Photo TR: Canada's Wonderland

So on Thursday I decided to use what I thought was my last paid sick day of the school year to go to Cedar Point. While at Cedar Point I get a text from the school secretary saying I actually had another one and if I still wasn't feeling well that I should take off Friday too. LOL. So what the hell, yeah sure I'll take Friday off. The school year ends next week and if I didn't use it I would lose it.. But what to do with my unexpected day off?

 

I had been planning a trip around Lake Erie for a while. Stops at Canada's Wonderland, the Hockey Hall of Fame, CFL game (Toronto or Hamilton), Niagara Falls, Marineland, Fantasy Island, and Waldameer were all going to be part of it. But since I had a Friday with nothing to do I decided to contact some people to see if they were interested in going to Canada's Wonderland on Friday. Like the responsible adults that they are, they said they had to work. So I said screw it, I'll go by myself.

 

The plan was to get to the park an hour early so I would have no trouble rope dropping it to Wonder Mountain's Guardian. (Spoiler alert: I had plenty of trouble)

 

I set the alarm for 4:30 AM. Because in order to get to CW at 9 AM with about a 4 hour drive (from Detroit) I have to leave at 5. The alarm went off at 4:30, but this was after a full day at Cedar Point with a 2 hour drive there and back, so I wasn't quite ready to get up at 4:30. I doze off again and for some reason I start dreaming about Kings Dominion opening a new flying coaster where Volcano is/was. When I realize I had dozed off I quickly get up and look at the clock, it says 5:20... oh sh!t...

 

I'm on the road by 5:45 headed towards the Ambassador Bridge which is only about a 10 minute drive from my house. Now I've been to Windsor a ton, but always use the tunnel since it drops you off right in downtown Windsor. I've never used the bridge before. When I get to the Canadian side I see a bunch of toll booths with green "open" signs above them, so I roll up to one and stop. I roll down my window but there's nobody to talk to. So I'm thinking, OK, this must not be where you stop so I start going forward and all of a sudden I hear a loud "HEY!" I look up and there's a guy in this raised toll booth with a pissed off look on his face. At this point I realized I was where the trucks were supposed to be. All of a sudden I am nervous as hell and I had to get out of my car to give the guy my passport and answer his questions. First question: Where are you going? I answer- Ca-ca-ca Canada's Wonderland s-s-s sir... He was like oh, that place was a dump before Cedar Point bought it. I was like yeah, I've been wanting to go for a while now, I get in free with my cedar fair pass... After that he was cool and we talked roller coasters for about 2 or 3 minutes.

 

When I get on the highway I see a nice sign that says "maximum 100 km/h" and under it the metric conversion to 60 MPH. Damn, I gotta go 60, hopefully when I get out of Windsor the speed limit will get higher.. It didn't. According to the law you can only go 60 on a highway in the middle of nowhere. It's not like the Canadians obey the law though. I'm going 60, but cars and trucks are passing me like I'm parked. Still I stay at 60 because I'm in a foreign country and the 9 on my plate is unrecognizable due to the blue paper somehow coming off. Does anyone actually drive the speed limit in Canada?

 

So while on the highway I am looking at traffic in Toronto and it's already a mess. I wanted to avoid that toll road and just stay in the highway but that didn't look like a good idea. So I start reading (while driving) about this toll road. Apparently it uses cameras to record your trip and then bills you. I figure out that my trip will cost me about $21. Ok fine, I'm using the toll road. Then I read at the bottom unrecognizable plates will be charged $50. Well sh!t my plate is unrecognizable. So I stop at a Walmart in God knows where and buy a blue magic marker to color in the 9 hoping that will be good enough. I'm quite fond of my work as it doesn't look any different from the rest of the plate. That also gave me a new found confidence to drive on this highway with the flow of traffic. I push it up to 80 mph. After all I haven't seen any cops on the road.

 

Wow this is long and I haven't even started talking about the park yet.. Ok, long story short, I hit a bunch of traffic before the toll road, I take the toll road which probably saved me a ton of time, and I get to the park a half hour after it opened...

