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Two construction trailers, two flatbed trucks, and more land clearing have been spotted around Minebuster and Splash Works from Cedar Fair Coaster Watch on Facebook

The park will be making their 2016 announcement tomorrow!!

That awkward moment when you climb to the top of WindSeeker for maintenance and realize you forgot your wrench

Hi Everyone, I recently had the opportunity to take a walk around Canada's Wonderland with Peter Switzer (Director of Maintenance and Construction at Canada's Wonderland) and thought I would share some information regarding project contracts and new ride construction at the park. Peter informed me that when CW is looking to build a new attraction, the process is identical to that of any other engineering project. First of all, the decision to build a new ride (and what type of ride will be built) is strictly that of Canada's Wonderland and not Cedar Fair. Each individual park makes its own decisions on what rides are built and when, however they must also receive approval from Cedar Fair. Below is a simplified outline of the process. When the park decides that they want to build a new ride, they put out something similar to a "request for proposal (RFP)" where they state the scope of the project including the type of ride that they want to construct and the features they want it to have. They might also include other details such as budgetary constraints, site constraints, and/or required building and design codes. The RFP is made available to amusement ride consulting companies which, if desired, submit proposals for a ride that meets the park's requirements. The park then has the option to accept one of the proposals or decline all of them. If the park accepts a proposal, they award an engineering contract to the corresponding company which is then responsible for developing a detailed design and manufacturing the ride. The ride's designers communicate with representatives from the park to tweak and revise the design until both parties agree on a final design. This process can take months and can involve hundreds of revisions as I'm told was the case for Leviathan. I asked Peter if he could provide specific examples of changes that were made to Leviathan from its original design however he was unable to recall any since the process occurred 5 years ago (more than a year before construction started on Leviathan) and he was recently dealing with another large project (very interesting). Another interesting note to add here is that many amusement ride consulting firms do not actually design the entire ride themselves. When Wonderland was working with B&M to build Leviathan, B&M was mainly responsible for designing the track and support structure. The design of the ride's specialized subsystems such as the electrical system and the concrete foundation piers were sub-contracted to other engineering companies that each specialize in a specific area. For example, all of the concrete foundation piers for Leviathan were designed by a geotechnical consulting firm within Ontario since this company is most familiar with the soil conditions around CW. Sub-contracting of work can also help to ensure that the rides are designed to fully comply with local building and design codes, especially when the primary consultant is located in another country. When Behemoth was constructed, the fall-arrest system that was installed on the lift hill for maintenance workers did not comply with local codes. Because of this, the park had to retrofit the ride with its own system to satisfy the codes. If a major problem develops after a ride is constructed at the park, CW may contact the designer to help mitigate the problem. After Leviathan was constructed, the park received numerous noise complaints from the surrounding residential areas due the coaster's roar as it plummeted down the first drop. Canada's Wonderland contacted B&M to help resolve the problem and B&M experimented with various alternatives at their facility. The optimal solution that B&M came up with was to fill the entire lift hill (which is made up of hollow rectangular steel segments) with sand to reduce vibrations which cause excessive noise. The park proceeded with this solution by cutting holes in each of the lift hill segments and filling them all with granular. This significantly reduced the loudness of the ride and the number of noise complaints (although I personally miss that loud signature B&M roar). I apologize for the long post but I hope that some of you will find this information as interesting as I do. I hope to share more information that I learned from Peter Switzer at some point, I had the opportunity to ask him a lot of questions about the park and specific rides. I even got a tour inside WMG with him and I was allowed to snap a few pictures with the house lights on (although I'm a little weary about posting them here). Cheers!!