It’s that time of year again. Canada’s Wonderland in Vaughan, Ontario opens its gates for another season of summer thrills. New for 2019 is Yukon Striker, the tallest, longest and fastest dive coaster in the world.

Wonderland has been a firmly entrenched part of my Southern Ontario experience for as long as I can remember. As a kid, it was a once-per-summer trip with my parents and sister, with picnic lunches on the lawn outside (Mom’s mock-chicken and ketchup sandwiches) and every last ounce of fun squeezed out of the day from 10 a.m. opening until 10 p.m. closing. As a teenager, it morphed into a once-per-week destination for my giddy, giggly friends and I, thanks to seasons passes and freedom to navigate the two-hour GO Transit route from Scarborough. Today, Wonderland is about making memories with my kids. Making memories for my kids so that they might look back and have the same nostalgic fondness for this magical place that I do.

With that in mind, I have to say that one of the coolest things about being a writer is that I get to go do awesome stuff and then write about it. On April 24th, I was invited to Canada’s Wonderland’s media preview event to ride Yukon Striker for the first time. You can read my official write-up in the York Durham Headwaters Ultimate Summer Road Trip magazine (soon to be released).

Here, on my own blog, is my unofficial write-up. The true story. Officially, I am a daring, thrill-seeking young(ish) go-getter, up for any challenge and selling the awesomeness of the experience with all the verbal dexterity in my power. The reality, though, is that I’m a big fat chicken, I don’t like heights, and the fear of that first drop on roller coasters makes me break out in a cold sweat. I might as well admit it.

That’s not to say I won’t go on roller coasters. I can brave the initial plummet because I enjoy the rest of the ride. I love The Bat, The Vortex, The Mighty Canadian Minebuster and The Wilde Beast. (No, I will not drop the E in “Wilde”; that is a sacred E! If you’re my age or older, you will know what I’m talking about.) But Behemoth and Leviathan are beyond my limits. I know this. I accept it. Instead, I enjoy watching people far more brave than I conquer those orange and teal swells of terror, and content myself with the voyeur’s knowledge that they are brimming with adrenaline over every death-defying inch of track.

Here is where I went wrong… or right, depending on your viewpoint: I didn’t read the stat sheet on that brilliantly sunny April day. I did not know that Yukon Striker holds records. With Behemoth in view in the distance – a deceptive point of reference since obviously Behemoth is much taller, and therefore Yukon Striker can’t possibly be anything I can’t handle – I confidently conducted my interviews for my YDH article, built up my determination, and marched up the ramp to tackle my first ride.

It wasn’t until I was strapped into my seat with no means of escape that wouldn’t include a humiliating meltdown that I figured it out. I was the only person on that car who was a single rider. Everyone else was a member of the American Coaster Enthusiasts group, also media guests to the park that day. They knew the stats. And they were all talking to one another about speed, and height, and vertical drops.

About this time, certain bodily orifices of mine began to pucker.

Noticing my panic, my car mate on my right informs me, “Oh, it’s nothing. Honestly, it’s so new and so smooth. It’s like riding a couch.” That’s all well and good, but I have no desire to ride a couch that’s going to pitch me at 90 degrees to my doom. I think this rather than say it, because at this point there is not much coming out of my puckered windpipe (… which bodily orifice did you think I was talking about?!).

Here is how that first ride goes for me:

I spend the ascent hyperventilating and laying a smack-down on my fight-or-flight response. At the top, Yukon Striker suspends riders over the first drop so that, if you are not an aforementioned Big Fat Chicken like me, you will have a breathtaking view of the entire park. “Open your eyes,” my car mate on my left tells me. “You have to see this. You’re missing everything. Open your eyes!”

Foolishly, I oblige. I look down. I see my fate. And then the brakes release and I scream.

And scream, and scream and scream.

(In retrospect, I can only describe the sounds which came out of my mouth during those three minutes and twenty-five seconds as a cross between a train whistle and squirrel chatter. In the back of my mind I was vaguely conscious of the fact that my car mates were laughing at me in between their own gasps and hollers of delight.)

“You’re fun,” my new friends tell me when the ride is over and I discover that I have not died after all.

So there it is. I survived Yukon Striker, and I unwittingly (literally unwittingly, as I had ZERO wits about me from start to finish) made people laugh. I’ll take it. It was an awesome day.

I may even ride it again next time.