Canada's Wonderland announced Leviathan, a 306-foot B&M roller coaster

So then, why would they build Behemoth in '08? Two great hypers a great park they make, but they were built a little too close for cap dollars.

So is this the new thread for complaints? ;)

Seriously though, great ride addition for a fabulous (and highly profitable) park. Kudos to B&M for exceeding 300' for the first time, to CW for building the biggest ride in Canada, to CF for (finally) recognizing the golden-goose park. Feed it, and it will lay golden eggs.... :)

I'm vaguely reminded of Steel Dragon 2000: Big, tall and fast, but not too intense.

You can tell that B&M is going on the side of caution with their first giga considering the normal seating, simple layout, etc. Of course the public won't care.

As an enthusiast, I think it's an awesome idea. From a business standpoint, two somewhat similar hypers in the same park is a little weird.

I'm of the exact opposite position Jeff. Enthusiasts are going to complain about it being unusual, but really the John Q. Public is going to eat it up, just as much as Holiday's World's visitors are going to enjoy two water coasters.

I think the one thing that is very telling is that fact that it is not an Intamin. It appears at this point Cedar Fair is willing to pay more and go back to B&M for a second coaster than to give Intamin another chance to screw things up.

- It's weird / it's great having 2 B&M hyper/gigas in the same park
- It looks like a great ride, with a different take than Behemoth
- I didn't expect this
- I don't think this has anything to do with CF's fear of Intamin screwing up. Intamin has been around long enough and has done enough work for CF for there to be a good trust both ways

Trust?

Lets take a look at the past few years... I305 for example, having to modify/redesign a whole section of the ride because of design faults is not usually a good relationship. From a business standpoint, that is a big annoyance. Where I work, when vendors mess up or cause issues, it is never a small deal.

I think the last "trouble-free" ride CF bought from Intamin was Millennium Force... Look back at the water ride at Knotts, Xcelerator cable incident and support redesign for tower, Dragster cable incident along with reliability and operation issues, I305 redesign, Maverick redesign, Shoot the Rapids issue, Steel Venom self-destruction at GL, Wicked Twister structural issues... The list goes on.

I have a feeling that the CF/Intamin relationship may come to a close, or at least slow down. Why go with Intamin and expect issues and modifcations when you can get a B&M for a higher price-tag, but have much better reliability and less headache? Maybe CF will stop going after the lowest bidder, and in return, get a better investment.

I think the lift hill will be longer than the ride itself. What an odd decision so soon after building Behemoth.

Also wanted to add, I've wanted to go to Canada's Wonderland since Behemoth was built but have yet to go so maybe if 1 B&M hyper wasn't enough, 2 will be.

Why Leviathan?

Canada's Wonderland serves the metro Toronto area, the fourth largest city in North America. It draws its base mainly from lower Ontario, which accounts for a significant fraction of Canada's population. This is a huge market. Clearly Cedar Fair feels that they can continue to grow park attendance by providing major new investments like Behemoth and Leviathan.

As for why Leviathan, specifically? The park already sports a roster of fifteen coasters, running the gamut from woodies to inverts to suspendeds to standups to flyers, and everything in between. Clearly the chain was looking for an attraction with high capacity, as had been the case with Behemoth.

Despite those fifteen coasters, the park still frequently sees very long lines (or so I'm led to believe, not having been back in a few years). So forget any new ride with a low throughput. This includes things like ball coasters, spinning mice, etc. And CF doesn't do wingriders or dive machines...yet, at any rate.

By a process of elimination, I suspect the decision came down to an E-ticket, exclamation point-inducing steelie or a Voyage-scale woodie. Yet the park already features three wooden designs, which may have been seen as a potential drawback. So the decision was made to swing for the fences, again.

It doesn't matter what the opinions of a few enthusiasts are about building a giga four years after a hyper. What matters is whether Cedar Fair's gamble pays off over time in increased tickets sales. Which I have no doubt it will.

Ensign Smith said:
It doesn't matter what the opinions of a few enthusiasts are about building a giga four years after a hyper. What matters is whether Cedar Fair's gamble pays off over time in increased tickets sales. Which I have no doubt it will.

<slow clap>

Give that man a cigar, he gets it. :)

With the biggest parks now having more than a dozen coasters and the biggest of the biggest eyeing two dozen on the distant horizon, it might be time to get over the "OMG! Two coasters that are kind of alike at the same park!!!! It's armageddon!" attitude.

I actually think I prefer the idea of variations of the 'standard' coasters rather than gimmick coaster after gimmick coaster.

Was there capacity problems with Behemoth? How packed does that park get? I think it's a fun idea. Hypers add so much in visual appeal to an entire park. They would build more than one wooden roller coaster at the same park in the olden days. Hypers/Giga's could be a new form of that. I like the name too.

Trim brake going up the 180ft hill, boooo ;)

I'm happy they are doing it, another good reason to visit Toronto next year.

Canada's Wonderland can get insanely busy, and another people eater makes some sense, I guess, but how many other CF parks are still sitting there with nothing? Put me in the "complainers" column if you like, but I think this announcement is strange.

First of all, if I was going to turn my most recent signature attraction into an instant bridesmaid, I would do it with a 300 ft B&M that had some unique features, like maybe some big honkin' inversions or another unusual prototype train. But no, instead they get a taller version of more of the same, kinda. And with a standard 4-across train.

My wildest conspiracy-theory guess is that this was originally supposed to be next in an intended long line of Intamin gigas for CF and something happened. Perhaps CF had finally had it up to there with Intamin and it's unreliability, fired their asses, and threw the project B&M's way, saying here's the layout, now do something. At the very least they could be assured of on time delivery of an operational coaster, right?

Before you throw me outta here for being a kook, take another look at the vid and try to imagine it as an Intamin ride. I think it's got many of the hallmarks, with modifications supplied by B&M. I'd also bet you a dollar that we see no more Intamin giga coasters at Cedar Fair. I'm sure they seemed like a good idea at the time...

^ While I think there's some logic there, you've got to wonder what the lead time is on one of these. I'm not sure how much the time period typically is between a chain approaching a manufacturer and opening day.

aerodynamic said:
Was there capacity problems with Behemoth? How packed does that park get? I think it's a fun idea. Hypers add so much in visual appeal to an entire park. They would build more than one wooden roller coaster at the same park in the olden days. Hypers/Giga's could be a new form of that. I like the name too.

Behemoth is the only good capacity coaster there.. and the only non-mouse-esque coaster running 3 trains. Especially since Behemoth was in the Action Zone area, this will help spread crowds over to the other side of the park

Leviathan looks great, but super excited there will be another line muncher in the park. The biggest weakness with CW for me was the lack of high capacity rides to match the crowds the place gets.

Most of the coaster collection is fairly dated, and recent additions like the Zamperla flyer and Italian Job/Stunt Coaster were not so great on capacity. Behemoth was a step in the right direction, they always have 3 trains on and the line is rarely over 45 minutes on a busy day. Leviathan will be a great addition to the park, very excited about this.

I wonder if the amusement seekers during the first golden age pitched a fit when a park built that second wooden out-and-back.

Rick UK, I think 2 years would be appropriate lead time. Lets say the layout and ground planning work had been done by one company already, it would be in place for manufacturer number two to take over easily with a lot less time involved. (I'm assuming that the park owns/pays for said plans) And that timetable would put it right in line with the most recent Intamin/CF coaster fiasco over at KD. Not to mention at the same time Shoot the Rapids was causing heartaches... I think it adds up.

A good example of this kind of thing happening was Big Bad Wolf - a ride that started out as a Schwartzkopf ride and ended up an Arrow.