A few days ago I decided to hit up Canada’s Wonderland for the first time in several years. One of the triggers for this was to try out their new hypercoaster, known as Behemoth (Wikipedia article).

I woke up at 8:00am on Sunday morning and drove up to Bloor St. to meet up with my brother. From there, it was about a 45 minute drive to the park, including parking. Not surprisingly, the line for Behemoth extended well beyond the queue and up the promenade towards Psyclone. We stood in line for nearly two hours, amusing ourselves with the many arguments between security personnel and guests that thought it would be amusing to try and jump into the line. We also spent time figuring out how long it would take Canada’s Wonderland to recoup the construction costs of the Behemoth (see below).

Anyway, moving on.. we finally arrived at the station. After setting our belongings aside, my brother and I climbed into the outboard seats of the first car. I found the moulded seat to be a bit of a squeeze, but managed to snug myself down. The restraint system on the cars is a mechanism that rises from the floor between your feet and swings down to secure your lap and thighs into the seat.

As it turns out, due to the limited ratchet range on the restraint and the extreme moulding of the seat, I was unable to ride the Behemoth. My thighs were simply too fat for the restraints to lock in place. At just under 6′ and 250lbs, I am indeed overweight but would not consider myself to be that large; sure, some of the other rides are tight, but there isn’t a single one (designed for adults) that I cannot ride safely.

Frankly, I think this was a blundering error on the part of both Canada’s Wonderland and Bolliger & Mabillard, the ride’s manufacturer. This is a theme park for servicing the North American population, and they should have designed their rides accordingly. I cannot believe that it would have been very hard to manufacture a restraint system that could accommodate a larger range of body sizes; all they needed was for the lap restraint to begin ratcheting sooner!

Needless to say, I find it somewhat ironic (by the Morissette definition) that a ride known as the Behemoth can only accommodate customers up to average size. My brother, who is quite fit and athletic, told me he found the seats and restraints quite comfortable, which tells me that his legs fully filled the seat without exerting excess pressure. This places him at just slightly under the maximum accommodating size.

While this was a staggering disappointment for me on its own, what I found even more difficult to believe was that I was allowed to stand in line for nearly two hours, chatting to various security and park personnel about the technical aspects of the new ride, and not once was it suggested to me that I might not be able to ride it. There was a “trial” seat placed just outside the queue, but again, never in a million years did I believe that they would have designed such a restrictive restraining system; I naturally assumed the test seat was to ensure children wanting to ride the Behemoth were sufficiently large to allow the restraint to function properly, not that a full-sized adult was sufficiently small.

Return on Investment

We estimated an average throughput of 1,000 guests per hour for attractions falling into the level 4 and level 5 thrill categories, and 500 guests per hour for attractions falling into levels 1 through 3. With these numbers, we estimated Wonderland to have 40,000 guests in line for attractions at any given time. Assuming that most people don’t stay the entire day, we decided that a total park throughput of around 100,000 customers per day was reasonable. If we say $30 per ticket for each of those customers, to account for season pass holders, children’s tickets, etc., that is $3 million per day in ticket fares. Let us next assume that Wonderland can offset all of it’s operating costs with sales of food, drink, and merchandise, allowing income from ticket sales to be directed towards paying off the construction costs of the attractions. With Behemoth clocking in at $26 million, this means a mere ten days of ticket sales will completely pay off the construction and installation of this giant roller-coaster. Not too shabby.