Day Out at Canada’s Wondeland

Alun has a season pass to Canada’s Wonderland. This is the third year he has had one. Usually, he goes with three school friends, however this year he hasn’t planned anything with his friends so far.

This year season pass holders can purchase up to four “Bring a friend Mondays” passes for $20 and up to four “Bring a friend any day” passes for $27. Two weeks ago I dropped off Trystan and Alun for the day for some brotherly fun. Today I went, for the first time since about 1990, along with Alun, Trystan, Owen and Michael’s father, Donald.

We arrived at 10am and while the lineups to get in appeared long they moved fairly quickly. Our first ride of the day was the Spinerator.

It was fun and not too scary a ride to get started with. Owen had never been on larger rides than they have at Fantasy Fair in Woodbine Mall.

After that we decided to split up for an hour so Donald, Trystan and Owen could continue on some of the less extreme rides, while Alun and I headed for The Leviathan.

The lineup wasn’t too long and after a ride which I found mildly uncomfortable but not particularly scary we alighted to find that the lineup had more than doubled since we joined it. I had heard that it was best to do the popular rides early and our experience seemed to support that. From the time we joined the line until we finished the ride was about 25 minutes. At the bottom of the first major decent the car enters a tunnel and it was hard to believe we wouldn’t be decapitated, but we lived to tell the tale.

Next we moved on to The Drop Zone which was over quickly but gave a fun floating feeling as we fell.

Here I am lining up for our next ride Nightmares.

This was my favourite ride of the day. Alun challenged me not to hold on and to stand straight up.

An hour had passed and we met up with Donald, Trystan and Owen. We decided to continue in the same groups and agreed to meet after another hour for lunch at the Marketplace International Buffet. They concurred that Nightmares was their favourite ride as well. They had been on it twice as well as once on Shockwave.

Alun and I went to Shockwave next where it took us 45 minutes to line up and have a ride. We didn’t get to go side by side here as we were the last two allowed on. At each ride there would be boxes to put belongings in or they would be left around the edges. As we waited at Shockwave a group of people walked straight to the front of the line. Apparently, they had bought “Fast Lane”, which for $55 or $65 on top of your daily admission allows you to bypass the lines. Too rich for me!

Lunch cost almost $100 after a 15% discount for season pass holders. The food was dismal. We should have had Subway. The boys enjoyed it, but agreed that Subway would have been better.

After lunch Owen joined Alun and me as Donald and Trystan wanted to go on Wild Beast and Owen, after riding The Fly before lunch, decided he was done with roller coasters for the day.

We started with The Rage, a swinging ship, which was fun and relaxing. I could have had a post-prandial nap on this ride had it lasted longer.

I actually left my cameras at home so had to talk Alun into taking this picture of Owen and me while we waited to board The Rage. He refused to be in the picture.

Next, we settled on Orbiter, which looked fun and had a short line. It was fun so we went again.

After that, we lined up for Swing of the Century, but there was a flash of lightening before we got on and all of the rides shut down until the storm passed. We met up with Donald and Trystan, who had watched the diving show and then gone on Wild Beast. Alun and I had planned to go on Windseeker next, but we all agreed we had had enough and didn’t want to wait an undetermined amount of time for the rides to begin again so we headed home.

While the rides were fun, I am not a fan of hot, crowded places or lineups so I don’t think I’ll be heading back to Wonderland too soon.