Mighty Canadian Minebuster

The Mighty Canadian Minebuster (often shortened to Minebuster) is a wooden roller coaster located at Canada's Wonderland amusement park in Vaughan, Ontario, Canada.

Mighty Canadian Minebuster
The Mighty Canadian Minebuster in operation in August 2018
Canada's Wonderland
Location	Canada's Wonderland
Park section	Frontier Canada
Coordinates	43°50′21″N 79°32′31″W
Status	Operating
Opening date	1981
Cost	$1.2M est.
General statistics
Type	Wood
Manufacturer	Canada's Wonderland Rides
Designer	Curtis D. Summers
Track layout	Out and Back
Lift/launch system	Chain lift hill
Height	27.4 m (90 ft)
Drop	26.5 m (87 ft)
Length	1,166.8 m (3,828 ft)
Speed	89.9 km/h (55.9 mph)
Duration	2:02
Height restriction	122 cm (4 ft 0 in)
Trains	2 trains with 5 cars. Riders are arranged 2 across in 3 rows for a total of 30 riders per train.
Fast Lane available
Mighty Canadian Minebuster at RCDB

History

Minebuster making up the chain lift hill, July 2007

Mighty Canadian Minebuster was one of five roller coasters to debut at the park's grand opening on May 23, 1981. It is also modelled after Shooting Star, a roller coaster that used to exist at Coney Island amusement park in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was originally intended to be the centrepiece of a themed area called Frontier Canada, but the idea for the section was abandoned – the section was later built for the 2019 season.^[1]

Minebuster is an out and back roller coaster designed by Curtis D. Summers and built in-house. The roller coaster was not built by Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters, despite a plaque at the operator's booth and several published reports that claim it was. PTC stopped building coasters in 1979.^[2] It is likely however, that the construction crew consisted of workers who had previously built coasters for PTC. The two, 30-passenger trains were supplied PTC. Canada's Wonderland's water park, Splash Works, has four sets of slides that pass over Minebuster.^[3]

For the 2025 season, 1,000 feet of track was removed and replaced.^[4]

Ride layout

Minebuster will be familiar to most coaster riders as a modified out and back wooden coaster, specifically with the addition of an upward spiralling helix at the end as the most obvious modification to the traditional out and back layout. The riders make an immediate U-turn to the left after leaving the station, past the storage depot and head up the chain lift hill. At the crest of the lift, the train makes a very small drop and turns right for the big drop. Riders then go through two negative-G hills and pass under a waterslide before climbing up a larger hill and making a turnaround to the right. The ride then drops down and rushes over three smaller hills before entering a banked turn to the left. For a finale, riders roar through a helix inside a tunnel before entering the brake run which stops the train.