· Yawn yawn yawn ... woooooooohoooooooo! (Canada's Wonderland)Toronto, Canada · 6th Oct 2008 · Posted by Chris
Thanks to Beth-Anne and Richard we had tickets to go and check out Canada's Wonderland, Toronto's massive theme park. Chris & Aimee were keen so off we went for a day of extreme thrill ride carnage and excitement.
We'd read about Wonderland's newest attraction, an unbelievably massive ride called "Behemoth". From a couple of km away from the park itself this monstrosity is visible against the skyline. The website has a number of 3D animations that simulate what the ride is like but obviously they can't convey what the thing looks like up close.
Ok so I'm not going to keep on like this. Basically if you want to read about the physical aspects of the ride you can do so online hehe. What I will do though is say that although it doesn't have any loops or corkscrews or anything like that it's probably one of the craziest rides any of us have been on! The ride up to the top of the typical roller-coaster start is loooooong and the view from the top makes it obvious how high you are. The drop on the other side of the climb though? Yeesh! It's 230 feet high and 75 degrees which is pretty much vertical when you consider that you're going down it at 125 kph with just a large chunk of plasticy stuff pressing against your waist. The drop is so steep that it actually simulates zero gravity for a few seconds - Annie's hair was floating as if we were in space! Totally freakin' awesome! We went to go on it again at the end of the day but it broke! Sooo gutted. At least we weren't part of the poor group stuck in the car halfway up the first slope though (you can also see how high and steep the climb is too) ...
The Behemoth car stuck up the climb at the end of the day! Stiiiiiiiiiiiink.
If you want to see an awesome 3D rendering of what a video taken from the front of the ride looks like, check out the videos ...
Canada's Wonderland has more rides than any them park I've ever been to (not that I've been to many outside of Dreamworld and Movie World on Australia's Gold Coast). We spent the rest of the day hitting up the biggest rides we could find, including ...
Flight Deck. It's basically the same as a ride called Lethal Weapon at Dreamworld where you're sitting in a racing-style seat with your legs dangling. The floor drops away and you're then thrown up the first climb and shot through a crazy series of turns and drops, all while your legs are hanging into space! It's a real neck-tester through because your head is constantly getting whiplashed around throughout the ride.
Mighty Canadian Minebuster. Man this thing is nuts. Apart from the fact that it's made completely of wood (scary enough when you think about it) it's easily the roughest and most spine-jarring ride any of us have been on before. If you go through like it, twice, like we did with your arms in the air in typical roller-coaster fashion you get chucked about like nothing else. At the end we were all in hysterics at being so amazed the ride still exists. It kicked ASS!
Aimee and Annie took a bit of a break at one point so Chris and I (yes, we're both called Chris) decided to hit up a ride called The Bat. It starts slightly differently from the others as you get pulled up the slope backwards and dropped down forwards, right through the building where you get into the cars at the start. It's awesome waiting for your turn and seeing people rocket past you at full pace before blasting up the usual arrangement of corkscrews and loops. That's about where it stops being normal though because you hit the end of the track, another slope that you get pulled up forwards this time. After that they let you go and you go through the entire ride again ... BACKWARDS! The sensation of going through loops and corkscrews without knowing they're coming is really weird and unlike anything else I've been on before. It looks like this (sorry if you're viewing this article in a way that doesn't show embedded YouTube videos):
One of the things you have to do at Canada's Wonderland is have funnel cake ...
Funnel Cake.
One of the best rides we went on was called Back Lot Stunt Coaster although it used to be called The Italian Job. The name got changed due to Paramount Theatres selling the park. Weird. Anyway, you get into a row of 3 replica Mini cars that look just like the ones from the movie. There's a sign in front of your face that says "Put head against headrest during launch." Launch? Ok that sounded a little weird so I didn't pay much attention to it but I soon found out why the sign is there. Instead of the usual tow up a slow climb the ride suddenly making a hissing noise and you're shot forward, accelerating from 0 to about 150kph in less than 3 seconds! We guessed later that it's done this way to simulate the snappiness of a thrill ride in a real Mini, as tiny as they are. Halfway through the ride the cars stop and a whole lot of flames and explosions go on all around you - you can't help ducking! After that it's another neck-snapping acceleration before being blasted through a series of tunnels in complete darkness! It's very strange when you can't see what's coming as all the turns are unexpected - it's just makes them feel even faster.
Towards the end of the day we had to head into the kid's area to go on the ride through Scooby Doo's Haunted Mansion. It's not a ride of thrills at all but instead a game where you have to shoot as many tiny targets as possible. It's great fun! I managed to pull off the win with 2180 points. :)
By the end of all this we were pretty knackered so all that remained was the bus ride back into town and a really nice dinner at Richtree Market Restaurant with Chris & Aimee. This is an innovative restaurant where you choose what you want to eat (like a buffet) but you swipe a card at each point and pay for what you eat at the end of the meal. The food was excellent but we were all sooooo full at the end! All we could manage after that was head home and crash before our early departure the next morning.
