It's a long drive.

A very long drive.

Once you've driven out of your way, far enough to imagine you must be lost and decide you should probably turn around and go back, you finally come across the next freeway you have to merge onto. Then you have to drive some more. For the most part, I will not be using this specific article to compare Six Flags' Magic Mountain to Disneyland, but the drive.

The Goddamn drive. 

If you have enough time while driving to switch CDs in your car four times, it has ceased to be just a leisurely drive to an amusement park and has officially crossed over into road trip territory.

It doesn't help that the near three-hour journey was a family outing involving my brother Michael - mentally disabled, prone to violence and with a fetish for Muppet Babies - and my niece Annie, midway into her awkward teenage years and is best described by Wikipedia as "Blasian." Later in the week both Annie and Michael would be taken into police custody after getting into a fistfight at a Taco Bell after Annie had fled from her grandmother's car at a red light in Los Angeles. but that's a completely different story.

Knowing the possible consequences of being stuck in a car with each other, both Annie and Michael were equipped with their own individual portable CD players to aid in ignoring. That meant I didn't have to listen to them yowl about incorrectly labeled mix CDs for hours on end. That's the hallmark of any family road trip: the denial of each other's existence. It's not a road trip without good old-fashioned ignoring.

Soon enough we arrived at the gates, voluntarily parted with $15 for parking and made our way to the ticket booths where, as a symbolic cherry-on-top to compliment the soul-destroying drive, Annie, Michael and I stood in line for an additional hour-and-a-half, staring at hundreds of dour human beings (including myself, the most dour of all), and one jackass playing hacky sack. 

We pay for our tickets. We go through the metal detectors. One more gate to go through and we're finally in.

The first thing one would notice if they were even vaguely perceptive is the unnaturally high number of teenagers wearing RUSH shirts. Disneyland has Mickey Mouse, but Magic Mountain has Geddy Lee ­ wielder of the mighty bass guitar, possessor of the piercing girlish whinny! The second thing one might notice is the fact that many parents have given their babies Mohawk haircuts. They're terrible people, possibly more terrible than parents that beat their children ­ and that's a fact. The third noticeable thing? The inhuman stench of circus peanuts, vomit, semen and body funk.

Michael ran off with Annie, despite the fact that they hate each other, leaving me alone to mope around unfamiliar territory. I hadn't been to Magic Mountain for almost a decade, around the time when the ride Superman: The Escape opened. I headed over to the old standby, Viper and spent a great deal of time staring at the front of the line, as people waiting for the front seat (many of Magic Mountain's queues don't have workers putting people into specific seats, so people are allowed to choose where to go) blocked entrance to every other available seat.

I felt a migraine coming on. 

I was ready to hop back into the car and speed home. Six hours of driving too and from the park ­ one hour actually in the park. It seemed fair. Due to Six Flags' lack of funding, the park was hideously understaffed. With only one car running on most of the tracks, each ride had a wait time of approximately one to five hours. So I did what any normal human being without a portable mp3 player would do: I sat around staring off into space, checking my cel phone for any possible call from a human being not wearing a t-shirt with a dragon on it.

Claudia, who had a season pass but was unable to join us that day, messaged me about wanting to audition for Disney's upcoming Halloween event. The good side, she explained, was that she'd be able to scare the living crap out of kids; the bad side was that she'd have to interact with said kids in order to scare them.

After saying goodbye to Claudia, I finally found something that would keep me entertained throughout the rest of the day. The Colossus was at one time the tallest and fastest wooden roller coaster in America. It manages to throw even the largest man around like a rag doll even though there are taller and faster wooden coasters now. The wait time is nonexistent. Just ignore the fact that The Colossus is fixed with duct tape when the doors to the carts won't stay shut. During the ride, if you look off to your left towards the parking lot at just right time, you might be able to catch a glimpse of Magic Mountain's pile of lost hats. I managed to keep the lap bar loose in order to catch more air on every drop each time I went on the ride.

The day was winding down and I decided to brace myself for the hour-long line for the park's newest ride called Tatsu. Tatsu. This oddly named contraption has already inspired an amusing urban legend in the limited amount of time that it's been open to the public and it goes something like this: A little girl, not even twelve years of age ­ too skinny for her own good, slipped out of her seat while dangling one hundred-plus feet in the air. That poor kid. That poor, imaginary kid. After an hour of contemplating that nonsense, I was at the front of the line and ready to hop into my chair. I rushed at a pace of about two miles an hour to my seat, tripped over my own feet, flipped forward onto my back, and hit the concrete. "Don't worry," I announced as I leapt up unharmed, "I haven't been drinking. I promise."

I was seated next to three Italian men, chattering away excitedly in their native language. Once everyone was strapped into their assorted protective chest pieces and crotch belts, the chairs started to pull back, leaving everyone staring straight down at the ground. And then the train started to ascend, leaving nothing to the imagination. One hundred feet up in the air, and you're forced to look down at the people getting smaller and smaller.

"OH SHIT, OH SHIT!" 

I was chanting it like a religious mantra, though I wasn't scared. I was experiencing something I hadn't experienced before. And like anyone in such a situation, I fell back on profanity. 

"OH SHIT, OH SHIT!"

The Italians next to me who couldn't speak English were phonetically reciting it like a war chant. 

Rolling into Tatsu's 124-foot pretzel loop was comparable to losing my virginity; the exhilaration, the heavy breathing, the thought that I was going to die, the idea that it would be worth the dying, the crying afterwards, and the horrible, ugly desire to do it all over again. And before the night was through, I did. Then, with my brother and niece in tow, both of whom I hadn't seen all day, I drove home with a mixture of bitterness, anguish, joy and stuffed animals.

But not necessarily in that order.

Want to read more John Felix amusement park adventures?
Check out his ongoing series A Year In Disneyland.