Let’s get up to speed on Canada’s Wonderland
No new rides this year, but two coasters are getting some love
It’s a funny year for the amusement industry. There are some major developments planned for the destination parks, especially Disney, but most of the new lands and attractions won’t start coming on line until next year. There aren’t a heckuva lot of new rides at the regional parks either. Yes, there are some new coasters announced for North American parks in 2026, but some of them may not actually open this season, while others are holdovers that were previously revealed.
That doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything exciting happening at some parks. For example, Canada’s Wonderland, located outside of Toronto, is lavishing attention on two of its coasters. One is getting a significant themeing makeover along with some new(ish) trains, while another is getting some much-needed love for its track.
Opened in 1995, Top Gun was Canada’s first inverted coaster. The park was then known as Paramount Canada’s Wonderland, and the ride was themed to the hit 1986 Paramount Picture’s movie featuring Tom Cruise. Cedar Fair took over the park in 2007, dropped the Paramount theme, and changed the name of the coaster to the more generic Flight Deck. Some 31 years after it debuted, Canada’s Wonderland (which is now under the Six Flags umbrella) is changing the name of the coaster once again, this time to The Daredeviler. That’s a lot of transformations for both the coaster and the park.
The retro theme reimagines the ride as an ode to early aviation and the stunt pilots who popularized the then-novel mode of transportation. The coaster will anchor a reenergized Grande World Expo area, which recalls the late 19th century and is one of the theme park’s original lands. The change is more than just cosmetic, however. Canada’s Wonderland says that the coaster will feature new track sections, new trains, and vest-style restraints, all of which should yield a more smooth ride experience.
The “new” trains are actually imports taken from the shuttered Six Flags America. They were introduced in 2024 on Professor Screamore’s SkyWinder, which had previously been known as Mind Eraser and, like Top Gun at Canada’s Wonderland, first opened in 1995. (Are you following me with all of these ride and park permutations?) Both coasters are off-the-shelf Vekoma SLC (an acronym for “suspended looping coaster”) models, sometimes derisively referred to in the enthusiast community as “Hang and Bangs.” With their notoriously rough rides, passengers would often be subjected to pinball-like head banging on the coasters’ original over-the-shoulder restraints. The Daredeviler’s less intrusive vest-style restraints (combined with the likely smoother ride) will eliminate the head banging.
The Mighty Canadian Minebuster, one of three wooden coasters at Canada’s Wonderland (out of a total of 18, which ties it with Ohio’s Cedar Point for having the second highest number of coasters at any park in the world; Poland’s Energylandia take the top spot with 19 coasters), is getting some much-needed replacement track. The Gravity Group is supplying its engineered precut track, and the park is installing it. With a total of 3,828 feet of track, Minebuster got 1,000 feet of track replaced last year and will be getting another 980 feet this year, which should make the ride much smoother (or at least the half of it outfitted with new track). Last year, Canada’s Wonderland debuted the multi-launch coaster, AlpenFury.
When I first wrote about The Gravity Group’s innovative replacement track, it featured vertical stacks of wood for straight-path sections. The company now also offers “3D combo track” for curving or twisting paths, which incorporates both horizontal and vertical boards. The Gravity Group provided its wooden replacement track for The Beast at Cedar Point and is currently working on Timber Wolf at Worlds of Fun in Kansas City, Missouri. The company has other replacement track projects underway, but the parks at which the work is being done have yet to announce them.
Have you been to Canada’s Wonderland? Are you surprised that the park has a near record-breaking 18 coasters?