Heres what Ill always remember about El Toro: standing in the queue while consumer goods exploded from the train as it rocketed over the apex of the first speed hill after the initial drop. Two examples, in particular, stand out in my mind. The first was a crumpled ball cap, that, as it was lofted skyward, caught the wind and then drifted lazily to the pond behind the ride. There it briefly clung to the surface until the water saturated its fibers and pulled it into a liquid embrace, never more to grace the head of its stunned owner. This collision of innocence and brute power reminded me of that devastating scene in James Whales 1931 production of "Frankenstein," where the monster fails to differentiate between the buoyancy of little girls and flower petals. My other favorite moment in line occurred when a cell phone, the one item that seemed most to characterize and unite the diverse crowd in ETs queue, was launched from the ride with the velocity of a motar, before detonating into shrapnel upon impact with the ground. The portents were unmistakable: the forces generated by the speed and profiling of this ride would be seismic.
I have to say, however, that given ETs nearly universal acclaim, my first ride, in the very back seat seat, was somewhat of a letdown. Letdown, of course, is a relative term here, as that ride was still better than almost any Ive experienced among the enormous stable of Six Flags roller coasters. It did not, however, leave me instinctively grasping for any solid handhold I could find on the car nor alter my view of the time-space continuum, as did my first ride in the back seat of the Coney Island Cyclone. It was solid but not transformative.
Happily, I devoted another three hours to securing a ride in the very front seat, and suddenly, the source of the hype came more sharply into focus. The opening one-two punch of the first drop and speed hill helped me achieve a life-long dream of understanding what the Road Runner feels like blazing along the undulating byways of the Looney Tunes desert landscape. Then I got to dive past Rolling Thunder like an Imperial Storm Trooper careening through the Endor moons thick forest on a speeder bike. Things got even crazier in the final twister section; keeping my hands in the air suddenly required the conscious application of mind over matter. The experience began to approach the blissful plain of the coaster enthusiasts nerd-vana.
Yet I must admit, when all was said and done, I had not quite achieved this transcendent state in my all-too-brief encounter with El Toro. I thought about this for quite some time and wondered what I could possible ask from a ride that ET did not deliver. The answer, for me, was that last measure of insanity that Ive found in a handful of life-altering roller coasters. The sort of insanity Im talking about occurs in the first drop and last quarter of the Cyclone, the tunnel of Hades, the section of Voyage that follows the break run, the descent into the trench on Cyclops, and the portion of Phantoms Revenge that begins with the dive into the valley. I attribute this primarily to the design of ETs rolling stock and restraints. Theyre simply too restrictive to impart the ultimate roller coater experience. Ive previously commented that the wood in El Toro is like the chicken in McNuggets, and when you start to mess with Mother Nature to that extent, youre eventually going to run into problems. Victor Frankenstein created a monster that was more human than human, and the creature thus lost all trace of humanity. Likewise, the uber-chickeness of McNuggets requires chicken flavoring to be added back to what was once, but is no more, recognizable as chicken meat. El Toro takes the essence of the classic wooden roller coaster experience -- steep drops, sharp turns, ferocious speed, big air -- and punches it up so far beyond anything that weve come to know and love that Intamin had no c
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