For some reason, I didn't know that Canada's Wonderland was open during the winter. For years, I thought they closed right after Halloween Haunt and then re-opened in the spring. But I saw someone's post on IG about the Winterfest funnel cakes at Canada's Wonderland a couple of weeks ago and I was like, "I MUST GO." So I asked my friend Iris if she was interested in going since she loves all things Christmas, and she immediately agreed.
Winterfest at Canada's Wonderland
Winterfest at Canada's Wonderland
Winterfest at Canada's Wonderland
Winterfest at Canada's Wonderland
Turkey Dinner Ball at the Holiday Dining Hall
Our main goal, aside from looking at all the pretty lights, was to eat as many Christmas-themed foods as possible. Of the main dishes, the Turkey Dinner Ball ($14.99) surprisingly ended up being the unanimous favourite. It's exactly as it sounds: turkey meat and stuffing shaped into a ball, battered and deep-fried, and then sat atop a bed of mashed potatoes, with gravy drizzled on top and cranberry sauce on the side. I do wish there was more gravy on the side because the batter ends up absorbing most of it, but the cranberry sauce was a saviour to keep the turkey from getting too dry.
Turkey Dinner Poutine at the Holiday Dining Hall
The Turkey Dinner Poutine ($14.99) was decent; the quality of the gravy and the cheese curds were great, but the turkey meat sitting on top was a little too dry and also way too smoked. To the point where it overwhelmed all the other flavours of the poutine. Even the cranberry sauce couldn't save it. We ended up taking the turkey off and just ate the poutine as it was meant to be. (Surprised that we found such a good poutine at Canada's Wonderland, of all places.)
Turkey Maple Cranberry Stromboli at the Holiday Dining Hall
We also decided to get the Maple Turkey Cranberry Stromboli ($13.99), which actually sounded really promising, like a turkey dinner pizza pocket. Except when we got our stromboli, which is made to order, it didn't have maple or cranberry. Upon first bite, we found tomato sauce, cheese, and turkey as expected, but also... beets. Yes, beets. I'm not that mad about it because I love beets, but did they really think we wouldn't notice the replacement of cranberry sauce for beets? (NOT ALL DARK PINK FOOD IS CREATED EQUAL.) So it was basically a pizza pocket with turkey and beets. Like the poutine, you're better off getting the original.
Gingerbread funnel cake at Festive Funnel Cakes
Finally, we lined up to get a funnel cake — the main reason for our visit to Winterfest. There are three Winterfest options on top of the original Strawberry, but we decided to go for Gingerbread since it seemed the most festive but also the most enticing. Like all the funnel cake options, it comes with the vanilla soft serve ice cream, but this one is topped with gingerbread pieces, drizzled with caramel sauce, and then topped with sprinkles and a sugar cookie. (It was supposed to be a gingerbread man-shaped cookie, but they ran out, so we got a tree-shaped one instead. A little disappointing when gingerbread is actually the theme of your food.) I don't need to tell you that it was hecking delicious, but I do think that it could have benefitted with more sauce because the addition of gingerbread pieces made the funnel cake a little dry. Then again, it probably has two days' worth of calories, fat, and sugar so... maybe not.
Winterfest at Canada's Wonderland
Winterfest at Canada's Wonderland
Winterfest at Canada's Wonderland
Even with a discounted price through Perkopolis, one admission ticket with parking still added up to $48 per person. Pretty goddamn steep for a three-hour visit, but once we walked in, we were met with a truly spectacular sight. And I gotta admit, with the amount of time and labour it took to set all of those lights, it's worth the price. It's once a year, after all.
We did want to end the night with some hot chocolate, which was surprisingly inexpensive (for a theme park) at $4.99 a cup, but then we saw that they were using the instant Carnation hot chocolate and realized why it was so affordable. We refused to get it because you can literally get a 7-sachet variety pack of Carnation hot chocolate for $5.99 at any supermarket here, so we decided to get some apple cider instead. But upon closer look at the menu board, we saw that one cup (with no alcohol, mind you) started at $11.99, which is just highway robbery. So we refused that, too. But we made up for our failed drink quest with getting some ginger molasses cookies (3 for $10, a total steal) in the Christmas Market, which turned out to be one of the best cookies I've ever eaten in my life.
Overall, I'd say that Winterfest was a success. This is as Christmassy as I'm gonna get.
Canada's Wonderland
1 Canada's Wonderland Drive
Vaughan, ON L6A 1S6
(905) 832-8131
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