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Around
Memorial Day 1972, the park re-opened to
the public after $5 million was spent in
improvements.
The Wizard and his trolls - Beep,
Bloop and Boop - replaced the Looney Tunes
Characters as the park’s mascots.
New for 1972 were the Animal Farm,
“Old 99” Steam Train, Oasis Cafeteria,
and the Palace Games; Jet Stream, the
world’s first Hydro Flume, opened later
that summer.
Numerous
changes including additional landscaping
were made as well.
The queue areas for Log Jammer and
Gold Rusher were lengthened to handle a
greater capacity. Gold Rusher was repainted from red to a yellowish-orange
shade.
Billy the Squid was repainted as
well and its name was changed to Jolly
Monster. Bottoms Up, one of the park’s flat rides, was renamed Spin
Out.
Also, Wizards Village was added to
Children’s World and Yankee Doodle was
removed.
In
1973 the park would add two Schwartzkopf
designed rides: Mountain Express -a
portable twister coaster - and Swiss
Twist.
Scrambler was also, as well as an
expansion of the Wizard’s Village play
area.
The
Portal House gift shop, Electric Rainbow,
Himalaya, Teen Tank (Jolly Jump for
adults), and Das Alpenhaus restaurant
opened in 1974. Teen Tank was removed later that year for unknown reasons.
In
1975, the park debuted several new
transportation rides.
The Dragon was built on the
backside of the mountain to take visitors
to the summit and The Grand Centennial
Excursion Railroad was built in the back
of the park.
The Railroad has two stations - one
where Batman: The Ride is now located and
the other in Spillikin Corners.
The Magic Pagoda also opened this
year.
For
the parks 5th anniversary, they
had something BIG in store.
After three years of design and
construction, The Great American
Revolution opened to the pubic in 1976.
This engineering marvel was the
first modern roller coaster to feature a
360º vertical loop.
1977
was a rather slow year.
The only major addition was The
Enterprise.
In
1978, Magic Mountain dropped another
bombshell on the industry with Colossus.
At the time of opening, this
massive dual-tracked wooden coaster was
the world’s longest, fastest, and
tallest roller coaster and was dubbed as
the “Greatest coaster of all time”.
At
the end of its first season, Colossus was
reprofiled in order to tame the ride –
more than twelve of the ride’s
hills/dips were redesigned and forces were
greatly reduced.
Also, the trains from
Internationally Amusement Devices were
replaced with ones from the Philadelphian
Toboggan Company.
At
this point, the 70’s were coming to a
close and times were changing.
Newhall Land and Farming sold the
park to Six Flags Corporation for $51
million – resulting in a profit of only
$250,000.
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