After our weekend in Chicago and visit to SFGAm, we flew home for a few days of work before embarking on the second leg of our voyage around the Great Lakes region with our son. When Canada’s Wonderland announced the addition of Alpen Fury last year, I knew that we would eventually make a trip north of the border this summer. It initially looked like we would make a quick trip to the park for a media event on July 3, but the park eventually pushed that back a couple of weeks and ended up opening the new coaster to regular guests the weekend we were in Chicago, which was before the rescheduled media event. We live about an 8-9 hour drive from Toronto (about the same amount of time it takes us to drive to Atlanta), so we chose to make a week-long road trip around Lake Ontario and Lake Erie instead of just flying to Toronto and back.
While the primary motivation for our trip to Canada’s Wonderland was for the Alpen Fury media event, we had not visited the park in 11 years, so we were going to carve out 2 full days to make sure we had time to see everything the park has to offer. It was probably a good thing that we had allotted 2 days for the park, because the media event didn’t begin until after the park opened for the day due to technical issues. The media event ended up taking place while regular park guests were in the park and in line for the coaster. It was a really weird setup with invited media and guests riding one of the coaster’s 2 trains and regular park guests riding the other. Kudos to the park for adjusting on the fly and doing their best to satisfy the needs of the invited media (including a couple of folks who had an afternoon flight to catch) despite the technical issues. They even walked a few of us over to ride Leviathan before regular park guests while they were working to get Alpen Fury up and running. Ultimately, we were able to get 7 rides on the new coaster, including our POV ride, before they turned the second train over to accommodate regular park guests.
Because of the delayed media event, we ended up getting a late start to our first day in the park. For those that have been to Canada’s Wonderland, you probably know how crowded this park can get, even on weekdays (we visited on a Thursday and Friday), so by the time I stashed my camera gear and media event goodies in the car and made our way back to the main park entrance, we had lost the opportunity to ride pretty much any major attraction in the park with little to no waiting. However, because the park has so many attractions spread across an expansive property, very few rides had waits longer than 30-45 minutes with Alpen Fury being one of the rare exceptions, which consistently carried a 180+ minute line both days we visited. Fortunately, Alpen Fury is operated with a single rider line that reduced the wait to @45 minutes so we were able to get 2 more rides on the new coaster over the next 2 days.
Canada’s Wonderland has added 3 new roller coasters since we last visited in 2004, Yukon Striker, Snoopy’s Racing Railway, and the aforementioned Alpen Fury. Yukon Striker opened in 2019 and still holds a number of records including the tallest and fastest dive coaster, topping Valravn at Cedar Point. B&M dive machines have been popping up all over the world in the past decade, and it’s rumored that another record breaking model will be coming to Six Flags Over Texas next year. However, I’ve found that the best versions of this type of coaster include a tunnel, bridge, or some other near-miss element that enhances the speed and excitement of the first drop. Yukon Striker may feature the biggest drop on any dive machine, but it also has a tunnel at the bottom of that first drop as well as 4 massive inversions. While that tunnel isn’t quite as good as those found on Oblivion, Valkyria, or Baron 1898, Yukon Striker’s height and speed make up for it, and that tunnel separates the Canadian coaster from other North American dive machines. Personally, I probably would have preferred that the second Immelman was replaced with a dive loop like on Wrath of Rakshasa, but that’s a minor critique, as is the pedestrian second half of the ride following the MCBR that features a second drop and forceless helix that is obviously only needed to allow for an additional train to operate on the track.
Snoopy’s Racing Railway debuted in 2023 and follows the trend of excellent family coasters being installed at theme parks around the world. This coaster is located in the very back of the park and buried deep within Planet Snoopy, so if you don’t seek it out, you would probably miss it. Snoopy’s Racing Railway is from ART Engineering, who also collaborated with Canada’s Wonderland on Wonder Mountain’s Guardian. The coaster uses a tire launch system to propel the train around the track and through a number of props themed with Peanuts characters. The train makes 2 cycles of the circuit, which reminded me a lot of Max and Moritz at Efteling. The coaster is a ton of fun with an ultra-smooth ride and comfortable seats. So often seats on kiddie coasters are not made for parents, but this new generation of family coasters, led by Vekoma, are comfortable for guests of all ages and sizes (minimum height is 36” with a supervising companion). While Alpen Fury grabbed the headlines of our visit, this coaster was one of the biggest surprises.
