- September 24th, 2013, 10:14 am
#52556
September 14, 2013
All photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jhawkins/s ... 635645543/
With the clock ticking on my time as a car owner pending a move to New York City, I decided there should be one final road trip. There are few major cities in the east that I have not visited, and not many amusement parks either, so the destination was obvious fairly quickly: Toronto and Canada's Wonderland. As part of the old Kings Entertainment then Paramount Parks family, I have been familiar with Canada's Wonderland for longer than most parks, having grown up visiting sister park Carowinds. Canada's Wonderland has always been an interesting case. It is the highest attended seasonal amusement park in North America, yet for years was seemingly neglected with second-rate coasters while other parks in the chain got the major investments. Since taking over ownership Cedar Fair has reversed that trend, so a visit for me was definitely long overdue, and I timed my trip to coincide with the annual unfortunately named "Rollercoasters, Eh!" ACE event.
Cedar Fair wasted little time in showing Canada's Wonderland some love as 2008 brought Behemoth, a giant B&M hyper coaster. Park staff greeted ACE members bright and early on a shockingly chilly morning for a walk back tour of the coaster prior to morning ERT.
Behemoth has a picturesque setting running alongside a lake, and the park showed just what it thought of the Paramount installed Back Lot Stunt Coaster by ramming the lift hill right through the middle of that ride. The layout is in some sense more boring than the other B&M hypers, but that's because Behemoth is about one thing and one thing only: airtime. It's the classic out and back, but at 230 feet tall and over 5,000 feet long.
The decision to install a massive B&M that can churn through riders (and then to install another one several years later) made sense in more ways than one for this park. With the massive crowds that the park gets, lines are huge more or less every day. The park really wanted something that could move the lines and with Behemoth (and later Leviathan) they got it.
The cold weather was wreaking havoc on the coaster's transfer track, so ERT was delayed slightly, but thanks to the hard work of the park's maintenance staff it was up and running in no time.
The park had just hosted the annual ACE summer conference a few weeks prior, so this regional event was lightly attended, meaning as many rides as you could handle during ERT. At one point I rode Behemoth in the front seat with the entire train to myself. At this point I have been on 9 of the 12 hyper/giga coasters B&M has built worldwide, so these rides start to blur together in a lot of ways. They are all great and it is hard to rank them, but by the end of the day at Canada's Wonderland I had decided that Behemoth is at this point my favorite of them all. The airtime is just amazing and the first drop seemed to have a little more kick to it than some of their other rides. The three airtime hills in a row on the return trip are what separate this ride from the pack for me.
With 16 coasters and a very crowded park, the ERT sessions would help make completing everything in a single day possible. Back Lot Stunt Coaster was first (which has a grand total of zero effects operating, again telling you just what the park thinks of it) and next came the bizarre Togo stand up, Skyrider. I found it amazing that they even opened this ride for ERT as I was literally the only person on it for my ride.
As with the other Togo stand ups, this ride is filled with head smashing turns. But unlike say Shockwave at Kings Dominion, it has some extremely unusual elements. There are several tiny bunny hops which give the unnerving sensation of airtime while standing up, and at one point there is this incredibly odd trick-track sort of section where the track banks one direction for a bit then banks the other way while still traveling straight. Really weird ride. While I didn't care for the Joe Frazier-style punches to the jaw that the restraint gave me, I actually kind of enjoyed it because of how strange it was. I hope it stays around a while longer.<!--nextpage-->
The forth coaster for morning ERT was Mighty Canadian Minebuster, a decent out and back wooden coaster with a rib-busting tunneled helix at the end that was somewhat reminiscent of The Beast's finale. This is a park that has a lot of quantity, but more limited quality.
With the park now open for the day, a buffet breakfast was next on the event's agenda (this event had more food than any other coaster event I have ever experienced), but en route I decided I needed to go ahead and knock another coaster out of the way while I could. Maybe not the best choice, Flight Deck, the red headed step child of the former Top Gun family of coasters, this one in the form of a Vekoma SLC. Now I have been on several Vekoma SLCs, and they are in general pretty horrid rides for the most part, but this one took the crown for the absolute worst, and is a prime candidate for the worst roller coaster I have ever been on. It just absolutely abused my body.
It did not take long for my thoughts to start forming on the appearance of the overall park. Designed similar to Kings Island and Kings Dominion, it became evident quite quickly that Canada's Wonderland has retained more of its original charm than any of the other parks in the chain. It is a beautiful and well cared for park with lots of trees and water, which sounds simple enough, but given the removal of both trees and water features that happened at some of the other parks (Carowinds...), it can mean a lot.
