Bizarro Ride Review

NOTE: This is the SFNE Bizarro, not the crappy one at Great Adventure.  (Well, it's not really crappy, but the theming is rubbish.)

As you may know, SROS at SFNE got rethemed to Bizarro for 2009.  I decided to pop over to check it out.  I'd ridden Superman many times before, so I knew what to expect in terms of forces.  However, I had no idea what they did besides paint it purple.

Anyhoo, I get to the park before it opens, and as soon as the stupid character parade is over, I leg it to the big purple-and-blue Intamin.  After some minor bitching about the locker policy (I had thought ahead and brought plenty of zippered pockets), I get on the ride.  First run of the day.  I plop down in the money seat (Car 9, front-left seat) and immediately notice two things: 1) the evil lap bar of leg pain is gone, and 2) there are these big ugly headrests with speakers playing something boring. 

So the train starts up the lift, and I look to the left at the river.  It seems muddier than usual.  Also, the speakers are cranked up way too high.  I can hear them breaking.  As the train crests the lift, I get my usual kick out of seeing a perfect layout view of the Tivoli (Catwoman's Whip or something like that) and see the first bit of themeing: they added a nifty new entrance to the tunnel and they put the fog back in!  W00t!  Out of the tunnel, over a great ejector hill, into the overbank, and we see the next bit of themeing: some cardboard builidngs.  The train dives through one of them, and hits two more airtinme hills, then goes through this random fog machine and into the dreaded Hill of No Airtime.  Fortunately, we are distracted from the boring element by a pair of 40-foot-tall flame jets.  Nice touch.  Into the figure 8, into the next tunnel, and the speakers cut out.  They did this consistently, and I kinda like it.  Makes you focus on the insane airtime on the last three hills.  I actually think the iartime breaks the speakers.  Then we get stuck outside the station for a while while they take their sweet time getting the other train loaded.  WTF, guys?

One more fun thing that day: I grabbed the last ride on Bizarro and it broke down while I was about 150 feet up on the lift.  Turns out a circuit breaker tripped on the brake run.  Anyway, Bizarro is still by far the best thing SFNE has to offer.  Too bad the rest of their lineup is mediocre.  Ah well.