Canada's Wonderland announces Yukon Striker, a B&M dive roller coaster

Last-gen Dive Machines (Shiekra and Griffon) are some of my favorite coasters. However, I really don't care for Valravn and on top of that it makes me extremely nauseous. I attribute that to the sustained high g-forces found throughout the ride. Is this just me, or does anyone else have a similar experience? When I saw the video for Yukon Striker it seems as if it would be even worse -- it really flies through that vertical loop and has a very tight helix before the final brakes.

I like the theme, and diving in to an underwater tunnel is a great feature. Is this the first dive coaster with a traditional vertical loop?

Just read the explanation behind the new themed section, too. Great story bringing that back after all this time. They really seem to be doing this right.

Goes back to what we were talking about in the general thread... there's really a sincere effort to invest in theme and appearance in the modern Cedar Fair era, and this is definitely a part of that.

I've only been on SheiKra and Valravn, and I think the latter is better in a no-contest way. Definitely intense, but in a good way. I imagine this will be like that, and four inversions is more than enough. That park has a crazy good lineup, considering it was non-impressive before the acquisition. I've still not been there!

Canada's Wonderland said:

a complete 360-degree loop – the only one of its kind for a dive coaster

I'm excited about this first-of-its-kind loop. It seems like it will provide an almost inverted coaster like sensation on the wing seats. Then again, I was looking forward to Valravn's zero-g roll more than any other part of the ride and that ended up being pretty gimmicky.

PhantomTails said:

However, I really don't care for Valravn and on top of that it makes me extremely nauseous.

The second half of Valravn can make me queasy, as does Gatekeeper. For me at least, I think it is way the inversions exert force that is atypical of most other looping coasters.

Funny. SheiKra is my favorite because of its setting. This ride does look really cool.

PhantomTails said:

However, I really don't care for Valravn and on top of that it makes me extremely nauseous. I attribute that to the sustained high g-forces found throughout the ride. Is this just me, or does anyone else have a similar experience?

Well, I don't notice sustained high g-forces on Valravn at all. I notice the hang time in the zero G roll much more, the rest of the ride is fun but not particularly forceful. So, no, I don't have a similar experience at all.

It's your heart-line, Pete.

PhantomTails said:

Last-gen Dive Machines (Shiekra and Griffon) are some of my favorite coasters. However, I really don't care for Valravn and on top of that it makes me extremely nauseous. I attribute that to the sustained high g-forces found throughout the ride. Is this just me, or does anyone else have a similar experience? When I saw the video for Yukon Striker it seems as if it would be even worse -- it really flies through that vertical loop and has a very tight helix before the final brakes.

Do you also find Gatekeeper to make you nauseous?

I too get a bit nauseous on Gatekeeper and Valravn. However, I have figured out exactly what does it for me (perhaps the same for you), but it's the force profile of the ride from positive to negative, over and over again in a fairly rapid succession. So if you just mapped out the positive/negative G on a graph, it would look like a sine wave of sorts. So it mimics being on a boat in the ocean, per-say. Most rides have a profile like this, but some stretch out the positive sections a bit more, say with a helix or long turns, for example.

On Gatekeeper the profile is very obvious as it is big hill after big hill. You constantly go from positive to negative, positive to negative, positive to negative, over and over again. Even in the inversions you are coming out of your seat a bit, or at least going below 1G.

On Valravn, the same thing. If you shut your eyes, you constantly would feel positive to negative, positive to negative, etc… Ignoring the lateral forces of course.

Some other rides, say Millennium Force, have long positive G areas (entire pullout through the first two turns, which lasts quite some time… followed by some negative G back into positive for another long duration). It makes the ride very reridable, at least for me. Or even Raptor, gives me no issue. But that ride sticks to positive G’s pretty well the entire ride.

So I found out with myself at least, it’s not the positive G’s or negative G’s that make me nauseous, but it’s the rides that tend to be very cyclical between positive/negative forces over and over again, without longer durations of just one of those forces to eliminate the “boat in the ocean” effect.

^this. Gatekeeper gets me too, but not to the extent that Valravn does. I also have issues with Banshee, despite being OK on other inverts. I know other enthusiasts who say the same about Banshee.

Are B&M rides getting too forceful? News at 11.

Cedar Fair has stepped up their game with the Taft Parks. They are going into full throttle theming. It's wonderful.

