1?)

And for a park as massive and busy as Magic Mountain it really is a capacity nightmare. With each car only holding 8 riders and only a single car cycling at once along with the horrifyingly slow load times... the line for it, while short... just doesn't move.

(I think it has 5 cars in all but four will be loading in the station while the fifth cycles...)

Here's the oddly shaped lifthill. You can also see the seats on the right are off-balanced. While loading in the station the staff try and keep this from happening but even my ride, this happened.

(I'm also kind of amused that all four ever built have chain lifts.. yet in RCT3 it can only be made as a launch coaster... I guess because when RCT3 came out only the concept was out but none had been built yet)

Ugh, don't worry. No one is having fun.

Along with the free spinning nature of the ride, the cars are able to flip 360 although it doesn't happen every time and it seems to only be able to happen in one spot (at the very end) our car did mange to do one full 360 flip but while watching I saw some cars not do it at all.

Um, but at least it looks cool?

I don't know.. I found two videos on youtube from CoasterForce that shows the ride in action. In the first video, an off-ride video from a few angles you can see cycles where the cars don't ever flip (the first full off ride video) and cycles where they do make at least one full rotation  (2nd, 3rd, and 4th)

Yeah, its awful... Also, Green Lantern is the only one of the four built that have those guards on the side of the restraints that prevent you from sticking your arms out/up. How odd.

Here's an on-ride video... ew.

In this video the car doesn't even make a full 360.

(you can see it invert at the end but then it rocks back without completing the roll)

Oh hey...

Here's a photo of me with it.

(I had wanted to do my 365 with Lex... but it was closed almost the whole day we were there...)

Yeah.. So I'd be fine without anymore being built. I guess I'd ride them (you know, for the credit) but I wouldn't really look forward to it. I kinda think that's how most Magic Mountain guests feel too. I didn't see anyone getting off and running to get back in line.. or even saying positive things about it! You'd here multiple people exiting the ride complaining about how bad it was.

Yup