It was a really cool day - we're going back at some stage if we can!
We'd read about Wonderland's newest attraction, an unbelievably massive ride called "Behemoth". From a couple of km away from the park itself this monstrosity is visible against the skyline. The website has a number of 3D animations that simulate what the ride is like but obviously they can't convey what the thing looks like up close.
Ok so I'm not going to keep on like this. Basically if you want to read about the physical aspects of the ride you can do so online hehe. What I will do though is say that although it doesn't have any loops or corkscrews or anything like that it's probably one of the craziest rides any of us have been on! The ride up to the top of the typical roller-coaster start is loooooong and the view from the top makes it obvious how high you are. The drop on the other side of the climb though? Yeesh! It's 230 feet high and 75 degrees which is pretty much vertical when you consider that you're going down it at 125 kph with just a large chunk of plasticy stuff pressing against your waist. The drop is so steep that it actually simulates zero gravity for a few seconds - Annie's hair was floating as if we were in space! Totally freakin' awesome! We went to go on it again at the end of the day but it broke! Sooo gutted. At least we weren't part of the poor group stuck in the car halfway up the first slope though (you can also see how high and steep the climb is too) ...
The Behemoth car stuck up the climb at the end of the day! Stiiiiiiiiiiiink.
If you want to see an awesome 3D rendering of what a video taken from the front of the ride looks like, check out the videos ...
Canada's Wonderland has more rides than any them park I've ever been to (not that I've been to many outside of Dreamworld and Movie World on Australia's Gold Coast). We spent the rest of the day hitting up the biggest rides we could find, including ...
Flight Deck. It's basically the same as a ride called Lethal Weapon at Dreamworld where you're sitting in a racing-style seat with your legs dangling. The floor drops away and you're then thrown up the first climb and shot through a crazy series of turns and drops, all while your legs are hanging into space! It's a real neck-tester through because your head is constantly getting whiplashed around throughout the ride.
Mighty Canadian Minebuster. Man this thing is nuts. Apart from the fact that it's made completely of wood (scary enough when you think about it) it's easily the roughest and most spine-jarring ride any of us have been on before. If you go through like it, twice, like we did with your arms in the air in typical roller-coaster fashion you get chucked about like nothing else. At the end we were all in hysterics at being so amazed the ride still exists. It kicked ASS!
Aimee and Annie took a bit of a break at one point so Chris and I (yes, we're both called Chris) decided to hit up a ride called The Bat. It starts slightly differently from the others as you get pulled up the slope backwards and dropped down forwards, right through the building where you get into the cars at the start. It's awesome waiting for your turn and seeing people rocket past you at full pace before blasting up the usual arrangement of corkscrews and loops. That's about where it stops being normal though because you hit the end of the track, another slope that you get pulled up forwards this time. After that they let you go and you go through the entire ride again ... BACKWARDS! The sensation of going through loops and corkscrews without knowing they're coming is really weird and unlike anything else I've been on before. It looks like this (sorry if you're viewing this article in a way that doesn't show embedded YouTube videos):
One of the things you have to do at Canada's Wonderland is have funnel cake ...
Funnel Cake.
One of the best rides we went on was called Back Lot Stunt Coaster although it used to be called The Italian Job. The name got changed due to Paramount Theatres selling the park. Weird. Anyway, you get into a row of 3 replica Mini cars that look just like the ones from the movie. There's a sign in front of your face that says "Put head against headrest during launch." Launch? Ok that sounded a little weird so I didn't pay much attention to it but I soon found out why the sign is there. Instead of the usual tow up a slow climb the ride suddenly making a hissing noise and you're shot forward, accelerating from 0 to about 150kph in less than 3 seconds! We guessed later that it's done this way to simulate the snappiness of a thrill ride in a real Mini, as tiny as they are. Halfway through the ride the cars stop and a whole lot of flames and explosions go on all around you - you can't help ducking! After that it's another neck-snapping acceleration before being blasted through a series of tunnels in complete darkness! It's very strange when you can't see what's coming as all the turns are unexpected - it's just makes them feel even faster.
Towards the end of the day we had to head into the kid's area to go on the ride through Scooby Doo's Haunted Mansion. It's not a ride of thrills at all but instead a game where you have to shoot as many tiny targets as possible. It's great fun! I managed to pull off the win with 2180 points. :)
By the end of all this we were pretty knackered so all that remained was the bus ride back into town and a really nice dinner at Richtree Market Restaurant with Chris & Aimee. This is an innovative restaurant where you choose what you want to eat (like a buffet) but you swipe a card at each point and pay for what you eat at the end of the meal. The food was excellent but we were all sooooo full at the end! All we could manage after that was head home and crash before our early departure the next morning.
It was a really cool day - we're going back at some stage if we can!