After an excellent breakfast, I headed straight for what would (not necessarily by coincidence) be my 400th roller coaster, a simultaneously impressive and shameful milestone of just how out of control this hobby has spun. Leviathan is one of the most interesting stories of recent years in the coaster world. Its announcement was one of the most shocking things I have ever seen in the industry. Here was a park that had just four years earlier built a massive B&M hyper coaster announcing that they were building the first B&M giga coaster, breaking their own ride's record for the largest coaster in Canada. Oddly enough, as I write this, it is starting to appear likely that Cedar Fair will repeat this same pattern at Carowinds as it is slated to get a giga coaster of its own in 2015. I think it just goes to show that coaster enthusiasts are a bit out of touch; the average park guest likely has little idea of the similarities between the rides and just sees two giant roller coasters. While to many people it seems odd to have two coasters that are so similar as marquee rides in the same park, all I can say is bring it on. If Canada's Wonderland is any example, this is a great thing.
While Behemoth was the first B&M hyper to use its new generation of trains, Leviathan actually turns the clock back and uses the old generation. I'm not quite sure why this was done, but the two theories I could come up with are that perhaps the tighter turns of this ride were better taken with the more compact trains, or the park just wanted to differentiate the ride from Behemoth in any way they could.
So what does Leviathan do that Behemoth didn't do already? Exhibit A, the first drop. This nearly vertical 300 foot plunge is the best first drop on any roller coaster I have ever been on. My first ride was in the very back seat, and though it is very rare for me to have any sort of fear on a ride, there was a definite moment of horror about halfway down this thing. It feels like an eternity hanging perilously in the air before slamming violently back down as the train pulls out of the drop.
To make matters worse, at the bottom is this tiny little tunnel.
The first drop alone almost makes the whole ride worth it for me, but there is of course more to it than that. All of the prior B&M hyper coasters are very controlled experiences. They have spectacular airtime and huge drops, but there is a sense of total precision and gradual changes in track movements. Leviathan is different. B&M got a little more creative here than they have with any of the previous rides. <!--nextpage-->
If there is one problem with Leviathan, it is that it is too short. Just when the ride seems to get going it ends with a brake run that must be almost 100 feet in the air. Mainly because of that, I think I might slightly prefer Behemoth, but it's hard to say. Both coasters are in my top 10 if not top 5 steel. The opening sequence of Leviathan may be the most brilliantly engineered thing ever conceived on a roller coaster. After the ridiculous first drop, there is a high speed turn at blinding speed followed by my second favorite part of the ride, this long low to the ground turning airtime hill. Riders float out of their seat the entire way over it as the track heads towards the front entrance of the park. It's hard to really describe it, but I kept thinking of it as the "surf" element. After that comes the more standard camelback hill, a severely overbanked turn at the park gate, a high speed turn, a final camelback, then a turn onto the brake run. I really think a coaster like this that was just a bit longer could be the best steel coaster in the world.
Cedar Fair parks seem to be about making statements at their entrances with recent coasters.
With the two big star attractions done, most of the rest of the day was dedicated to getting the remaining coasters, starting with the other large woodie, Wild Beast. A clone of Grizzly at Kings Dominion and Great America, the ride is loosely based on the long gone Coney Island Wildcat. It isn't surrounded by trees like the Kings Dominion version nor does it run nearly as well, but it's still a fun coaster, and I came back and rode it again later.
Next door was Bat, and since Vekoma boomerangs are pretty much my most hated type of coaster (even worse than SLCs) and the line was already huge, I decided to keep moving. After 400 different coasters I think one luxury I can give myself is passing on waiting in line for a ride I know will be miserable.
For some reason The Fly seems like a perfect name for a wild mouse. As with pretty much every ride, there was a sizable line, but fortunately this was part of our evening ERT, so I saved it for later.
Behemoth and Leviathan were clearly the reasons for being here, but there was one other ride that I was extremely excited about: Vortex.
Many people tout Vortex as the best Arrow suspended coaster, so as a fan of this unfortunately dying breed of coasters, I was really looking forward to it. It did not disappoint.
The layout of Vortex seems to be virtually identical to Flight Deck at Kings Island, but a look at the stats shows that Vortex goes faster and runs its course in less time. That makes sense because while I like the Kings Island coaster a lot, Vortex was on another level. It's a short ride, but absolutely relentless, pure intensity from start to finish. The setting is great too, as it begins by climbing to the top of the park's centerpiece Wonderland Mountain, then runs down a hillside to the lake below. <!--nextpage-->
Continuing the coaster tour, the line was short for the junior suspended coaster, Silver Streak, so I took a ride.
