After sleeping peacefully through an overnight thunderstorm, I was up in time for my early departure back up to Toronto. I regret the inability to watch the sunrise over Niagara Falls but that would've been one thing too many to ask of me right now.
However, something that I neglected to mention last night was that the friend I was going to meet at Canada's Wonderland today was doing all four Walt Disney World theme parks in one day - that's why they were on Spaceship Earth when passport control tried to contact them about my stay here. This intensively packed day was mentally and physically exhausting for them, and them catching a fever later that day had them get next to zero sleep for their flight from Orlando. During my falls sightseeing, I got a text from them saying "I can't lie it's not looking good and I may not come up because I feel awful and I just want a lay in", so it looks like the entirety of these three days would be solo.
Unfortunately for them, for the past year or so I've been running a "coaster of the day" in a fairly large roller coaster chat room. Not one time has my travel friend ever ridden the Coaster Of The Day on the same day it was featured. So I had an ace up my sleeve. Today's Coaster Of The Day is Alpenfury at Canada's Wonderland.
And I am not joking when I say this was the push they needed to get out of bed and meet me at the park.
The traffic hellscapes continued as my coach pushed on into Union Station, but I had an ultimatum and an issue that was going to be fixed NOW.
I was not leaving Union Station until I had this dastardly internet issue SORTED.
After half an hour of hopelessness and getting nowhere, they ask, "do you have an eSIM". No. I don't.
"Download [this eSIM app]". Sure.
Look around the app.
Canada eSIM.
$7 a day for unlimited data.
Head. In. Hands.
If you guessed that the issue with my phone's lack of internet was down to the fact that I had absolutely no clue what an eSIM was until now, then congratulations, you were correct. After almost four years of travelling abroad, this was the first ever time I discovered wtf and eSIM was or what it was used for.
Every internet connection issue was solved with the snap of a finger from here on out. Just like that.
So I immediately boarded an Uber to the park.
But once we'd arrived, we had one final concern on our hands.
In a last-ditch effort to save money, we were deciding against booking a hotel for the night. We both had atrociously early flights in the morning to separate destinations, so our plan was to sleep in the airport and spend the night there.
We both collectively decided "f**k that" and booked a hotel.
After collecting our FastLane Ultimate which gave us unlimited access to the attractions that had it, our first plan of action was
#471 Alpenfury, the reason I came here, and boy did this ride deliver on all fronts.
Glaringly miserable capacity issues aside, this is one of the most blisteringly fast-paced roller coasters I've ever been on, and is absolutely relentless right from the beginning. A violent launch up and through the mountain sends you careening through nine chaotic inversions, every one different from the previous, with some punishing G-forces that seriously toy with you in every sense of the word - it's a lot, but it's perfect. It's a pleasantly long ride too and doesn't die off towards the end in the slightest, and with an incredible sense of speed too. A worthy addition to my top ten.
The highlights don't end here. Next up was a lap of
#472 Leviathan, breaking the record for the new tallest coaster I've been on at around 310ft, and in turn also breaking the record for the fastest coaster I've ridden at around 90mph.
While a fairly short ride considering its insane numbers and only a couple of airtime hills due to focusing more on high-velocity turns, this is yet another chef's kiss of an example on how you do speed. Without an inch of wasted track and just like Alpenfury, Leviathan gets fast and stays fast all the way through until the end. A worthy addition to my top ten, again!
We declined going back around for a second lap in favour of gaining more credits, hold that thought.
Next was
#473 Yukon Striker, a mammoth 200ft dive coaster with a jaw-dropping vertical fall into a tunnel in a lake. Oblivion at Alton Towers has been finally dethroned as my favourite dive coaster with its assault of one-after-another inversions, my favourite being the vertical loop that definitely pulls more forces than it should due to being designed a little.. differently to all the others.
The finale of the ride is a significant step down in intensity with the helix being a bit of a non-event, but I didn't seem to mind it as much as other people did.
The last of the "big 4" was
#474 Behemoth, and this one didn't quite stack up to the others. While rich with moments of glorious airtime in that back row, it was sadly accompanied by a very prominent rattle that infected the whole layout and negatively affected the ride experience.
