First Visit to Canada's Wonderland

Jacob, Jeff Elliott and I just got back from a road-trip to Toronto and spent a Sunday at CW. I was going to do a quick article, but if you want to do one go for it! Just a few thoughts and observations: their two major coasters, Behemoth and Leviathan, are amazing coasters- we rode each of them multiple times thanks to getting FastLane. Vortex looks like a fairly standard suspended coaster, but wow! does it have speed! Wild Beast is a woodie that, as Jeff explained, "put my back out, put it back in again, then put it back out for good". Very rough woodie, reminding me more of a coaster from a closed park than a major CF park. Silver Streak in Kidzville was a surprisingly good inverted family coaster with a great loading staff who sang the safety announcements to us! Thunder Run is a mine ride through the mountain that dominates the center of the park, taking the place of the Eiffel Tower at Kings Island and Dominion. it's a family coaster with pretty good speed and is unusual in that it runs through the course twice each time, with the ride operator making "Choo Choo" sounds as it leaves and passes through the station. Lots of other coasters, many of which we skipped or I'll not mention because they were one-and-done and not memorable, good or bad. Guardian of the Mountain, after a first ride interrupted by mechanical issues that left us sitting inside the mountain for about 15 minutes taking selfies and pictures of the ride projectors (and giving Jeff a chance to start howling like a wolf and scaring the little girl behind us (bad Jeff!)is a pretty good experience with which I had two complaints: 1) it was just not long enough, and 2) I had a terrible time seeing where the beam from my gun was pointing- I could see Jeff's better than mine. It is still a fun attraction, but they have a terrible set-up for the long lines that form for it. No outside queue area, so the line just winds down the path leading to the entrance. Ride it first thing or plan on an hour wait.
Canada's Wonderland is a visually beautiful park, but some of the pathways tend to wander around more picturesque than easy to follow. We ate at Coasters, usually a safe choice at a CF park, and the burgers we had were among the best I have had at a theme park.
All-in-all we had a great time at Canada's Wonderland. Be selective on your choice of coasters- you can spend lots of time waiting for a coaster that does not live up to expectations, but do not miss the two big ones, Behemoth and Leviathan.
You'll have a great time!

I posted a trip report earlier this summer from Canada's Wonderland, so you might get some ideas from that...

http://www.themeparkinsider.com/flume/201408/4155/

We only ate at the restaurants that were part of the All-Day-Dining Plan, but didn't have a terrible meal. However, I don't think I would pay full price for any of the items we ate. The Pizza/Pizza Chicken strips and fries were surprisingly good, and the Manchu Wok was pretty decent for what it is.

The layout of the park is a bit annoying with the two best coasters on opposite ends of the park with the newest coaster in the middle. From what we could tell (visited on a Friday night and Saturday in July), Leviathan seemed to be more efficient loading, and without the seat belts, meant that they were running at a higher capacity. They actually have a clock inside the station to keep the crew moving and prevent the trains from stacking (there's no MCBR so with 3 trains on, it doesn't take much to stack). I would probably recommend either going left at the entrance to Behemoth or straight up to Wonder Mountain's Guardian. If you like MIB, you will probably want at least 2 or 3 rides on Guardian, so you might want to hit it first, because hour-long lines persist throughout the day because of the low capacity. I highly recommend Vortex, which is a really good Arrow suspended coaster, and if you want a really strange experience, give Time Warp a go, but don't wait more than 10 minutes for the bizarre Zamperla flier. Also, the park has a ton of big flat rides, so make sure you hit a few of those as you're walking between the coasters.

Awesome, thanks guys! I'll probably do Guardian first just to knock the long line out before hooking around the left and going around the park that way.

Coasters is usually a safe bet from what I've seen, so perhaps we'll do that. We'll be staying for Haunt that night, so I don't really have the option to snack all day and hit a restaurant on the way out.

Maybe the all-you-can-eat pass is a good value if I'm stuck there all day anyway...it's something I'll think about, anyway.