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Batman Scales the Mountain : Gotham City Area, Roller Coaster Are Largest Expansion in Magic Mountain’s 23-Year History

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

At Six Flags Magic Mountain, Kevin Barbee has used his experience in urban design to construct a dark, decaying city.

The “city” Barbee designed is Gotham City Backlot, a Batman-themed area opening today that is highlighted by Batman the Ride, a suspended looping roller coaster. Owing more to the stark, futuristic aesthetic of the 1989 “Batman” movie than the campy late-’60s television show, Gotham City is Magic Mountain’s 10th themed area, a 6.2-acre set designed to immerse park guests in another reality.

So complete is the illusion that recently built structures have been carefully coated with spray-on urban grime, the juice stand has a “sci-fi, industrial look,” and even the restrooms are tucked away in the Acme Atom Smasher Coolant Pump Facility, said Barbee.

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Gotham City’s pride and joy, as well as the inspiration for its creation, is the Batman ride. Riders sit four abreast on 32-seat cars that hang down from a steel track. With their legs waving free, passengers go through two loops--on the outside . (This is the third Six Flags park to feature the coaster--it opened in 1992 near Chicago and last year in New Jersey.)

Jim Seay, Magic Mountain’s engineering manager who helped design the ride, compares the experience to taking a ride on a high-speed ski lift chair that spins upside-down. “It’s startling to be on the outside of a loop,” Seay said. “Your feet are just flying up in the air. You don’t see the loop--the track is above you.”

The ride, co-developed by Six Flags and the Swiss firm Bolliger and Mabillard, is possible because of computer simulations and advanced technology. Seay, who worked for Hughes Aircraft before coming to Six Flags, calls it “the most technically sophisticated ride in the world.”

The ride itself lasts about two minutes, but the entire experience revolves around a story line set in motion as park visitors line up for their chance to brave the imposing steel coaster. The wait begins in Gotham City Park (donated, of course, by benevolent millionaire Bruce Wayne) where the sounds of chirping birds can be heard, then continues through the seedier side of Gotham, the Gotham Public Works Project. To “escape,” guests must walk through a giant pipe and into the subterranean-looking “Batcave,” where they board the ride.

Once riders climb into the padded steel seats, the floor drops out, and their car begins the 10-story climb that will take it into the first loop. The coaster, which travels at speeds of up to 50 m.p.h. and reaches up to four times the force of gravity, or Gs, takes its passengers through two corkscrew turns and a 360-degree “heartline spin” that makes riders feel weightless.

“It went so fast we had to go on three or four times just to remember it,” said John Summy, a 27-year-old salesman who rode the coaster at Six Flags Great America in Illinois last year. “The thing that was neat about it was that your feet weren’t hooked in.”

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For those who enjoy having a floor beneath their feet, two previously existing rides were refurbished and redecorated to fit the Gotham City theme. The ACME Atom Smasher sends its passengers around a circular sloping track at high speed, and Gordon Gearworks spins so quickly that riders are held to the wall by centrifugal force when it tilts. The Gearworks, Barbee said, is painted to look like “a bad office that has had cigar smokers in it forever.”

Gotham City is the largest project in the park’s 23-year history, and Tim O’Brien, an editor at Amusement Business magazine, estimates that the coaster alone cost at least $10 million.

Barbee has designed Gotham’s food stands, Joker Juices, Butler’s Pantry and Gotham Pizza Factory, and used a neon sign to give the Axis Department Store a futuristic Art Deco look. A replica of the Batmobile used in the 1989 movie also will be on display.

“The movie presents such a dark picture of a once-elegant and beautiful city that’s been overrun by greed and industry,” Barbee said, “we focused on the grimy, unkempt look.”

Gotham City was previously the Hollywood Backlot area, but Barbee, 31, who has been at Magic Mountain for just over a year, had the idea of redesigning it to extend the Batman theme, which is available to Six Flags because both the character and the theme park are owned by Time Warner.

“We’re in a competitive market,” Barbee said. “Batman is a popular Warner Bros. product that helps the synergy between our companies. But I also just thought it (Gotham City Backlot) would be darned neat.”

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* Magic Mountain, Valencia. Opens at 10 a.m. daily. Closing hours vary. $28 for general admission, $18 for seniors, $15 for children under 48 inches tall. Free for children 2 and younger. Parking is $5. (818) 367-5965.

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