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Canada's Wonderland Discussion Thread


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I would imagine that bringing more people near the park will bring more people into the park, even despite the circumstances. ALTHOUGH, supposedly KK is pretty dead during the derby, but KK is never really all that busy anyway.

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There is no way you can go on all 17 coasters in one day. The park is only open for 12 hours. You can't get on Taxi Jam without a child.

 

We visited on Thursday May 30. The park was open from 10-6. We only stayed until 5 (so about 7 hours) and left to visit my cousin in Scarborough to watch game 1 of the NBA Finals with them.

 

Wonder Mountain was down all day. Other than that and Taxi Jam, we were able to ride the other 15 coasters without Fast Lane. Did Yukon twice and Leviathan three times.

 

After reading how busy this park can get, we probably got lucky. We didn't even follow any real strategy other than trying Wonder Mountain first and finding it closed. So we headed to Yukon and pretty much just proceeded to the next closest ride each time.

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There is no way you can go on all 17 coasters in one day. The park is only open for 12 hours. You can't get on Taxi Jam without a child.

 

We visited on Thursday May 30. The park was open from 10-6. We only stayed until 5 (so about 7 hours) and left to visit my cousin in Scarborough to watch game 1 of the NBA Finals with them.

 

Wonder Mountain was down all day. Other than that and Taxi Jam, we were able to ride the other 15 coasters without Fast Lane. Did Yukon twice and Leviathan three times.

 

After reading how busy this park can get, we probably got lucky. We didn't even follow any real strategy other than trying Wonder Mountain first and finding it closed. So we headed to Yukon and pretty much just proceeded to the next closest ride each time.

 

I am glad to hear that you got many rides in during your visit in late May. Weekdays in May and June are the best times to visit as it is just school groups for the most part, which usually clear out by 3:30pm or so.

 

As others have stated, I agree that it is highly possible to get on many roller coasters and other rides throughout a day at Canada's Wonderland, especially during a weekday in May and June as crowds are minimal. I would recommend anyone visiting from far away to visit this time of year, if possible!

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We made our first trip to CW this past week and here are a few scattered thoughts:

 

This park is pretty nice, and it was certainly packed. Lines were spilling out into the midways. Granted, we were there on a weekend, but dang.

 

Leviathan is phenomenal. Really confirms that the butthurt for KI-2020 is much ado about nothing as far as I'm concerned.

 

Yukon Striker really seems to have some shake to it. I really can't help but think that the new B&M trains have something to do with this. Yukon Striker and Valravn both have a "vibration" that isn't present on the older models, and the same can be said about Banshee. It doesn't really detract from my enjoyment of them, but my wife says that they can give her a slight headache. That being said, Yukon Striker really delivers in the first half of the ride. It really seems to be a hit as the midway around it stayed packed and it kept ~2hrs worth of a wait.

 

We were told that CW does not offer complimentary water cups. Is this something new or is this unique to CW?

 

The food service was... bad. There's no way around this. We went to the little food court in front of Flight Deck and this has to be one of the worst setups for a restaurant I've ever seem. Combine that with staff that either didn't know what to do, or didn't really care and this made even moderate lines ridiculously slow. My wife has a food allergy so we had to make a special request for food so we were going in expecting to be patient with this. However, 2 out of 3 times eating here, her meal had to be made 3 times, each time we got food, it burned about 45 minutes out of our day. There was a beer stand in the restaurant (either to provide relief or to capitalize on short fuses, not sure which .) I can't imagine going to one of the crowded restaurants.

 

Overall, this is a really good park, and I can really see continued investment in this park being a plus. I'm sure we will be back some day.

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Hey guys, thinking of taking the kids to the park on Sunday for Father's Day, and taking advantage of the early ride time in the kids section (we have season passes). According to the website, the section open early is Kidzville, but only lists 4 rides: Flying Canoes, Flying Eagle, Treeetop Adventure, and Sugar Shack. However, when the Planet Snoopy section opens early on every other Sunday it lists 8 rides.

 

My question is if it really is just 4 rides they open up an hour early or if more are open... theoretically those 4 rides can be done in 15 minutes or so... so then we wait 45 mins for another ride?

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My wife has a food allergy so we had to make a special request for food so we were going in expecting to be patient with this. However, 2 out of 3 times eating here, her meal had to be made 3 times, each time we got food, it burned about 45 minutes out of our day.

Why not just pack some food in a cooler to eliminate the hassle?