I really enjoyed the sudden pull through the turnaround though, and this was the second coaster in the park to feature a non-event of a helix, this one was a worse offender as it provided no forces of interest while maintaining that strong and consistent rattle - at least Yukon Striker was smooth, along with the other two.
The next decision was to shake off all the other coasters that were on FastLane Ultimate, starting with
#475 Backlot Stunt Coaster. This was a smaller family launch coaster that immediately started with a decently strong triple helix upwards, something you'd never see on a modern roller coaster. The rest of the ride wasn't too notable. I didn't know the ride had a second launch which was fun, and at around the halfway point you stop for what should have been a show section with effects, but every single one was either broken or out of use. A short indoor section follows after which was a lot darker than I thought it was going to be, but the ending where you crash through the billboard was hilariously anticlimactic as you hit some brakes right as you punch through.
To the side of Backlot Stunt Coaster is
#476 Mighty Canadian Minebuster, without a doubt one of the single funniest roller coasters I have ever ridden in my life, and I think there's a decent argument for it being the funniest outright. The unceremonious bouncing of the train throughout the layout left us both in a fit of unstoppable hysterics - I also had some room between me and the lap bar which enabled for a little more movement than usual! What looks like a wholly unremarkable wooden coaster from offride ended up becoming by far one of the most prominent memories of this whole excursion, and by the time the upwards helix came to end out the ride, we had simply downright lost it.
I love Mighty Canadian Minebuster.
I often find myself being The Contrarian when it comes to coaster opinions with some opinions outrageous enough for some to call "rage bait", like I'm intentionally saying something stupid in order to get a reaction. A lot of my thoughts on rides really do not align with what the majority of people would think about that same ride, and that's honestly something I'm happy with. I like not having the majority opinion, I like when people have these outlandish views on rides that nobody else agrees with, and bonus points if you can explain why you think that way too. It brings new and refreshing angles to things that have otherwise been talked about to death.
But sometimes, everyone unites as one.
They see a ride so bad, so abhorrently awful, that they all band together and say "No".
And that is exactly the reputation that the absolutely irredeemable trash known as
#477 Flight Deck deserves.
Deserving its status as one of the worst roller coasters on the planet, #1927/1929 on Captain Coaster, Flight Deck is unacceptably rough for a steel coaster - an almost unbearable assault on the body was littered everywhere from start to finish, an instant addition to the list of coasters that I never want to ride again.
#478 Thunder Run was not on the list of FastPass accessible rides but it was on our list anyway because why shouldn't we ride a powered coaster, and an indoor one at that too?
There was enough room on the seats for me to ride the entire thing facing ninety degrees to the left, and my restraint failed to release at the end of the ride, and there was enough space for me to slide out without having to raise it!
And then there was
#479 Vortex, finally riding a suspended swinging coaster that isn't Vampire at Chessington, and wow, this is one of the most slept-on coasters I have ever ridden and deserves so much more respect than it gets. This is seriously the most out-of-control I have felt on a roller coaster in a hot minute, and while the "big four" at this park are much larger and far more forceful, this one has the added 90's jank to it that piles on a lot more "WOAH"'s than it realistically should. While a short ride, it packs everything it can into that time, and wins an award that I never thought I'd ever think about: the world's scariest brake run.
Slamming into the brakes you are coming right out of a steep turn, and you still have the momentum from swinging out on said turn, so by the time you slow down, you still swing aggressively, almost hitting 90 degrees and getting an involuntary squeal out of me - a positively fantastic ending!
The final new credit of today was
#480 Wonder Mountain's Guardian.
Anyway, with that out of the way, it was time for our second ride on Alpenfury. We get into the queue and
...
...fine.
I'll talk about it.
If I really have to.
There really aren't many words to describe how spectacular of a car crash this roller coaster-combined-with-a-shooting-ride is.
Reading about how the size of the ride is "almost half and acre" on the trivia board, you start to realise why Cedar Fair doesn't do themed dark rides, and you start to become thankful that they don't bother 90% of the time because this is a disaster on all levels. To top it all off, 9/20 seats were blocked off so the ride was running at 55% capacity, and by the brakes we found out exactly why that was the case.