 

 

And oh yeah, the park was PACKED! Had to wait 30 min just to get in...

 

Forget about Wonder Mountain's Guardian, where can I buy fast lane..

 

 

found it!

 

Headed over to Wonder Mountains Guardian to see the line and it was a full queue...

 

I'm not one who really cares about theming, but I like fountains and water sh!t and I really liked the entrance to this park..

 

 

 

So I then made my way over to Yukon Striker, which looked fantastic!

 

 

 

But it wasn't open yet.

 

So I decided Mighty Canadian Mine Buster would be credit #89.

 

 

The ride was, well, trash... I really get on my students for using that word in this way, but it really fits. It was rough, and not enjoyable at all.

 

I measured the ride forces with that ride forces app for anyone who is interested..

 

 

Then I saw that Yukon Striker was open. Fast lane does not dump you right into the station. There is a point in the line where it splits. That it where you choose your row. It basically at the bottom of the stairs to the station. Fast lane merges with the rest at that point. If you choose the first row it's about a 20 minute wait from that point.

 

 

I thought the ride was really good. Definitely the best dive coaster I've been on. And I've been on all of the ones in North America. What I really liked about this one as that it seemed like the holding brake help you further down the drop. So not only the people on the front row got a view of what was below, but everyone gets a good view. IMO that made the 2nd and 3rd rows not completely suck, unlike the rest of the dive coasters.

 

My favorite element (after the first drop of course) was the vertical loop. The actual ride goes through that element a lot faster than it appears on the pov and it was quite forceful.

 

Yukon Striker actually exceeded my expectations and landed a spot in my top 25 at #25. I have less than 100 credits so it's not like it's THAT big a deal, but I really enjoyed it! For those wondering about the vest restraints. First of all they have never bothered me. There were some saying they were a little "better" than the ones on Valravn. Personally I didn't notice a difference. And if the vest restraints bother you then I don't know what to tell you.. Put down the xbox controller and do some pushups... Just kidding... Kind of...

 

Here are the ride forces for Yukon Striker

 

 

I think a lot of that airtime was me walking out of the station. I really like this app. As you will see a lot of the airtime measurements are off.

 

After Yukon I noticed 2 flat rides in the area, and I love me some flat rides.

 

Sledge Hammer I guess is the only operating ride of it's kind in the world. It was pretty fun except for the bulky restraints. The ride forces app unfortunately didn't pick anything up for this.

 

sorry about my fat finger in the way

 

Psyclone was right next to it. And it was a fun ride, but again it had bulky restraints that made it uncomfortable for me in the shoulders. It was also a very short cycle.

 

fat finger in the way again...

 

Then I made my way over to Behemoth. The fast lane line does dump you into the station for this one. So even though there was almost a full queue I was in the front seat in less than 5 minutes.

 

This ride was freaking awesome! I don't hear too much talk about this, but it grabbed my #2 spot with B&M hyper's behind Mako. The airtime is so strong, and it's a very intense ride. It definitely exceeded my expectations. I marathoned this for a while.

 

 

I walked by time warp and the SLC but passed on both. I don't ride SLC's, and time warp just didn't look like fun. I trust others' opinions when just about everyone says those are 2 of the worst coasters win Earth..

 

Hi SLC... no I'll pass, thank you...

 

One small complaint is how long the food and refresh lines are/were.. It took me an hour to get lunch..

 

 

By now it's close to 3 PM and I realized I have not ridden the freaking giga yet...

 

yeah fat finger again

 

I thought it met expectations. It was tall, it was fast, and it was pretty intense, but some have said it is better than Millennium Force... umm not even close... I did marathon it for about an hour though.. On one of my rides I rode with a group of guys were were just blown away by it. And I was kind of jealous that they enjoyed it so much and how much it overwhelmed them. I guess because I ride coasters so often and go to a place like Cedar Point so often I'm used to it. I don't know... Just a thought I had while sitting on the brake run with those guys. And BTW those were pretty fun guys to hang out with even though they thought Leviathan was the tallest coaster in the world, and they thought Cedar Point was a Six Flags Park LOL!!! We talked Raptors basketball (this was before game 4) and coasters for a little bit.

