The biggest park in Canada, and now the biggest park in the Cedar Fair chain, Canada's Wonderland opened in 1981 and is home to 15 roller coasters, more than any other park outside the U.S. At a club level the park is also the record holder for most coasters given to us during ERS times, at a ridiculous but amazing 7 and to accommodate that we had to visit twice, not a bad thing!
The first coaster we rode was Time Warp, a calculated "let's get it out of the way" move based on our experience of knowing how bad these rides are. A definite advantage in being a coaster "enthusiast" is knowing the bad ones. Supposedly a "flying" experience but more like a "being thrown around" one.
Nina and co. keeping themselves entertained before the morning ERS began.
We started with an exclusive ride on Behemoth another large B&M like the one at Carowinds but not themed around the Nascar Dude, thankfully. This one is just a big yellow monster of a coaster with more of that calculated floaty airtime.
With a bit of luck, Darren managed to make this coaster and the last coaster of the trip his landmark 600th. Having finished the riding we were making our way into the park when we were stopped by park management and told to wait where we were. Wondering what we'd done wrong it was nice of the park to be present Darren with a free on-ride photo of his ride.
Like the ride in King's Dominion the Backlot Stunt Coaster had become a pale shadow of The Italian Ride themed coaster it used to be. Out of sympathy we felt obliged to ride all 3 cars suffering some painful neck compression when the launch leads into the helix in doing so. The ride ops were a good group though.
Next to Behemoth is Sledgehammer that the park also opened up for us for first rides. It's a giant jumping ride, the only one permanently located in a park. It's easier to show a video of what it does rather than describe it, so here you go.
Nice water feature, which most visitors overlooked.
The Canadian Minebuster was expected to be a rough wooden coaster but it was actually fairly decent. It's been looked after very well.
Flight Deck (formerly Top Gun) is an SLC coaster and a really good one. Don't believe anyone else when they describe it as "headbanger" and "rough as f...". I was keen to re-ride it but with the likelihood of being beaten up by my colleagues (not fans of these rides) I thought better of it. This ride has a ridiculously long queue line area.
At the right angle this sign takes on a whole new meaning!
I don't recall ever seeing such a thing in a park before, certainly not on this trip. This park did have the most diverse crowd of all those we'd visited so perhaps not a surprise.
Someone disrespects Cartman's authority by leaving him hanging on this fence.
Years ago I'd have been keen to ride Top Scans but I'm past them now. Once you've ridden them at German Fairs, anything else pales in significance.
Silver Streak is a kiddy inverted coaster again run very well with a ride op team that would insist on the riders doing a dance routine and saying this was the best coaster in the park before sending it out. Cute!
The park also has a kiddy wooden ride called Ghoster Coaster (formerly had a Scooby Doo reference). This was an excellent ride also. We had much mirth in the queue line mucking about that led to me having water thrown on me (thanks Martin). Also chatted to a couple who'd won a massive polar bear, it had cost then $60 in attempts to do so. Our train was momentarily delayed by a young kid who'd queue jumped (or crawled making his way under the legs of the people waiting). They threw him out :D
The most exclusive kiddy coaster is Taxi Jam, usually closed to adults but opened to us for an embarrassing credit-whoring experience.
When is a mouse not a mouse? When it's a fly. Only makes sense at this park where the The Fly is the mouse coaster. Quite a slow throughput but a good ride once you get to go on it.
So this is where The Smurfs ended up after their TV gig came to an end. Smurfette still being the little tart she's always been too.
One of the best coasters in the park is the swinging coaster Vortex. Taken to the top of the mountain that sits in the centre of the park it then turns and take a drop off it before doing it's swinging thing. It swings pretty high towards the end. Riding this definitely softened the blow of not being able to ride Big Bad Wolf at Busch.
Also inside the mountain is Thunder Run, a powered mine coaster with a slow queue line due to technical issues. Nice light show inside the mountain though.
Skyrider is the Togo stand-up coaster and this wasn't bad either. Having ridden several of these and realised how bad they can get it's great to be surprised when you find a well run one.
One of the night time three ERS rides was The Bat, a boomerang coaster. It was as rough as expected.
Wild Beast was the second coaster and this was too rough to ride more than once. A few of the group stayed on this for the full hour though. Respect to them!
Dragon Fire is the big arrow looper coaster, the third coaster in the night time ERS and its fair to say more of a challenge to ride than the wooden one. This had been given to us for the ERS but the majority left it after one or two rides. We have a member in the group called Darren who loves to reride the roughest coasters and I thought I'd keep him company as he was the only one left behind. So the challenge in this case to see if I could ride for as long as he could...and I did it after 20 laps. With the two of us riding and the other Darren taking over the lifthill PA system ("Hey Malcolm, You Suck!") we had a lot of fun. Excellent ride operations crew here too with the occasional diss from them also ("Hey Malcolm, You don't suck.....I lied, you do")
Boo Blasters is a dark-ride shoot 'em up thing. The throughput on this was atrocious and it was a little naughty of the park to make money by selling optional 3d glasses for a dollar. I don't think the girl was able to sell very many. The ride itself wasn't that bad, only because I got the high score.
In a nice attempt to bring education to the park there are posters around that explain the science of the rides. I think it was only me reading them though :)
I did like Canadas Wonderland, and whilst the majority of the coasters aren't the best in class (Silly Flyer instead of B&M Flyer, SLC instead of B&M Inverted) the way they're run still makes the overall experience worthwhile. Personally I'd have liked to have spent less time here so that I could have gotten into Toronto, a city I ended up not seeing at all.
They do also prepare a wonderful breakfast!
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