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Yeah, but I was thinking people might decide to go to CW after the parade since they took the day off anyway. Or a lot of out of town folks coming to Toronto for the parade might go to CW on Tuesday maybe. I fully expect every other tourist attraction like the CN Tower to be super-packed now. Then I think "do people want to go to an amusement park after standing at a parade for 2-3 hours? Probably not...so Monday seems better than Tuesday."

 

I would imagine that bringing more people near the park will bring more people into the park, even despite the circumstances

 

Just my two cents on this, as I am Raptors fan and a coaster fan.

Couple of things work in your favour. The parade time is going start at 10am on the Lakeshore and finish downtown at Nathan Phillips square. The "festivities" are expected to last until around 3pm. So a 10 till 3 window covers the morning at the park.

Also, while the downtown tourist attractions might see a bump in attendance on Monday....that is because they are easily reached from the area. Canada's Wonderland is not. You can't just hop in your car from the downtown and drive there within 20 mins (and certainly not at 3pm!), and getting there on public transit from the centre is not going to be any quicker. Toronto may be a great city, but their public transit is not (it got stuck in the 70s).

There isn't going to be a mass surge in attendance because everyone is leaving the downtown core at the same time.

 

Lastly....the question to ask yourself is what demographic would be attending the park on Monday? At the moment you have school still in session, people working during the day and now...an NBA title parade in the city. The optics of that scenario say that there is a good chance the park will be pretty quiet on Monday.

 

The Raptors winning has been one of the biggest sporting events in the city since the Jays won in 93. It has caught the attention of people and folk want to be seen celebrating. Any locals who are Raptor fans are not going to be planning to go to CW on Monday....even less likely if they are Season pass holders as the park will always be there...a title parade will not. I don't think the mentality right now is people thinking "how can I see the Raps and ride Leviathan on Monday". It is one or the other...and I'd guess that most Raps fans who are thinking of going downtown on Monday are just going to stay there and enjoy it. I couldn't think of anything more logistically complicated in Toronto than to get from the Downtown Core to Canada's Wonderland at the time of day we are talking here in a timeframe that would make sense to enjoy the park (if spending a long time there was my goal).

 

I would say Monday is the more likely day to be quieter. Tuesday....who knows....I don't know how many people who would be coming to the city for a parade would be planning CW on Tuesday. Again though, school is still in session and the 9-5 work crowd who took a sick day to see the Raps will be back earning their coaster money again in the work environment. Wonderland on a weekday before the summer is more likely to be manageable than when the schools break for the holiday (last week of June). I wouldn't envisage it being a zoo on either day.

 

Good luck with whichever day you pick. I'll be leaving the park to you on the Monday....I fancy a wee jaunt downtown! Have a great day at the park.

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My wife has a food allergy so we had to make a special request for food so we were going in expecting to be patient with this. However, 2 out of 3 times eating here, her meal had to be made 3 times, each time we got food, it burned about 45 minutes out of our day.

Why not just pack some food in a cooler to eliminate the hassle?

 

Two reasons: 1. The restaurant advertises dishes that would be ok for her to eat. We went in expecting to be patient, but we didn't expect how horrendous it was going to be.

2. This allergy has developed over the past 8 or 9 months, which was a fair bit after we purchased our all-season dining plan.

 

We did take a couple protein bars in, but we at least wanted our 2 meals.

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Wonderland is my home park and yes the food is pretty bad. The Backlot Cafe I have found to be the best bet for food though that's not saying much.

 

I have never could figure out why Wonderland is ao different compared to other Parks in the company. Early entry is only on Sundays, platinum passes are never mentioned, and no sit down restaurants. The food festivals don't seem to be much of draw like the Frontier Festival at Cedar Point.

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There is lots Wonderland does great but at the same time for a park that's in the same chain as Cedar Point, food wise and advertising wise they could do a lot better. I look at how Cedar Point does festivals and how well run they are. The food is also a lot better overall at Cedar Point.

 

As far as advertising, Wonderland does a poor job of letting people know that the platinum pass exists. I have had more then once a worker at the front gate look at my pass weird as of they have never seen it before.

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Are there any rules of thumb for if to buy a Fast Pass or just a normal ticket on a weekday in June with school still in session? Like if the parking lot is more than half full, buy a Fast Pass? Or maybe if a bunch of buses in parking lot buy a Fast Pass? I'm gonna be there about 5 hours approx. 2-7 PM and would like to ride:

 

Preferably at least 2 rides:

Yukon Striker

Leviathan

Behemoth

Vortex

 

At least 1 ride:

Sledge Hammer

Soaring Timbers

Skyhawk

Shockwave

Backlot Stunt Coaster

Knight Mares

maybe Klockwerks

maybe Spinovator

 

I won't be stopping to eat or anything, just riding. I'll eat before I go.