 

 

Then I went over to Wilde Beast. And like Minebuster, this thing is trash.. Too rough to enjoy.

 

 

Then I started to head over to Dragon Fyre, but Wilde Beast gave me a headache so I wasn't in the mood for Arrow's sh!t just yet.

 

I went back to the car to sit in the AC for half an hour and I took a couple Tylenol because that trash Wilde beast really f*cked me up...

 

After I recovered I got on Vortex. I really like the bat at Kings Island so I was really looking forward to this one. Vortex felt faster and more intense, but also rougher. It was definitely a fun ride though. I think I need up having 3 rides on it.

 

??? Airtime...

 

Then I went over to Dragon Fyre again, and this was the most surprising coaster of the park. I really liked this ride. Usually Arrow loopers dig into my shoulders, but this one didn't at all, and it was actually quite comfortable. The ride wasn't too rough, and it was pretty forceful for a looper IMO. I actually had 3 rides on it.

 

that yellow cloth or whatever it is I think made this ride more enjoyable than other Arrow loopers

 

After that I spent the rest of the time on Leviathan, Yukon Striker, and Behemoth.

 

The other coasters that were not on fast lane I skipped because those lines were too long. And the other flat rides I skipped too because they had the same uncomfortable bulky restraints.

 

Overall it was a really fun day and the park lived up to my expectations. Their top 3 all made my top 25... I'll definitely be back!

Great report! I'm guessing the app was confused by Vortex swinging?

 

The B&M collection really is great.

Thanks. Yeah that is probably what did it to that app. I’ll have to record on iron dragon next time I’m at CP to see if it does the same thing.

 

 

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Great report! Glad you had a good time. lol @ your driving and border experience.

so... I'm confused. If you drive a car into Canada with US plates you will be given a $80 fee on tolls?

Just read this easy to follow fee chart!

 

https://www.407etr.com/en/tolls/rate-charts/rate-chart-complete.html

 

Plus easy to follow toll charge calculator

 

https://www.407etr.com/en/tolls/tolls/toll-calculator.html

 

 

You can use US plates and not be charged the $50 additional fee as long as your plate is clearly visible, amongst the other extremely high fees. It all depends on day, time, whether you paid for a transponder or not, etc.

 

The toll road is completely optional.

Right, the plate has to be visible for the camera to pick it up. Mine wasn't before I stopped at Walmart to buy a marker to color in the 9 that had peeled off. Based on the calculator I should be charged $21.50 for my trip.

Amazing report! I'm still working on my trip report as well to Canada's Wonderland. It was my first theme park outside the USA, so I was thrilled that my visit turned out great. Hopefully, I'll get my report done soon.

I’m glad you liked it. I’m looking forward to yours when you get around to posting it. I try to stay away from reading about parks I’ve never been to. Now all I do is look for others’ reports.

 

 

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Nice report...although the blue sky in the pictures looks a bit odd! Are you sure you were in Toronto?

 

We liked Yukon Striker for the reasons you mentioned also, and I definitely felt they gave you a fair bit of hang time at the top....it seemed to be a long 1 2 3 DROP!! when we went on it.

 

Nice to see afew people coming to visit CW this season. I've always been consistent in the CW thread in that I think Cedar Fair has done an excellent job of investing in the park, and have made it more of a "revisit" park with some solid rides.

Glad you had a good day

Glad you have had fun. I have lived in Michigan my whole life and have never been to Canada's Wonderland. Were hoping in a few years.

Nice report. I will get up to Canada's Wonderland someday, maybe once they get a solid 4th "big" coaster. There does seem to be a pretty large drop off in their coaster lineup after the 3 B&Ms.

 

In fact, I think I am more excited for the wide array of flat rides at the park than I am for any of the major coasters!

100 kph is 62 MPH. 65 is a perfectly reasonable speed limit for an interstate highway in America so it's basically the same thing. You're just from Michigan where the speed limits are awesome (for the eastern half of the country at least).

 

Anyway, great report!