After a frankly absolutely pathetic attempt at "worldbuilding", after boarding you're chucked outside where an announcer shouts "WELCOME TO WONDER MOUNTAIN'S GUARDIAN!" at you, something I say satirically. An awful coaster section follows that lasts around four seconds, before you go inside.
The indoor section consists of blurry screens, terrible forgettable music, ZERO sound effects, no commentary from the heroes or villains or whatever, no screeching evil animals, unresponsive guns, low quality everything, constant squealing from the wheels, and generally a laughably poor execution across the board that leaves you seriously wondering what the hell happened here. After around fifty seconds of this unfathomable nonsense, you stop. A dragon breathes fire at you with, you guessed it, zero sound effects, and suddenly,
the world's best drop track. Seriously. That drop was a damn good finale and briefly made me forget all of the horrors beyond my comprehension that happened beforehand.
Anyway, the scores appear, the photos weren't working for some of them and scores weren't displaying for others, and my travel friend's gun was seriously overheating, that thing was HOT - I imagine that became the tenth dead seat not too long after our ride.
So I beg to ask again. What the absolute hell happened here? To call this thing an unmitigated disaster would be an understatement; apart from the drop track this ride somehow manages to get as much wrong as possible. It feels like an attraction that, when it closes in the next decade, the entire thing just gets left in the mountain to rot forevermore.
Here's what my travel friend had to say;
wonder mountain's guardian. what a ride. what an experience. the world's most useless coaster section, followed by a hilariously bad dark ride, then possibly the world's best drop track, all not-so-neatly wrapped up with the kind of quality you'd expect from a certain group of so-called engineers working out of northern idaho.
It was time for rerides now, beginning with a back row ride on Alpenfury. Usually we decide to do a challenge that we call "extreme rides no reaction", where we have to lock eyes with each other for the entirety of the layout. Notable rides I've done this challenge on include Untamed at Walibi Holland, Wodan at Europa Park, Helix at Liseberg and Hyperia at Thorpe Park.
Then the second launch hit, the "extreme rides no reaction" challenge was dropped in a fraction of a second, and my world changed. The second launch in the back row of Alpenfury is the greatest existing launch on any roller coaster in the world. The strength of those LSMs under a tunnel that shot you up through a mountain was an unparalleled level of raw unfiltered chaos that had us both caught off-guard in the most incredible way possible. Screaming for our lives isn't enough to describe it, this lap was less Alpen and more Fury as the train absolutely careened through the layout at breakneck speed, never ever stopping for anyone or anything. The insane power of this ride was not to be messed with, and every single element hit harder and harder and harder, unable to catch our breath until the brakes.
Wow. Wow. Wow.
My next reride went to Behemoth, as I wanted a redemption ride due to the serious rattle I had on my first go, but sadly I found myself in the exact same seat due to severely misjudging how the row numbers worked with ride vehicles like these and this lap was just as bad if not worse than the previous. The shuffle was pretty awful throughout, and the helix was even worse this time around, but I have to cut the ride some slack simply due to how juicy that airtime is and the pull through the turnaround.
And my next reride of the day went to Yukon Striker, which was mostly the same as the first lap - a solidly excellent dive coaster that is just absolutely massively big.
It was finally time for the reride on Leviathan that I promised that I would be doing ever since the beginning of the day.
The FastLane line was spilling out of the entrance.
"...I'm booking an Uber to the hotel."
"..."
"...yeah, me too."
It was coming towards around 6pm, four hours until park close, but we both had to be at the airport for 4am as we both had a flight at 6 in the morning the next day that we would really rather not miss. It was best to cut our losses.
In hindsight we should have had a second day at Canada's Wonderland, but that would've meant making these three days even more pricier than they already were - this was already running seriously overbudget from the very start - but hey ho, we live and learn and I'm sure that I'll be back here anyway. I would really love to return. Even though it's a "mandatory fastpass" park, this is one of the nicest and most pleasant parks I have visited, a striking difference compared to what I've always heard about these big North American amusement parks.
I'm counting my days to when I can go back.
And sure enough, we were correct to leave early. Similar to my Fantasiana day in my 2024 visit to Austria, upon returning to the hotel I passed out in bed so hard that I managed to completely skip dinner.
Tomorrow is the final day, where I fly out to Montreal early in the morning for a park that I've heard nightmares about. Are the rumours true?
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