The line was not so short for Ghoster Coaster, the junior woodie, but I love any wooden coaster so I waited it out. Plus, the Carowinds version was the first roller coaster I ever rode, and I have now been on all four that were made at Canada's Wonderland, Carowinds, Kings Island, and Kings Dominion.
Just like Kings Island and Kings Dominion, Canada's Wonderland opens onto International Street, with shops and restaurants lining a giant fountain. Unlike those two parks, where the street terminates at a replica of the Eiffel Tower, Wonderland has Wonder Mountain.
Most of the mountain sits empty, but the park plans to rectify that next year with a prototype hybrid dark ride and roller coaster that will be located but in and outside of it.
My mission to ride all of the coasters was looking doable. After the event lunch in the park's picnic pavilion, I hit Dragon Fire.
Dragon Fire is a surprisingly good Arrow looper. It was built one year after Carowinds' Carolina Cyclone and is fairly similar in layout. I think most of these smaller Arrow loopers are pretty fun; it was when the company started going too big that the rides got really rough.
I should probably also mention that Canada's Wonderland is also notorious for a great collection of flat rides, including Sledgehammer, which is the only ride of its kind in the world. It looked a little too insane for me. Stuff like this just makes me sick, so I didn't really get to appreciate that aspect of the park.
Behemoth had a full queue, but even so was still only around a 40 minute wait, exemplifying how great the capacity is on these rides. I was glad to get a final ride on it in.
The not waiting in line for crappy coasters thing crops up again. I went on one of these torture devices at Rye Playland and had no desire to wait in line an hour to ride this one.<!--nextpage-->
The final must-do ride for me was Thunder Run, the current inhabitant of Wonder Mountain (and it won't be going anywhere next year despite the new ride) and a roller coaster that I somehow seem to have some vague memory of riding when I was younger despite the fact that I had never been here before. Weird.
Thunder Run is a powered coaster that completes two circuits, twisting in and out of the mountain through several scenes with lights and animatronics. From what I was told a lot of the effects have been recently restored, and I loved the ride. In fact I'd even say it was one of the standout rides to me, joining Behemoth, Leviathan, and Vortex.
I saw that one of the park's food stands sold poutine, and so an evening of gluttony began.
In addition to a breakfast and lunch buffet, funnel cake time was listed on the event itinerary. Funnel cake time meant us being given the most insane funnel cakes ever, topped with a heaping load of strawberries in syrup and ice cream. I was smart enough not to eat the entire thing, but still probably ate way too much.
As closing time approached and I wondered by Bat again, I noticed that there was no line. So much for the whole not riding it thing. With no line I figured I might as well take a spin, and I guess this was just one of those weird things, because it turns out that not only was it by far the best boomerang I have ever been on, it was the first ride I have ever had on a boomerang that I can honestly say I enjoyed. Yes, I actually liked it. I would ride it again voluntarily. I have no idea what they possibly could have done, but it's some sort of miracle. Or, maybe it's not. There is a possible answer: Bat differs from other boomerangs in that it actually runs an Arrow train that was taken from Dragon Fire. That seems to have made all the difference in the world. As the park closed for the day, I had successfully been on 14 of the 16 roller coasters (the missing ones being the aforementioned Time Warp and the children's coaster Taxi Jam).
With ERT set for Leviathan, The Fly, Thunder Run, and Vortex, I almost didn't even make it over to Leviathan. Vortex was out of this world insane at night. It's a borderline top 10 coaster for me; that's how incredible it was.
I did of course get to Leviathan to finish up the night with one of the best ERT sessions ever. The coaster is just nuts at night and I lost count of how many times I rode it, including an extended run just camped out in the front seat. The first half of the ride in the front seat is pure madness.
This was the effect that it had on my hair by the end of the night. Anyone down in the Carolinas who is worried about the rumored possibility of Carowinds adding a B&M giga in addition to Intimidator should not be concerned: Behemoth and Leviathan complement each other very well. Even though it has a lot of mediocre at best coasters, Canada's Wonderland is a first class park. It is my favorite of the old Paramount parks and probably only bested by Cedar Point in the modern Cedar Fair chain. In addition they really go all out to put on a fantastic event for coaster enthusiasts, so I would recommend any ACE member try to make it up for this sometime.
All photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jhawkins/s ... 635645543/
With the clock ticking on my time as a car owner pending a move to New York City, I decided there should be one final road trip. There are few major cities in the east that I have not visited, and not many amusement parks either, so the destination was obvious fairly quickly: Toronto and Canada's Wonderland. As part of the old Kings Entertainment then Paramount Parks family, I have been familiar with Canada's Wonderland for longer than most parks, having grown up visiting sister park Carowinds. Canada's Wonderland has always been an interesting case. It is the highest attended seasonal amusement park in North America, yet for years was seemingly neglected with second-rate coasters while other parks in the chain got the major investments. Since taking over ownership Cedar Fair has reversed that trend, so a visit for me was definitely long overdue, and I timed my trip to coincide with the annual unfortunately named "Rollercoasters, Eh!" ACE event.
Cedar Fair wasted little time in showing Canada's Wonderland some love as 2008 brought Behemoth, a giant B&M hyper coaster. Park staff greeted ACE members bright and early on a shockingly chilly morning for a walk back tour of the coaster prior to morning ERT.
Behemoth has a picturesque setting running alongside a lake, and the park showed just what it thought of the Paramount installed Back Lot Stunt Coaster by ramming the lift hill right through the middle of that ride. The layout is in some sense more boring than the other B&M hypers, but that's because Behemoth is about one thing and one thing only: airtime. It's the classic out and back, but at 230 feet tall and over 5,000 feet long.
The decision to install a massive B&M that can churn through riders (and then to install another one several years later) made sense in more ways than one for this park. With the massive crowds that the park gets, lines are huge more or less every day. The park really wanted something that could move the lines and with Behemoth (and later Leviathan) they got it.
The cold weather was wreaking havoc on the coaster's transfer track, so ERT was delayed slightly, but thanks to the hard work of the park's maintenance staff it was up and running in no time.
The park had just hosted the annual ACE summer conference a few weeks prior, so this regional event was lightly attended, meaning as many rides as you could handle during ERT. At one point I rode Behemoth in the front seat with the entire train to myself. At this point I have been on 9 of the 12 hyper/giga coasters B&M has built worldwide, so these rides start to blur together in a lot of ways. They are all great and it is hard to rank them, but by the end of the day at Canada's Wonderland I had decided that Behemoth is at this point my favorite of them all. The airtime is just amazing and the first drop seemed to have a little more kick to it than some of their other rides. The three airtime hills in a row on the return trip are what separate this ride from the pack for me.
With 16 coasters and a very crowded park, the ERT sessions would help make completing everything in a single day possible. Back Lot Stunt Coaster was first (which has a grand total of zero effects operating, again telling you just what the park thinks of it) and next came the bizarre Togo stand up, Skyrider. I found it amazing that they even opened this ride for ERT as I was literally the only person on it for my ride.
As with the other Togo stand ups, this ride is filled with head smashing turns. But unlike say Shockwave at Kings Dominion, it has some extremely unusual elements. There are several tiny bunny hops which give the unnerving sensation of airtime while standing up, and at one point there is this incredibly odd trick-track sort of section where the track banks one direction for a bit then banks the other way while still traveling straight. Really weird ride. While I didn't care for the Joe Frazier-style punches to the jaw that the restraint gave me, I actually kind of enjoyed it because of how strange it was. I hope it stays around a while longer.<!--nextpage-->
The forth coaster for morning ERT was Mighty Canadian Minebuster, a decent out and back wooden coaster with a rib-busting tunneled helix at the end that was somewhat reminiscent of The Beast's finale. This is a park that has a lot of quantity, but more limited quality.
With the park now open for the day, a buffet breakfast was next on the event's agenda (this event had more food than any other coaster event I have ever experienced), but en route I decided I needed to go ahead and knock another coaster out of the way while I could. Maybe not the best choice, Flight Deck, the red headed step child of the former Top Gun family of coasters, this one in the form of a Vekoma SLC. Now I have been on several Vekoma SLCs, and they are in general pretty horrid rides for the most part, but this one took the crown for the absolute worst, and is a prime candidate for the worst roller coaster I have ever been on. It just absolutely abused my body.
It did not take long for my thoughts to start forming on the appearance of the overall park. Designed similar to Kings Island and Kings Dominion, it became evident quite quickly that Canada's Wonderland has retained more of its original charm than any of the other parks in the chain. It is a beautiful and well cared for park with lots of trees and water, which sounds simple enough, but given the removal of both trees and water features that happened at some of the other parks (Carowinds...), it can mean a lot.