Our son wasn’t quite tall enough to experience most of the big rides the last time we visited Canada’s Wonderland, but despite all of the new coasters in this park he was excited to ride, he was most surprised by the shear number of large flat rides. As we walked around the park over our 2 days, we wondered if park representatives go to IAPPA every year and randomly pick a new massive flat ride to add to the lineup. You can spin, flip, turn, and swing in just about every direction imaginable by riding the various flat rides at Canda’s Wonderland, and I think you could probably consider it one of the flat ride capitals of the world. Some of our favorites included Skyhawk, which is a Gerstautler “Sky Roller”, and is similar to Dragon Racer Rally at Epic Universe or Shell Shock at Nickelodeon Universe. The slight difference here is that the seats spin around a straight tower, which makes it a bit harder to get the carriage to spin upside down, but with a bit of practice, we were able to get well over 10 inversions during a single cycle. Another interesting and unique flat ride is Sledgehammer, which is a Jump 2 ride from Huss and features long arms that spin and rotate around a large tower. Eventually the ride thrusts the arms in the air and spins riders 80 feet in the air before flinging them back down towards the ground. This was an extremely interesting ride to watch run, but was a bit of a 1-trick pony to ride with just the thrusting up and down generating unique forces. Nonetheless, it’s a ride I’ve never seen anywhere else before. Many of the other flat rides in the park are similar to those you can find elsewhere, but some have cool theming like Lumberjack, which looks like 2 giant axes swinging back and forth, Soaring Timbers, which is themed to a giant log swinging back and forth, and Wild Night Mares, which is a massive gravitron with individual compartments for standing instead of up against the wall of the wheel. There are so many flat rides in the park that we weren’t able to get to them all despite spending 2 days in the park.
In addition to the new coasters since our last visit Zach was excited to ride many of the coasters he wasn’t tall enough to experience 11 years ago. Leviathan was B&M’s first giga-coaster, and dominates the park’s skyline. Unlike B&M hypercoasters like Behemoth located on the other side of the park, Leviathan is not designed to optimize airtime. Instead, it is all about speed, topping out at 92 MPH and negotiating maneuvers at pulse-pounding velocity. The bottom of the first drop features a tunnel, which reminds me a lot of Goliath at SFMM or Titan at SFoT, but blasting through the tunnel occurs in the blink of an eye as the track tips upward into a banked right turn. My favorite element of this coaster is the low-slung airtime hill that is perfectly profiled to maintain the speed while popping riders out of their seat for a solid 2-3 second of floating airtime. However, the second half of the course shows how much B&M improved their giga-coaster design with Fury 325. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with the back half of Leviathan, but if you’ve ridden Fury 325 before experiencing this coaster, you’ll easily recognize how inferior B&M’s first giga-coaster is to what might be considered their “masterpiece”.
On the other side of the park sits Behemoth, which is a B&M hypercoaster. I still think it’s odd to have B&M hyper and giga coasters in the same park with Kings Island and Carowinds having the same setup. However, the space between these 2 coasters (it takes about 10-15 minutes to walk from one to the other) and clear difference in focus (Behemoth optimizes airtime while Leviathan highlights its speed) allows to very similar coasters to exist in the same park. We ended up riding Behemoth quite a bit at the end of our second day because we were in this section of the park as ride ops were in overdrive trying to dispatch as many trains as they could in the final hour of operation. With a single rider line (not available on Leviathan), we were able to get 4 straight rides in less than 30 minutes. Of other North American hypercoasters, I’d place Behemoth just a touch below Nitro at SFGAdv, and the layout here is pretty similar with a hammerhead turnaround and pretty forceful helix (actually a figure 8 design on Behemoth inst.ad of upward, decreasing radius design on Nitro). The placement of the coaster along the park’s perimeter lake ads to the excitement, especially during night rides. I’d still rate Candymonium, Apollo’s Chariot, and Mako ahead of the second tier of B&M hypers, which would include Behemoth, but it’s still a great attraction and worth multiple rides when visiting Canada’s Wonderland.
