Canada's Wonderland is operated by Cedar Fair and is based around 30 miles north of Toronto in Vaughan. Getting there on public transport from downtown Toronto was really simple, and quite cheap (around $15 CAD in total for Metro and then the bus). On arrival, Leviathan absolutely dominates the skyline, with part of the coaster built over the car park.
As you enter the park, Wonder Mountain stands tall in front of you as the centre piece, with various fountains and water ways leading to it.
We got through the obligatory bag search and ticket scan, grabbed a Funpix pass (where you can scan unlimited ORPs and park photos on to a pass and access them online for $30), and not really knowing if it would be busy or not, decided to head over to Leviathan first.
Leviathan, for those who don't know, is a 300+ feet tall B&M Giga-coaster. After a short-ish queue time of around 20 minutes, the first things I noticed is that it has the older style hypercoaster trains, and not the Shambhala-style staggered seating. Canada's Wonderland have also implemented seatbelts onto their coasters with lapbars, which is not something I've seen on a B&M before.
The coaster itself does exactly what it says on the tin - it takes you up it's suprisingly nippy lift hill and drops you back down, a long way down, through a series of air-time hills, straights and twisty turns. A hugely fun ride and a great way to start the day, but despite it's size and stature, it wasn't my favourite B&M on the park (more on that later!). It also turned out that the 20 minute wait for Leviathan was the longest queue of the day - result!
Following Leviathan, we started the walk the park in an anti-clockwise fashion, which lead us to Wild Beast, one of the 3 woodies on site. My other half won't ride a wooden coaster, so I went solo on this one. No single rider queue, but the wait was short so not an issue. I have to say that, a month on, I don't remember a great deal about Wild Beast, which probably isn't a good thing! I remember that it wasn't TOO rough, but not was it majorly thrilling. I'm definitely a fan of modern style woodies over the older, clunkier ones.
The Bat was up next, which is a standard Vekoma Boomerang. I've not ridden a Boomerang since I was a child, so I was interested to see how it held up, and if Vekoma OSTRs are as bad as people say they are! I quite enjoyed it. It's certainly more of a staple park attraction than one you build a park around, but as a filler ride it does it's job. It's short, it's fun, and it's not too painful.
We then started moving towards the centre of the park and checked out Vortex, an Arrow suspended coaster - similar to Vampire but with the original trains. Now, I rode Vampire back in the day, and can't say I remember those carriages being particularly unpleasant - but we really didn't enjoy them here. Some evil laterals caused by the way the cars swing kind of ruined this one for me, and also drew some evil looks from a fiance whom I'd promised 'it would be ok' to. In many ways it's a shame, as it's one of the better looking coasters on the park, with it's lift hill up over Wonder Mountain, with a big portion of it swooping over the lake. But the hip bashing was too much to warrant any re-rides.
Following this, and seeing as the tempreture was rising, we hit the White Water Canyon, a fairly standard rapids attraction. I don't really have much else to add. It's rapids, you spin through the course and get a bit wet. After this we took a quick walk around Planet Snoopy, which is the children's section of the park, and grabbed some overpriced and underwhelming lunch.
Then, the rain. The torrential, seemingly endless rain, which essentially brought the park to it's knees for 2 hours. Nothing in operation except a handful of indoor attractions. So we stood by some sheltered lockers for a while, and watched Canadian school children getting soaked and doing silly things in the weather (one guy tried swimming in a puddle).
As it died down, I jumped in the queue for Wonder Mountain's Guardian. The missus wasn't feeling this one at this time, so I went on solo, queued inside in the dry and waited... and waited.... and waited.... Eventually, operations kicked in again, and we were underway.
Guardians is very much a family attraction, combining some coaster elements with a 3D shoot-em-up where you, as the guardian of Wonder Mountain, are tasked with saving it from an evil dragon and various other critters. It starts by cresting the lift, follow by a small drop, a barely noticeable hill before you drift back into the mountain. From here, the cars turn side on and you face the giant screens, taking down as many bad guys as you can, until you enter the vault filled with gold at the end - to face the dragon. After a few shots, dragon has enough and flames the floor, sending you into a Th13teen style freefall drop.
All-in-all, a fun family attraction which is quite unique in it's execution.
