Innovative roller coaster-dark ride combo heads to Canada’s Wonderland

A $10-million first-of-its-kind attraction coming to Canada’s Wonderland will combine a 4-D interactive dark ride with a roller-coaster track inside the Toronto-area amusement park’s decades-old Wonder Mountain centerpiece.

Photos: Wonder Mountain’s Guardian at Canada’s Wonderland

Debuting on May 4, Wonder Mountain’s Guardian will carry riders up a 60-foot-tall coaster lift hill on the exterior of the man-made mountain before dipping inside a cavern and slowing down for a dark ride experience complete with wind, motion and other special effects.

Inside the mountain, riders wearing 3-D glasses will battle mythical creatures with laser guns in scenes depicting dark forests, underground lakes and subterranean cities while traveling along a 1,000-foot-long coaster track.

The action will be played out on large curved screens, including the longest interactive screen ever built for a ride.

Riders will compete for points and compare scores after a final showdown with a dragon. It remains to be seen if the unique dark ride experience will conclude with a coaster-based climax.

“It’s going to be better than what you’ve seen at Disney or Universal,” said Ernest Yale, founder and president of Triotech, the Montreal-based company handling the project.

That’s quite a boast considering the latest dark ride experiences like Universal’s Transformers 3-D and the Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man as well as Disney’s Radiator Springs Racers and Toy Story Midway Mania can cost in excess of $100 million and take years to develop.

Known mostly for building 4-D motion theaters, Triotech introduced its first interactive dark ride in 2013 at Denmark’s Tivoli Friheden theme park. Another dark ride is in the works for early 2014 at the Hello Kitty theme park in Shanghai, China.

The ride vehicles and transportation system for the new attraction at Canada’s Wonderland will be built by Art Engineering, a German-based company that makes kiddie rides, water rides and dark rides.

It remains to be seen if Wonder Mountain’s Guardian will bring the coaster count at Canada’s Wonderland to 17, one more than Ohio’s Cedar Point but two fewer than California’s Six Flags Magic Mountain. The definitive Roller Coaster Database has yet to list the new attraction on its “New for 2014” census, waiting to see if the track includes any drops that would qualify the ride as a coaster.

Construction of the Guardian won’t affect the coasters currently navigating Wonder Mountain -- the suspended Vortex (1991) and the Thunder Run mine train (1981). The new ride will utilize unused space inside the man-made peak that was large enough to house two Halloween Haunt mazes in 2013.

Ride enthusiasts have expressed hope that Wonder Mountain’s Guardian could spur development of similar attractions at other parks in the Cedar Fair chain, which hasn’t added many dark rides in recent years. Cedar Fair CEO Matt Ouimet, a former Disneyland president, has placed a higher emphasis on family entertainment and themed environments since joining the company in 2011.

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