News   Nov 22, 2024
 627     1 
News   Nov 22, 2024
 1.1K     5 
News   Nov 22, 2024
 3K     8 

Gondolas as Urban Transit

In the case of just looking at Wonderland here, it's difficult to understand the future of that site.

Cedar Fair out in SF sold off the land recently where their park California's Great America sits, which presumably the park would close shortly after.

I know the situation is somewhat apples to oranges, considering Wonderland is the highest visited theme park outside of California and Florida in North America, which makes it the highest visited seasonal park as well. I wouldn't be surprised when the new AECOM Theme Index comes out, if Wonderland in 2022 had its first season with over 4 million visitors in history.

But consider the situation with developers, we all know the condo developers would love to get their greasy hands on this site, and let's not mention the newer residents complaining about the noise from the roller coasters. Is it possible that Cedar Fair may sell the land Wonderland is on for a huge profit and take off?


Now more to the topic at hand, what hasn't been discussed is the logic behind this, Wonderland for starters is only open daily from about June to Labour Day. It's open weekends in May, and then Sept-Oct. Finally, it opens daily (albeit mostly nightly) through most of December for Winterfest. So with that in mind, what would be in Wonderland's best interest to fund an expensive project when they aren't open long enough to justify the cost it?

Wonderland may have better data on this, but how do most guests reach the park? If you live within the TTC network it can be worthwhile, but consider Wonderland gets visitors from outside the GTA where a true transit trip is not viable. Within the GTA but outside city proper, Wonderland isn't exactly an easy destination to reach, case in point, from where I live in Brampton would probably take four times as long to reach Wonderland by transit then if I were to simply drive from where I am in Brampton.

Mostly, my guess is that the majority of people who would use the gondola would most likely be Wonderland associates, not that there is anything wrong with that, the only people that you could theoretically draw are tourists already downtown and want to visit Wonderland easily, and those that are in the TTC system, for everyone else, and I assume that's the majority of their guests, they are much better off to drive if they can.
 
I honestly don't see much of a future for the Wonderland site OTHER than as what it is, and for exactly the reasons you outlined. As far as land use policy goes, it's not great, but with the performance they get out of it and the honestly pretty good site accessibility the value would have to be a lot higher than it is to incentivize the kind of risk that would go with trying to move. I'd suggest in these terms the comparable park would really be Disneyland; it would never go where it is if built today, but the prospect of redeveloping the site are virtually nil between the advantages it does have and the true return on that kind of redevelopment.
 
I honestly don't see much of a future for the Wonderland site OTHER than as what it is, and for exactly the reasons you outlined. As far as land use policy goes, it's not great, but with the performance they get out of it and the honestly pretty good site accessibility the value would have to be a lot higher than it is to incentivize the kind of risk that would go with trying to move. I'd suggest in these terms the comparable park would really be Disneyland; it would never go where it is if built today, but the prospect of redeveloping the site are virtually nil between the advantages it does have and the true return on that kind of redevelopment.
What I was mentioning more of, is Cedar Fair selling to the developers and just leaving the market altogether (which is presumably what is going to happen with California’s Great America in Silicon Valley)

In other words, selling and getting out of dodge.
 
What I was mentioning more of, is Cedar Fair selling to the developers and just leaving the market altogether (which is presumably what is going to happen with California’s Great America in Silicon Valley)

In other words, selling and getting out of dodge.
Which just doesn't make a whole lot of sense given both the actual performance metrics above and their market position.
 
What I was mentioning more of, is Cedar Fair selling to the developers and just leaving the market altogether (which is presumably what is going to happen with California’s Great America in Silicon Valley)

In other words, selling and getting out of dodge.

If Cedar Fair had any such plans on the horizon for Wonderland, they wouldn't have opened two new rides this year and started a massive survey of Kingswood, Time Warp, and Flight Deck in prep for a future mega coaster.
 
Last edited:
Didn't they introduce the Weekend 20E that runs every 15m?
perhaps, but that's still not exactly subway-needed levels of service. If that was the standard, basically every bus line in the City of Toronto is in need of a subway replacement.
 
If Cedar Fair had any such plans on the horizon for Wonderland, they wouldn't have opened two new rides this year and started a massive survey of Kingswood, Time Warp, and Flight Deck in prep for a 2025 mega coaster.
yup. People have loved the "Wonderland is going to be redeveloped" rumour for decades now. It's just not going to happen.
 
If Cedar Fair had any such plans on the horizon for Wonderland, they wouldn't have opened two new rides this year and started a massive survey of Kingswood, Time Warp, and Flight Deck in prep for a 2025 mega coaster.
Kingswood still exists?? When was the last time it was used for anything notable?

What mega coaster??
 
Gondola is good .. but why not build a rollercoaster line :)

Contract it out to Cedar Fair, they know how to handle that. The public transit version will be a lot longer and a bit slower, but other than that, will build on their rich experience.
 
Gondola is good .. but why not build a rollercoaster line :)

Contract it out to Cedar Fair, they know how to handle that. The public transit version will be a lot longer and a bit slower, but other than that, will build on their rich experience.
Heh, a rollercoaster to Wonderland would be one heck of a long rollercoaster.

I know we are joking, but how would it work, would we start either end of the line with a lift hill? And then have a roller coaster high above the streets of Vaughan?

Obviously a real ride would need multiple lift hills to work, just one lift hill I don’t think would have enough momentum to carry you a distance of six kilometres or more.
 
Kingswood still exists?? When was the last time it was used for anything notable?..
From what I can see, it looks like 1997 was the last year there was something resembling a full summer season of shows, then only sporadic use at best in the last 25 years. I would assume whoever the promoter had been up until 1997 likely let their contract expire, and no one replaced them.
When it opened in 1983, there was little downtown competition, but SkyDome in 1989 and particularly the Molson Amphitheatre in 1995 changed that.
https://www.setlist.fm/venue/kingswood-music-theatre-vaughan-on-canada-53d73ffd.html?page=6
 
Last edited:
Gondolas can be excellent transit systems and in some cases absolutely revolutionary. The system in La Paz Bolivia, due' to it's incredibly steep hills, has brought reliable and fast transit to literally millions of people who had none before. It has had a huge positive impact on the city's economy and especially the poor who live in precarious hillside housing who now have ways to get to work opportunities.

They are, however, very niche technology and should hence only be used in niche situations. A gondolas from Waterfront to the Toronto Islands would work well except it may not be possible due to BBA. It could have been an application for Pearson but the airport people mover now does the job. The only place I can think of in Toronto where it would make sense would be a connection from a potential Mid-town/Malvern GO station to the Zoo.

Vancouver is going to build a gondola from the SkyTrain to the SFU which sits high on Burnaby Mountain. The road is very steep and it often gets snow due to it's elevation which the buses can simply not run up such snowy steep hills.
 

Back
Top