We started to head to the west side of the park, in the direction of Behemoth, Leviathan's older, but shorter brother.Standing at a mere 230 feet, Behemoth is a B&M Hyper in every sense of the word. Hill after hill after hill. Despite being a few years older than Leviathan, this DOES have the new style staggered seating, and although, like before, you're required to fasten your seatbelt before pulling the clam-shell down, you immediately feel a lot more exposed. Behemoth is a pure airtime beast, and I loved every second of it. In my pantheon of 'massive B&M airtime machines' that I've ridden, I rank this just behind Shambhala, but ahead of Leviathan and Nitro. My favourite coaster on the park, and one on which I would enjoy multiple re-rides later in the day.
There's a lot to do in this area of the park, with Backlot Stunt Coaster nearby, some awesome flats and a lot of games and food stalls. I took on Backlot Stunt Coaster next, which is kind of themed around a film set and feels a bit out of place - like it should be at Universal or Hollywood Studios, with the obvious exception that it's simply not good enough for either. Just a very 'meh' coaster, despite the launches and dark section. The cars are very cramped, which probably didn't help, but I was surprised at how short it was. It felt like a 25-30 second ride and just didn't really do a lot for me. Particularly straight after Behemoth!
I took on Psyclone next, a Mondial Revolution. I've ridden similar before (like Vortex at TP) but have not experienced the ones with the outer-seating style, which adds a lot to it. Lots of fun, lots of weird forces and thoroughly enjoyable.
We then noticed that Sledgehammer was in operation! The Huss Jump 2, which was custom built for Canada's Wonderland that apparently breaks down ALL the time (and had been all day, up until this point at around 4pm). Well, I wasn't going to miss the opportunity to experience such a unique ride. You sit in a gondola comprising of 4 lots of 2 seats, all facing inwardly, attached to a giant arm. You're spinning via the central column and the gondola itself, which 'jump' 25 feet in the air at various points in the ride, holding you up there for 15-20 seconds before dropping you back down again. Rinse and repeat. This was so much fun that I found myself laughing during the experience. Just a really enjoyable, mad and unique attraction. Thumbs up!
I took in a couple more rides on Behemoth, we grabbed an ice cream and chilled for a bit, and then I headed to Mighty Canadian Minebuster. Another fairly standard woody. My experience of this and Wild Beast have kind of merged into one, so apologies for the lack of detail. But I do remember that I didn't hate it, so it can't be that bad.
What was bad, however, was Flight Deck, CA's huge Vekoma SLC. Now, I've never actually ridden an SLC. I visited Blackpool before the days of Infusion and have never been to Fantasy Island, but have ridden Vampire at Chessie with it's SLC trains and always thought 'they can't be that bad!' I was wrong.
For some crazy reason, the designers felt it necessary to put a weird ridge in the shoulder section of the restraints which crushed my shoulders through every inversion, of which their are many, and believe me, experiencing a bat-wing when you have something digging into your shoulder, really isn't much fun. The sullen, cold grey steel of the coaster matched my expression as I exited the vehicle.
At this stage, it was about 7pm and we were winding up to leave the park. Having explained the premise of Wonder Mountain's Guardian to the other half, she wanted to ride it, so we did that again. I took a quick ride on Thunder Run as we were walking past, which is a fairly standard Mine Train coaster which travels through Wonder Mountain, followed by another ride on Leviathan, before a quick go on Dragon Fire on the way out. Dragon Fire is standard old skool Arrow affair, complete with double loop and double corkscrew. Much like The Bat, it did what I expected it to do and not a lot more, but if nothing else it brought back some memories of Corkscrew at Alton Towers.
We headed out of the gates, made a bee-line for our coach and headed back to Toronto, weary, sweaty and achey, but with smiles on our faces.
Highlights:
Behemoth
Leviathan
Sledgehammer
Wonder Mountain itself, which makes a great centre piece for the park and interacts with 3 different attractions (Guardians, Vortex and Thunder Run)
Funpix - which is a great idea by Cedar Fair.
Lowlights:
The food
The rain
Flight Deck
Ride count:
Leviathan x2
Behemouth x5
Wonder Mountain's Guardian x2
Wild Beast
The Bat
Vortex
Back Lot Stunt Coaster
Mighty Canadian Minebuster
Flight Deck
Thunder Run
Dragon Fire
Sledgehammer
Psyclone
Oh, did I mention that we also stayed at Cedar Point for 2 nights during our holiday? Trip report for that up next...
