Canada’s Wonderland Ontario, Canada Cedar Fair Entertainment
Park News - (11/8/2024) WinterFest will return to Canada’s Wonderland starting on Nov. 16th and running on select dates through to Jan. 4th, 2025. The winter wonderland themed event features season food and treats, themed live entertainment, a nightly tree lightning ceremony, cookie decorating with Mrs. Claus and much more. This year’s event also featuring Ice Skating on Snow Flake Lake, Jack Frost’s Igloo Village, Elf on the Shelf and St. Nick photo ops, a visit to the Christmas Market, and over 20 rides that will remain open, weather permitting of course. (Click here to see the list of WinterFest rides) (7/14/2024) The local news has released an update regarding the medical condition of the 17-year old girl who fell from the Swing of the Century ride at Canada’s Wonderland. According to various reports she is still listed as being in “critical condition” at this point, though no further details have been noted. (7/13/2024) Sad news from Canada’s Wonderland this week as the local news reports that a 17-year old girl fell from the park’s Swing of the Century ride on Thursday afternoon. Park Medical staff responded and treated on-site while waiting for EMS to arrive, who transported her to a local hospital for further evaluation. As you might expect from the name, Swing of the Century is a Zierer made Wave Swinger style ride, featuring 48 seats suspended from a tilting and swinging carousel like structure by chains. These style rides are considers family attractions, with Swing of the Century being one of the original rides that was at the park when it first opened back in 1981. Currently the details about how exactly the girl “fell” from the ride have not been released, but since no one has reported that anything appears to have “broke” during the ride cycle, this has led to the thought that the incident may have been caused by the rider somehow. In fact, according to a report on YouTube by a “Global News” channel, they say that inspectors were on site at the park later that same day and found that every aspect of the ride was safe and working properly. A witness report and comments from Canada’s Technical Standards and Safety Authority spokesperson in the video confirm that they believe the riders was somehow attempting to get off the ride for an unknown reason, possibly panicking as the ride was starting the cycle, and caused their own accident. Authorities gave Canada’s Wonderland permission to reopen the ride, and they did on Friday without incident.
2025 - AlpenFury - (11/25/2024) The first official construction report about the AlpenFury coaster coming to Canada’s Wonderland has been posted by the park. They give us a peek at the work taking place inside Wonder Mountain to prepare for the new coaster to travel through the structure, making some structural changes where needed, preparing the footer sites and so on. Once this work along with some needed underground work to prep for the station site is complete, they will begin installing the ride track and needed electrical inside the mountain.
(11/20/2024) Premier Rides was showing off the lead roller coaster train car at IAAPA for the new AlpenFury coaster coming to Canada’s Wonderland next summer. What I really like is that the side body panels have been removed from Premier’s SkyRocket train design, which should make loading and unloading guests from the train’s so much easier. As a ride vehicle, I don’t mind the SkyRocket trains at all for their ride experience, and once you are inside and seated they are roomy and fairly “fluffy friendly” if you get my gist, but the act of getting in and out between the restraints and the body panels of your typical train is something of a battle all by itself. So that said, this looks to be an excellent solution to that problem while creating a very “open” ride experience for the passengers at all the same time on this epic layout launched coaster.
(10/26/2024) We’ve got some great news for our readers in the “Great White North”, because a shipment of valuable cargo from the US is on the way to the border for you! And no… i’m not talking about smuggling sugary US breakfast cereals across the border! Instead a semi-truck load of blue Premier Rides roller coaster track and black support beams was spotted on I-94 heading east-bound just south of the Michigan making a bee-line for the Canadaian border and to drop off the precious cargo at Canada’s Wonderland for the new Alpen Fury coaster.
(8/9/2024) Canada’s Wonderland will be adding an incredible multi-launch roller coaster for the 2025 season called AlpenFury, which will also be Canada’s “longest, tallest and fastest launch coaster!” The first launch will blast guests from the station down in the depths of Wonder Mountain, while the second will shoot them 50 meters into the air and out of the top of the mountain itself! Along the way rides will soar along 1000 meters of track and through 9 brain warping inversions, the most in all of North America on a launch coaster. The coaster itself will be from Premier Rides, using their Sky Rocket coaster design. For those wondering, while scanning the concept art, I don’t see a sign of any sort of ‘comfort collars” added onto the trains, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they feature a seat-belt though. Check out the incredible animations below!