The last time we visited this park, Wonder Mountain’s Guardian was brand new, and understanding the coaster’s limited capacity and frequent technical issues, we waited until the beginning of our second day to ride the coaster/shooting gallery attraction when the park first opened to limit our waiting time. Boy has this attraction deteriorated with half of the 8-person trains having at least one inoperable seat/blaster, which drags an already low-capacity attraction down to unacceptable levels. Not only that, but the scoring system appears to be inconsistent, taking away what made this attraction so unique when it debuted. The drop track (the first such in North America) is still a fun novelty, but this is easily a 1-and-done when there’s no incentive to re-ride and improve your score during the dark ride portion of the attraction.
Wonder Mountain is the icon of Canada’s Wonderland, and with the addition of Alpen Fury, there are now 4 roller coasters that interact with the structure. Thunder Run was the first coaster to integrate its layout into the mountain, and is a Mack powered coaster with a figure 8 design that circles the interior of the mountain. The coaster operates with a single train that makes 2 loops of the circuit during each cycle so it is a bit of a slow loader, but it’s still a fun coaster that is superior to other indoor coasters you might find a Six Flags parks like Skull Mountain at SFGAdv or Runaway Mountain at SFoT. The other coaster that integrates its layout into Wonder Mountain is Vortex, which is an Arrow suspended coaster. This is the last of a quickly dying breed with just 4 of these left in North America (Ninja at SFMM, Iron Dragon at CP, and The Bat at KI the others). Of these 4, I’d say Vortex is probably neck and neck with Ninja as the best, and the added interaction with Alpen Fury and Yukon Striker probably gives Vortex a slight edge. The first drop is exciting and the lower half of the layout features some of the most out-of-control moments you can experience on a suspended coaster.
The rest of the park’s coaster lineup is pretty mediocre, but not as terrible as some parks’ bottom tier. Dragon Fyre (not to be confused with the dismantled Drachen Fire at BGW) is an old-school Arrow looper but is quite possibly one of the smoothest riding example I’ve experienced in over a decade. Flight Deck is a Vekoma SLC still running with its original trains, but is quite possible the most intricately themed versions of this coaster model in the world with props dating back to when Paramount operated the park and leveraged their Top Gun IP on coasters throughout the chain. Perhaps the merger with Six Flags will eventually see this coaster updated with the new generation trains with vest restraints, or perhaps it will get removed as an aging, painful relic like the adjacent Time Warp was earlier this year. We did carve out some time to ride Wilde Beast, which is a mediocre PTC wooden coaster, but didn’t feel like standing in 30+ minute lines for The Fly (wild mouse), The Bat (Vekoma boomerang with OG trains), Stunt Coaster (identical to versions at KD and KI), or Mighty Canadian Minebuster. While this park’s top tier coaster lineup is elite and world-class, its bottom tier is instantly forgettable and could use some serious updating.
In addition to all the rides, Canada’s Wonderland also puts on a few shows to entertain guests. One of the most unique shows is the Victoria Falls Cliff Diving show off Wonder Mountain. The show lasts all of 5 minutes because each diver can only make 1 dive since the path to get back to the platform takes too long to allow for repeat attempts but is truly a unique show for a theme park. Since the divers can only make 1 off the mountain, the park has another dive show near Leviathan that includes parkour elements, slack rope aerobatics, and synchronized diving. This reminded me a lot of the dive show from Europa Park we saw last summer, and is the type of show that used to be a theme park staple, but is becoming increasingly rare. The other show we saw was Cirque Ambiente, which is a typical acrobatic-style show featuring a handful of individual acts. These types of shows have become pretty ubiquitous in theme parks around the world, but there are so many different types of performers featured that keeps these shows fresh and interesting.
Overall, we really enjoyed our 2 days at Canada’s Wonderland, and feel that the addition of Alpen Fury (as well as other world-class coasters Yukon Striker, Leviathan, and Behemoth) makes this park one of the best in the new Six Flags chain. Cedar Point is still the class of the now-combined chain, but Canada’s Wonderland is right up there as one of the best regional theme parks in North America.
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I love seeing older Arrows being maintained and kept, and the only gap in this lineup was a large-scale launch or looper before Alpenfury came along (soon to be confused with Alpengeist).
My interest in this park has seriously declined since the removal of Time Warp. Such a historic and incredible attraction being removed at the drop of a hat is honestly insulting.
. . .just kidding. I can't wait until I visit sometime soon.