2025 has certainly been a banner year for the theme park industry, with the first new major US theme park in over a decade opening earlier this year as well as a number of major new coasters and thrill rides. However, one new attraction that I’ve had my eye on since it was announced last fall was AlpenFury at Canada’s Wonderland. After a few delays and a false start, I was able to attend the park’s media day for the new north of the border Premier Rides launch coaster. AlpenFury sets a new record for a launched coaster with a total of nine inversions, which also matches the North American inversion record set by Steel Curtain back in 2019.
While dwarfed on the Canada’s Wonderland skyline by Leviathan, Behemoth, and Yukon Striker, AlpenFury still extends 164 feet into the above Wonder Mountain, and further enhances the park’s central icon. In fact, AlpenFury is now the fourth coaster that integrates its layout into Wonder Mountain, joining Wonder Mountain’s Guardian, Thunder Road, and Vortex. The back side of the mountain looks like a twisted pretzel of coaster track and supports, as there are numerous spots where AlpenFury interacts with its fellow Wonder Mountain inhabitants. While there are no spots that would qualify as a near miss, it’s mesmerizing to watch the coasters run with trains whizzing and roaring past each other.
AlpenFury takes the concept of launching roller coaster to a new level with the way it integrates into Wonder Mountain and its relentless series of maneuvers. It’s clear that Premier and Canada’s Wonderland took great care with the layout, taking a lot of inspiration from top coasters both past and present. From the start, the coaster’s initial dive following an initial series of LSM motors and explosive launch out of Wonder Mountain reminded me of Volcano – The Blast Coaster. AlpenFury accelerates through a trench in the base of the mountain, blasting vertically out of the mountain, and into an inside top hat inversion. To further the comparison to Volcano, a blast of fire erupts from the mountain periodically during the train’s emergence into the top hat. The launch to propel the trains to a top speed of 71 miles per hour is extremely powerful and felt like it had an extra kick at the very end of the series of LSMs. It wasn’t quite the same as the vertical launch on Voltron Nivera at Europa Park, which felt more like the train was being dragged into the first inversion, but AlpenFury’s launch does feel like it kicks into another gear over the last moment before the train goes skyward.
While that start is about iconic as it gets, AlpenFury still has another eight inversions to dazzle riders. While it’s tough to differentiate the twists, dive loops, rolls, and corkscrews, the constant twisting and turning never felt nauseating, repetitive, or boring. Aside from the turnaround near the front of the park, the trains maintain their speed throughout much of the course, and the smooth transitions keep the intensity and excitement high.
Just when you think AlpenFury has run out of ideas, the coaster delivers one of the best finales I’ve ever experiences on a coaster with a twisting, diving corkscrew followed by a massive shot of airtime on a mini-hump, and then a slow heartline roll that is guaranteed to leave riders speechless as the train flies back into the final brake run. That finale is right up there with Velocicoaster’s finish, but Islands of Adventure’s apex predator noses ahead for me because of the mosasaurus roll over the lagoon.
AlpenFury definitely establishes a new bar for what can be done with a launching coaster, but like even the best coasters in the world, Canada’s Wonderland’s newest thrill machine is not without faults.
The first is that while the park has done a nice job giving the coaster some European Alpine theming, the station and entrance were a little lacking for me when compared to a coaster like Alpengeist at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Also, while the trains have sled elements on the front, there’s not much else on the train or along the course to further that theme.
Speaking of those trains, the design here is very similar to other Premier Sky Rocket models with three rows of two seats in each car (18 total seats in each train) with a tighter squeeze for guests sitting in the third row of each car. Also, the loose article bins that travel along a track from the load side of the station to the unload side of the station can take some getting used to and can be a bit problematic when there are operational issues. Sometimes guests are placing items in the bins but when the guests don’t necessarily end up on the very next train, the items need to be handled by ride ops and it makes an already complicated system even more complicated.
The other big issue right now is the sheer demand for this new coaster, which is generating multi-hour waits in a queue that doesn’t have shade. There is a single rider line available, as well as a FastLane Plus queue, but guests not able to choose those lines will need to bring their patience, considering the initial popularity and limited capacity with just 18-person trains that can probably dispatch as fast as every 2-3 minutes. However, if you can stomach the wait, it will be rewarded with one of the best coaster experiences in the world. In my book, this is absolutely a top 10 coaster, and right on the edge of being top five, joining the ranks of Voltron, Velocicoaster, Steel Vengeance, and Iron Gwazi. AlpenFury is THAT good, and despite opening halfway through the summer, is worth a trip to Toronto.
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Is it just me, or is the color scheme on this coaster reminiscent of something that you would make as a kid in Roller coaster tycoon? Absolutely blinding.
Beautiful coaster - Thanks For Posting....
