Canada's Wonderland Planning Major New Roller Coaster

This has been a rumor for quite a while now, but the first concrete evidence of Canada's Wonderland's plan to construct a new roller coaster has finally surfaced.

The park has applied with the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority to "alter a waterway to
construct in the Regional Storm Floodplain of the Don River in order to facilitate the construction of a by-pass channel and a new roller coaster at Canada's Wonderland."

Yes, that said new roller coaster!  The permit for the work will be valid from this month, all the way through January of 2020.  To me, that would imply a ride opening of 2019, as permit usually includes plenty of extra padding time at the end.

© Toronto and Region Conservation Authority

This map, included in the permit filing, shows the location of the waterway work.  That will help us narrow down where in the park in a moment.  But the filing also has an interesting passage that further describes the work as "a low flow by pass channel is proposed around a current on line pond to facilitate the construction of a ride tunnel within the pond."  So it sounds like the coaster will actually have a tunnel that goes underneath a pond within the park.  Interesting!

© Google Maps

The location of the work can be centered to this part of the park using the map in the permit filings, plus there is a large pond located here which further makes sense.  This image is a bit outdated as the park's stand-up coaster, SkyRider, was removed before the 2015 season.

The permit also includes that there will be 9 supports within the pond area, in addition to the tunnel going under it.  So if you use the empty SkyRider plot, the pond that Vortex swings over, and the large open area at the top of the image, there's plenty of room for a nice-sized new roller coaster.

Now, as to what kind of roller coaster this will be, that remains unclear for now.  Canada's Wonderland is a busy park, so something with solid capacity would appear to be a requirement.  They already have a hyper and a giga, so cross those off the list.  The park's only big inverted ride is in the form of an SLC, so that's a possibility, but maybe a wing coaster would fit that bill.  Or, what about a dive coaster, like Valravyn?  Then again Cedar Fair is installing a large, good capacity, Gerstlauer 'dive' coaster at Knott's, so maybe that's the key?  The list could go on, it is simply too early to tell without more information.