 

Also how accurate is the ride wait time in the app?

 

Can you buy a Fast Pass after you are already in the park and see lines and decide you want one?

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If you go with a Fast Lane Plus, you'll be able to walk onto all the B&Ms and get a ton of rides. I'd recommend that you fire up the park app when you reach the park and see what the wait times look like. If the park looks slammed, go with a FastLane.

 

Yukon Striker will probably have the longest queue, but it does have a single rider line.

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Based on my experience last week that itinerary is like barely almost doable but most likely just outside of reach without FLP.

 

Wait times on June 11th were about 25 for Leviathan, 35 for Yukon, 20ish for Behemoth and 15 for Vortex before the park started clearing out around 5 PM (and the B&Ms still had some wait until close). All of those flats had a multi-cycle wait to ride. Single rider for Yukon was still like 15 minutes. So just the coasters you want to do could take up to like 4 hours. But it's also hard to justify buying FLP as mostly it's just switching rides and walking between attractions that make it not doable. Can you stay like 1 more hour because that would make it possible, the later you can stay the less lines there will be.

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Lines were pretty short today, we were in the right places at the right time. I'm glad I didn't use my FL+ that I bought over the winter sale. Wonder Mountain Guardian was a joke, though. The 3d screens were not calibrated at all, one train had *two* seats working on the entire train, and every single train had at LEAST 2 seats out of commission so the line was loooonnggg. None of the cameras work. Sound not how it should be. Etc etc. It's a shame because when everything works it's great. I think Six Flags does a better job with Justice League's when it comes to maintenance 1000%

 

Leviathan was a 10 min wait for us, vortex was 5 min, stunt coaster was 5 min, behemoth was walk on, Yukon was about 15 min. Skyhawk was walk-on.

 

Weather was great. Ate at the mess Hall near Yukon Striker, got Manchurian chicken and noodles. Chicken was good, noodles... not so much.

 

Had a nice quick visit.

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If you go with a Fast Lane Plus, you'll be able to walk onto all the B&Ms and get a ton of rides. I'd recommend that you fire up the park app when you reach the park and see what the wait times look like. If the park looks slammed, go with a FastLane.

 

Yukon Striker will probably have the longest queue, but it does have a single rider line.

 

I have personally found the park app to be completely useless and inaccurate when it came to wait times... and it only gave wait times for a relatively small portion of the rides.

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Are there any rules of thumb for if to buy a Fast Pass or just a normal ticket on a weekday in June with school still in session?

If I have any question if it will be worth it or not I wait until noon to make the call. Hit the big rides around that time to get the best perspective. If I find wait times more than 15 or so minutes I go for it. The park will usually only get more crowded at that point. I'm personally a pretty big fan of using FL+ when most others wouldn't want to. When waits are relatively short, as in 15-20 minutes or so, that makes everything walk-on, which I feel is a great experience. Even if I can save 10 minutes per ride on average it's still worth it. It adds up to a lot of time saved not being wedged between potentially obnoxious people.

 

At CP last Monday a rain storm cleared out the normal CP crowds. We went back to the park at about 2pm and saw Raptor had a 20 minute wait. We bought FL plus even though rides like Maverick were only 20 minutes long. It made everything walk-on. We probably saved the most time with Dragster, as per usual, by avoiding what looked like a 45 minute to an hour wait. Again, we walked right into the station.

 

It's like having the park to yourself. It's not worth it to a lot of people, but that's the experience we go for. It gives us plenty of time to do our own thing. We like to just kind of drift around, relax, enjoy the park, and of course..... ride whatever the hell we want whenever the hell we want to do it!

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Thanks for the advice. Do they let you choose your seat on Yukon Striker, Behemoth, Leviathan, and Vortex (if you want the front seat, back seat, etc.) even without a Fast Pass and in the single rider line, or do the ride ops tell you where to sit?

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Single rider line for Yukon, no... Single rider line leads up into the station... The Fastlane & Standard queues meet at a point where guests choose to wait for front row, or rows 2/3... These lead up the stairs into the station, where they fill the rows from the queues for those seats... Single rider line is used to fill seats left by adding groups and the result being less than 8, but not big enough to get another group in... Downside is you won't get to choose your seat, but the upside is on a busy day, it can drastically reduce your wait time on Yukon Striker...

 

Behemoth, Leviathan and Vortex, they'll let you wait for the seat you want...

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