So me and my sister got to do Justice League not once….not twice….not three times….but FOUR times and I loved it. On the subject of ride repeatability, I got to ride X2, Twisted, and Riddler's twice. It was a great day to go as virtually all of the lines were short. Everyone else was busy cooling off at Hurricane Harbor. As a result, we got to hit up all the major rides except for Revolution thanks to the bloody VR keeping that line long. Once of these days, SFMM is going to have to get ride of it. It's got to go. And bring back the single rider line for that ride while you're at it. Anyway, back to Justice League.
So the ride was really awesome. I mean, HOLY CHICKEN NUGGETS AWESOME Definitely a top 10 dark ride for me. I would personally rate this up there with Transformers, FJ, Spidey, and MIB. I will go as far as to say that I liked it better than Transformers. Heck, I think I may like this as much, if not
slightly better than MIB. See, JL had stuff that Transformers didn't (and should've) had: practical effects and fire; not to mention some descent AAs. On top of that, the spinning felt more intense. On Transformers, especially if you sit more "inside" the car, the spinning is kinda tame. Here, you can feel it spin. Now, with MIB, what that ride has going for it is that everything feels big and the queue experience is better. With JL, although the queue may be inferior, the small space works to its advantage. The practical effects get a little too close for comfort. That truck OMG I thought it was going to hit me! It was used better than how Spider-man used it! Also, the animatronics were better and the spinning was just about as intense.
For the ride itself, I can't really find many flaws to pick at. Well, okay maybe there are a couple. For one, the shooting system isn't perfect. Although Iron Reef doesn't deserve to even be compared to this ride, the aiming system is slightly better….the few times that rubbish actually works. The lasers beams shoot from the bottom of the screen as opposed to actually shooting from the gun, which is kinda annoying. Aside from the aiming, the game play is very smooth and actually WORKS. You listening Triotech? I like how they tell you in the car which color your laser is, which is REALLY helpful. Another knock on Iron Reef. I also like how the targets aren't limited to the screen but also to the sets and AAs.
I guess the only other flaw I could find was that the graphics could've been better. The only real advantage Iron Reef has was slightly better graphics. You don't notice the flaws in the graphics on the ride as the 3D kind of masks it, but you REALLY notice it in the pre show. Actually, the only thing that bothered me about the ride was the pre-show. You could really tell the graphics were clearly done by same people who animated Foodfight. Those people running in the background….LOLOLOLOL they looked goofy. Also, why do we not hear any background noise when the characters were talking? Why does Superman have to fly to the top of a building to talk to us via camera? Why are Lex and Joker talking to us in the middle of the street when every one of these characters would have easily been interacting with us inside of a building. Well, as long as the ride is awesome, who cares, right? Well, if they didn't make us spend so much time in the pre show, I would care….which brings me to one more concern.
I've seen the other versions on Youtube but haven't been on the other clones. From what I've seen, the rides are similar, save for some adjustments and tweaks made to some of the scenes and new footage for the last screen. While the changes are great, there is one I'm not a fan of. The queue system is different here as the line takes place entirely outside. The real issue was that there is not really any interior queue line, just two pre show rooms that you have to watch. I'm not a fan of this because after repeated rides, you're already going to understand the story and how the ride works. You're going to be wasting eight minutes of your precious time while you're thinking, "Just get me on the dang ride". The other ones weren't set up like that and I hope they change that in the future. It wouldn't be that hard to change. Just keep the doors open and put queue railing up. You should have the option to choose to ignore it if you want to. Oh, and remember that single rider line? You don't get the option until after the second pre show is finished, right up at boarding. If you don't get to utilize it when you first enter the outside queue, why have it at all? It's virtually useless at that point.
Oh and for SFMM standards, the loading was pretty efficient, but it was slightly awkward. It was an omnimover/FJ/HM style of loading. Maybe they're still ironing things out here, but I found the staff to be a bit unpleasant when it came to this. We had cups of water to drink before we got in line and the lady was yelling at us to drink or toss it
before we even get wait in line. Look, I get it. You don't want some dumb nugget to poor their Coke all over Cyborg. You don't want some doof-blossum smearing nacho cheese all over the freshly (and smelly) painted Hall of Justice. But to not allow ANYTHING when you are still a ways from going inside is overkill. Also, when it was almost our turn to board, the attendant was letting the people they counted go up. When we tried to move up behind them (You know, like every human being would naturally do in every queue), he barked at us, "Wait! I didn't tell you to move up yet!" Like, really man? I'm just trying to grab my glasses for the ride.
So yeah, that's my lengthy review. Justice League is, in my debatable opinion, the best shooter ride in the U.S. and definitely the best shooter ride West of the Mississippi. Back when Transformers open, I've heard someone say that if SFMM would even try to make something that good, it would be total crap. Who would've thought that SFMM would be capable of making a dark ride that's better than Transformers (At least IMO)? I mean, the facade is definitely better than USH's Transformers. Pl.ease check it out. It's SoCal's long-awaited remedy for MIB and it's not at MIB or Disney. For a semi-low budget dark ride, it's pretty phenomenal considering it's now in the top 10 list for any dark ride fan.
Sigh... a friend at the park tells me the GP isn't a fan... the general conscious is "it's lame" and "cheesy/ boring"... this is why we can't have nice things...
I think that's what the GP thinks of this ride. It's not a scary roller coaster, so why bother? That sucks, because the park could use a little variety.
Why would six flags clone this if it wasn't popular? An affordable dark ride of this quality is a game changer in the industry.
Seriously. The fact that SFMM can make a dark ride THIS good for a semi low cost shows how far the industry has come. Spider-man was once the big dark ride king and now a chain can make a more compact, almost-as-elaborate version for a fraction of the cost. It's amazing. I'll discuss this more in the other thread, but it makes you wonder what the bloody heck Knott's was thinking when choosing Triotech with Iron Reef.