Interesting reading and nice photos. I like the comparison with Volcano, a coaster I really miss. So sorry I had to skip the media preview due to health issues. If they ever resolve, I'm heading to Toronto and hoping that the single rider queue will mitigate heat and humidity. The mention of Steel Curtain raises an interesting point. Although I always regarded RCDB as the ultimate authority, I now question that assessment. That site credits Steel Curtain with only 8 inversions, counting the banana roll as only one (technically a banana roll can be one or two), and credits AlpenFury with only 7. @the_man25, I agree with your assessment of the park in general. The Vekoma SLC is one which would best be retired and Time Warp was cruel and unusual punishment. Good riddance. Another one I'd like to see retired is Dragon Fyre.
Time Warp was painful, but it was a bit of a bummer that they closed it at the beginning of this year before we were able to get back up here. Flight Deck is a pretty awful Vekoma SLC, but as some of the most intricate theming of any coaster in the park since it opened back when the original Top Gun was popular. Of all the versions that could benefit from the gen-2 trains it’s this one.
I actually thought Dragon Fire was running really good, and is one of the smoother classic Arrow loopers still running today. It takes up a pretty small footprint and is bounded by the parking lot and Leviathan, so potential replacements are pretty limited.
FWIW, Vortex is probably the second best Arrow suspended coaster still running in North America (behind Ninja), and its admirable that the parking lot has been able to keep this coaster running.
I've walked away from serious motor vehicle accidents with less pain than Time Warp.
I'm disappointed with the two 18-person trains, specifically with a park that hits such high numbers. I typically visit CWland every 3 years, and the crowds have consistently been insane. If the opportunity permits, once we go in a few weeks, I'll either get the express pass or break our party up for the single rider line. It perplexes me that parks tend to skip shading most of the queue line.
@sxcymike - Reportedly, shade for the main queue area is in the works, but right now, it’s pretty brutal in the middle of the day. After riding during the Media Event, we rode later in the day via the single rider line with a 30 minute wait. We waited about the same earlier today in single rider, and are currently going single rider after a shutdown, which looks like it will be a 45 minute wait. Over our 2 days here, we’ve noticed the few single rider lines are generally managed well, but there are a few groupers who do whatever they can to not use singles.
TWO 18-rider trains? Premier needs to up their game when it comes to capacity because you could really put a few more cars on that thing. Not to mention another train.
TBF, the length of the course cannot allow for another train. There’s no MCBR, and the ride is over in 80 seconds, so it’s almost impossible to no stack trains with just 2 on the track. For comparison, Raptera at KD also has just 2 trains with 20 seats per train, so not that much difference in capacity.
I expected this to be good, but never expected it to be considered among the best in the world as in my experience none of the other Premiers I've ridden are top tier coasters. Sounds like whatever they were smoking when they came up with this crazy layout resulted in something special, and I'll definitely have to get myself back up to Canada at some point to try it out (though it's not currently in my 2026 plans).
If SF wanted to i'm sure they could have done a duel loading station but that would cost more to operate and it seems like they gave up on those a long time ago. I don't think i've ever seen Superman at SFOG use both loading zones at the same time and I haven't seen Kingda Ka use both since 2005. Now that I think of it I can't remember the last time i've seen Manta using both either, its been probably 10+ years (since i've seen it at least). So sad because at Disney and Universal they work great.
Storm Runner at Hersheypark does duel loading even with only 2 trains and it still helps throughput because no wasting time sitting in the brake run.
There just isn’t a lot of room where the station is, which doesn’t even have a maintenance track - they were storing one train in the station and the second on the launch track under the mountain, so I’m guessing there’s a switch down there to pull trains off. The queue and station use pretty much every square inch of space in the area, so while they probably could have changed things around to create more space, it would have significantly impacted the coaster’s layout and the angle that the launch takes through and out of the mountain.
Frankly, the way they squeezed a coaster of this caliber into this space is nothing short of miraculous.
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I've only been to Canada's Wonderland once, in 2008, and it was befuddling to me that such a huge major market/very crowded park had such a poor ride lineup. Behemoth was new that year (the first Cedar Fair addition) and other than that I think the second most popular ride in the park was Vortex which was way outdated to be the parks second best ride even 17 years ago. They have since added Leviathan, Yukon Striker, and now Alpenfury so they have definitely moved this park in the right direction though progress has been slow (even Wonder Mountain's Guardian, which has had mixed reviews, I think it the addition at least made sense as they needed a family coaster).
The park still has an old Vekoma Boomerang, an old horrendous Vekoma SLC, a really old Arrow Looper that no one really rides anymore, and two really bad/rough wooden coasters, so i'm kind of surprised the current "SF purge" hasn't hit this park like it has with other parks. At least they FINALLY took out that Zamperla flying coaster this season though that was one of the worst coasters in the world, so that plot combined with the SLC gives them a big plot of land for another major coaster. Also both wooden coasters could be RMC candidates (or removal and replacement with a new woodie), so there is still substantial opportunity to improve this park. And the next thing they need to build has to be high capacity because I think people will forgive having one bad capacity super-headliner at this park, but not two.