After an excellent breakfast, I headed straight for what would (not necessarily by coincidence) be my 400th roller coaster, a simultaneously impressive and shameful milestone of just how out of control this hobby has spun. Leviathan is one of the most interesting stories of recent years in the coaster world. Its announcement was one of the most shocking things I have ever seen in the industry. Here was a park that had just four years earlier built a massive B&M hyper coaster announcing that they were building the first B&M giga coaster, breaking their own ride's record for the largest coaster in Canada. Oddly enough, as I write this, it is starting to appear likely that Cedar Fair will repeat this same pattern at Carowinds as it is slated to get a giga coaster of its own in 2015. I think it just goes to show that coaster enthusiasts are a bit out of touch; the average park guest likely has little idea of the similarities between the rides and just sees two giant roller coasters. While to many people it seems odd to have two coasters that are so similar as marquee rides in the same park, all I can say is bring it on. If Canada's Wonderland is any example, this is a great thing.
While Behemoth was the first B&M hyper to use its new generation of trains, Leviathan actually turns the clock back and uses the old generation. I'm not quite sure why this was done, but the two theories I could come up with are that perhaps the tighter turns of this ride were better taken with the more compact trains, or the park just wanted to differentiate the ride from Behemoth in any way they could.
So what does Leviathan do that Behemoth didn't do already? Exhibit A, the first drop. This nearly vertical 300 foot plunge is the best first drop on any roller coaster I have ever been on. My first ride was in the very back seat, and though it is very rare for me to have any sort of fear on a ride, there was a definite moment of horror about halfway down this thing. It feels like an eternity hanging perilously in the air before slamming violently back down as the train pulls out of the drop.
To make matters worse, at the bottom is this tiny little tunnel.
The first drop alone almost makes the whole ride worth it for me, but there is of course more to it than that. All of the prior B&M hyper coasters are very controlled experiences. They have spectacular airtime and huge drops, but there is a sense of total precision and gradual changes in track movements. Leviathan is different. B&M got a little more creative here than they have with any of the previous rides. <!--nextpage-->
If there is one problem with Leviathan, it is that it is too short. Just when the ride seems to get going it ends with a brake run that must be almost 100 feet in the air. Mainly because of that, I think I might slightly prefer Behemoth, but it's hard to say. Both coasters are in my top 10 if not top 5 steel. The opening sequence of Leviathan may be the most brilliantly engineered thing ever conceived on a roller coaster. After the ridiculous first drop, there is a high speed turn at blinding speed followed by my second favorite part of the ride, this long low to the ground turning airtime hill. Riders float out of their seat the entire way over it as the track heads towards the front entrance of the park. It's hard to really describe it, but I kept thinking of it as the "surf" element. After that comes the more standard camelback hill, a severely overbanked turn at the park gate, a high speed turn, a final camelback, then a turn onto the brake run. I really think a coaster like this that was just a bit longer could be the best steel coaster in the world.
Cedar Fair parks seem to be about making statements at their entrances with recent coasters.
With the two big star attractions done, most of the rest of the day was dedicated to getting the remaining coasters, starting with the other large woodie, Wild Beast. A clone of Grizzly at Kings Dominion and Great America, the ride is loosely based on the long gone Coney Island Wildcat. It isn't surrounded by trees like the Kings Dominion version nor does it run nearly as well, but it's still a fun coaster, and I came back and rode it again later.
Next door was Bat, and since Vekoma boomerangs are pretty much my most hated type of coaster (even worse than SLCs) and the line was already huge, I decided to keep moving. After 400 different coasters I think one luxury I can give myself is passing on waiting in line for a ride I know will be miserable.
For some reason The Fly seems like a perfect name for a wild mouse. As with pretty much every ride, there was a sizable line, but fortunately this was part of our evening ERT, so I saved it for later.
Behemoth and Leviathan were clearly the reasons for being here, but there was one other ride that I was extremely excited about: Vortex.
Many people tout Vortex as the best Arrow suspended coaster, so as a fan of this unfortunately dying breed of coasters, I was really looking forward to it. It did not disappoint.
The layout of Vortex seems to be virtually identical to Flight Deck at Kings Island, but a look at the stats shows that Vortex goes faster and runs its course in less time. That makes sense because while I like the Kings Island coaster a lot, Vortex was on another level. It's a short ride, but absolutely relentless, pure intensity from start to finish. The setting is great too, as it begins by climbing to the top of the park's centerpiece Wonderland Mountain, then runs down a hillside to the lake below. <!--nextpage-->
Continuing the coaster tour, the line was short for the junior suspended coaster, Silver Streak, so I took a ride.