(7/21/2024) A new video teaser for the new 2025 Canada’s Wonderland ride project has been posted by the park, with a very creepy vibe.
(7/19/2024) A post by Canada’s Wonderland reveals that they will be making some kind of announcement about “A new adventure” coming to the park on August 8th. The background that the graphics are overlaid on appears to be the rocky surface of Monder Mountain, which has been long rumored to be involved with the park’s next roller coaster project.
(7/5/2024) While the thought is that some kind of launched coaster may be coming to Canada’s Wonderland for 2025 and possibly interact with the park’s Wonder Mountain, it is looking less likely to be the B&M Wing Coaster ride system shown in the concept art. Instead we’ve heard that Cedar Fair had been looking at Multi-Launch coaster concepts from Premier Rides and Zamperla for a time as well for their future projects. With the merger between Six Flags and Cedar Fair now in effect, that could make things even more interesting, though at this point I’d think that whatever is planned for CW was already lock-in and should be in production. Stay tuned!
(6/15/2024) A reader sent in some pictures from Canada’s Wonderland this week, where they noticed that construction walls are already in place for the park’s suspected new 2025 attraction. Based on some of those early guest survey concepts (see below), many are really hoping that this may be that B&M Launched Wing coaster concept, but nothing has been confirmed yet. Interestingly enough, pieces for a suspected B&M launched Wing coaster have started to arrive at sister park, Kings Dominion, so I’m not sure if CW will get something similar or go in another unique direction for 2025. Special thanks to Matt for sending in pictures showing off the teaser walls, and an overhead map showing off their location.
2026 - Water Attraction - (11/14/2024) A press release from Six Flags today confirmed that the company is planning to spend over $1 BILLION on the parks over the next two years. Some of this will come in the form of enhancements to the guest experience, such as new themed areas, dining upgrades and technology enhancements. While we’ve seen the 2025 capital projects ($500 million) already announced, they decided to post a list of teasers of what they are already confirming will come to some of the parks in 2026 as part of another $525 million capital investment plan. Canada’s Wonderland was included on the 2026 attraction list, promising to bring “a new record-breaking water attraction” to the park. This sounds similar to an entry for Carowinds as well, and we’ve seen a lot of similar attraction concepts shared between these two parks as of late. Both are listed as record-breaking attractions, only with the CW version listed as a “water attraction” while Carowinds was described as a “water ride”. While the word play could have just been put into effect to not sound repetitive, to me the use of the phrase ‘water attraction” also includes the possibility of this being something for the water park, while Carwoinds is described more clearly as a “water ride”.
???? - Hyatt Place/Hyatt House - INDEFINITE HOLD - (5/16/21) At this point, it seems Canada’s Wonderland has opted to cancel their long planned hotel addition. This may be a temporary thing, as they failed to start construction during the time limits of the building permits they had. There is a good chance that Cedar Fair could have just opted to shelve the project for the time being until the company gets their financials back on solid legs and we have put the COVID-pandemic behind us. This could also be a reflection of the more strict lockdown rules in Canada, and Ontario in particular, that are keeping the park closed for longer than it’s American cousins who are all opening up this month. (4/18/20) While Cedar Fair has not issued a new timeline for the hotel, it would seem likely that the closures would push back the ‘late 2020’ planned opening of the hotel until sometime in 2021. (8/29/18) As we had been hearing for some time now, Cedar Fair will open a new hotel at their Canada’s Wonderland theme park property. Now we have a few more details as posted by BlooLoop. This will be a dual-branded Hyatt Place and Hyatt House hotel with 203 rooms that is set to open in late 2020. Construction is expected to begin sometime in the first half of 2019. (4/29/18) Remember those rumored hotel plans for Canada's Wonderland? They aren't a rumor anymore, as the plans for the new hotel were confirmed in a planning meeting. The new hotel will be 8-stories with 603 rooms and built under the Hyatt Place brand name, to be built on park property on Wonderland Drive near Rutherford Rd and Highway 400. Construction should begin soon actually, but I’m not sure if it will be ready for 2019 or 2020. \
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