It's nice to hear that I wasn't the only one that felt that way on GateKeeper and to a lesser extent Valravn. I always thought it had something to do with the vest restraints really keeping me plastered to the seat and constantly pushing on my chest, but the explanation of "wave-like" positive/negative g-force changes makes complete sense. Oddly, I didn't seem to get as nauseous when riding in the very front.

Regardless, I'll be heading to scenic Vaughan, Ontario in 2019 to ride this... nausea or not!

I’ve never experienced nausea on any roller coaster and can ride most spin’&puke flats. I do have a panic disorder though and oddly enough discovered that on a HUSS standard Top-Spin. ....And that’s a direct result of the OTSR. (Not sure if all TSs have the little bar that forces and locks the restraint in place?)

MaxAir bugs me the same but at this stage I can control the brain’s response. B&M vests don’t trigger on initial comfort, but if they ratchet tighter, it’s an episode about to happen. (If I can’t take a full lung breath of air I’m DYING lol)

This ride looks EPIC as does CW.

Not enough to make me go there again, just yet. While I like the idea that most of the good stuff happens before the MCBR drop, it's still not enough to make me go there in spite it being my 3rd closest park after Cedar Point and MI Adventure. With them having such a huge collection, I find it sad to think that this is going to be one of the top 4 there since I find any seat on a dive coaster, other than the 2 outer seats of the front row, to be extremely boring. So many of their coasters are just awful. They will need, at the very least, a Banshee quality invert and at least one of their awful woodies to be RMC'd. The flying coaster thing and the SLC are really bad. The thing I love about Great Adventure, Holiday World and Hersheypark is that most, if not all of their coasters are really good for their types. CW and to a lesser extent, CP have tons of coasters but many of them are rides that I, and many others, never want to ride again. This is going to sound strange, but in all honesty, if I want to ride several different coasters in a day, I would take MI Adventure over CW, any day plus, no hassle with crossing the border.

Let’s link to the other thread regarding the evolution of roller coasters. Remember when the biggest sensation was the world’s first dive coaster at Alton Towers? And let’s see- it pauses at the top (terrifying), disappears into a hole in the ground that you can actually stand right by, then turns immediately onto the brake. Wow!
Sheikra and Griffon, in spite of their brevity, were definite improvements. Now we have this, and in the grand scheme it hasn’t been all that long.

I wouldn’t call the latest raft of B&M rides too intense, but I will say that Banshee just about does me in. Every time I ride it I’m surprised by its length and the dynamics, almost as it I’d forgotten, or something. Vests are tight on me, and positive G’s cause me to go short of breath. But the good news is that recent health issues have forced me to seriously re-think my diet, and without fail. A happy result will be a size or two reduction and by next season I anticipate a much more comfortable fit on rides. Even though I’ll be another year older, I’m looking forward to how coasters, particularly the huge B&Ms, treat me.

I haven’t been to CW in a number of years and now I see good reason to make the road trip. My first visit to the park was its inaugural year. I enjoyed it, and it was a complete theme park experience in a market that was prime. But like the two parks before it, everything was new, the place seemed flat, and what trees they had were small. It’s a beautiful place now, and for the most part the themeing has held up nicely. I can’t wait to experience it again.

Valravn makes me nauseous but I believe it has nothing to do with the ride itself. It's the brakes. The brakes grab in multiple small, yet jerky motions that really set my stomach off. Most coasters do one steady deceleration, Valravn, both at the top of the lift and the final break run, do a series of jerks. The worst is when they bring the train back to the station after it's been stopped at the end of the ride course.

The second "half" of Gatekeeper can mess with me a little too, but it really feels to me like bad engineering. Like the train is cresting the hills and dips at the improper speed, messing with my sense of equilibrium.

You guys are all weird. :) While more intense, I don't find Valravn to be that different in terms of how it affects me. I will say that starting with Walled Iggle, every new B&M has been intense in a way that previous rides were not. It's especially obvious when I get to ride it multiple times. Wild Eagle, Banshee, GateKeeper, Valravn, Thunderbird... they're all rides I enjoy but I'm less eager to marathon them.

I think they're all more of a drawn-out intensity, rather than quick and snappy. It's hard to explain, but there's a longer period of sustained G-forces back to back because everything is so swoopy.