The line was not so short for Ghoster Coaster, the junior woodie, but I love any wooden coaster so I waited it out. Plus, the Carowinds version was the first roller coaster I ever rode, and I have now been on all four that were made at Canada's Wonderland, Carowinds, Kings Island, and Kings Dominion.
Just like Kings Island and Kings Dominion, Canada's Wonderland opens onto International Street, with shops and restaurants lining a giant fountain. Unlike those two parks, where the street terminates at a replica of the Eiffel Tower, Wonderland has Wonder Mountain.
Most of the mountain sits empty, but the park plans to rectify that next year with a prototype hybrid dark ride and roller coaster that will be located but in and outside of it.
My mission to ride all of the coasters was looking doable. After the event lunch in the park's picnic pavilion, I hit Dragon Fire.
Dragon Fire is a surprisingly good Arrow looper. It was built one year after Carowinds' Carolina Cyclone and is fairly similar in layout. I think most of these smaller Arrow loopers are pretty fun; it was when the company started going too big that the rides got really rough.
I should probably also mention that Canada's Wonderland is also notorious for a great collection of flat rides, including Sledgehammer, which is the only ride of its kind in the world. It looked a little too insane for me. Stuff like this just makes me sick, so I didn't really get to appreciate that aspect of the park.
Behemoth had a full queue, but even so was still only around a 40 minute wait, exemplifying how great the capacity is on these rides. I was glad to get a final ride on it in.
The not waiting in line for crappy coasters thing crops up again. I went on one of these torture devices at Rye Playland and had no desire to wait in line an hour to ride this one.<!--nextpage-->
The final must-do ride for me was Thunder Run, the current inhabitant of Wonder Mountain (and it won't be going anywhere next year despite the new ride) and a roller coaster that I somehow seem to have some vague memory of riding when I was younger despite the fact that I had never been here before. Weird.
Thunder Run is a powered coaster that completes two circuits, twisting in and out of the mountain through several scenes with lights and animatronics. From what I was told a lot of the effects have been recently restored, and I loved the ride. In fact I'd even say it was one of the standout rides to me, joining Behemoth, Leviathan, and Vortex.
I saw that one of the park's food stands sold poutine, and so an evening of gluttony began.
In addition to a breakfast and lunch buffet, funnel cake time was listed on the event itinerary. Funnel cake time meant us being given the most insane funnel cakes ever, topped with a heaping load of strawberries in syrup and ice cream. I was smart enough not to eat the entire thing, but still probably ate way too much.
As closing time approached and I wondered by Bat again, I noticed that there was no line. So much for the whole not riding it thing. With no line I figured I might as well take a spin, and I guess this was just one of those weird things, because it turns out that not only was it by far the best boomerang I have ever been on, it was the first ride I have ever had on a boomerang that I can honestly say I enjoyed. Yes, I actually liked it. I would ride it again voluntarily. I have no idea what they possibly could have done, but it's some sort of miracle. Or, maybe it's not. There is a possible answer: Bat differs from other boomerangs in that it actually runs an Arrow train that was taken from Dragon Fire. That seems to have made all the difference in the world. As the park closed for the day, I had successfully been on 14 of the 16 roller coasters (the missing ones being the aforementioned Time Warp and the children's coaster Taxi Jam).
With ERT set for Leviathan, The Fly, Thunder Run, and Vortex, I almost didn't even make it over to Leviathan. Vortex was out of this world insane at night. It's a borderline top 10 coaster for me; that's how incredible it was.
I did of course get to Leviathan to finish up the night with one of the best ERT sessions ever. The coaster is just nuts at night and I lost count of how many times I rode it, including an extended run just camped out in the front seat. The first half of the ride in the front seat is pure madness.
This was the effect that it had on my hair by the end of the night. Anyone down in the Carolinas who is worried about the rumored possibility of Carowinds adding a B&M giga in addition to Intimidator should not be concerned: Behemoth and Leviathan complement each other very well. Even though it has a lot of mediocre at best coasters, Canada's Wonderland is a first class park. It is my favorite of the old Paramount parks and probably only bested by Cedar Point in the modern Cedar Fair chain. In addition they really go all out to put on a fantastic event for coaster enthusiasts, so I would recommend any ACE member try to make it up for this sometime.
). A few more (untrimmed) airtime hills would have been nice too. I love the intensity though. Leviathan is not without flaws either, for instance having a brake run run 100 feet in the air.. 