Winterfest

Location: Vaughan, Ontario, Canada
Address: 9580 Jane Street
Date: Dec 2019
Website: www.canadaswonderland.com

  Canada's Wonderland amusement park started out as the summer place to go for rides and thrills.  When the kids went back to school in the fall, the season ended.  Next they started operating later and later in order to stay open with reduced hours up until Halloween.  In 2018 they realized, "Why is the park closed during the most wonderful time of the year?", and Winterfest was born.  Now being in Canada in the winter means it is too cold and snowy for most of the rides to operate, but that didn't stop them from turning the park into a winter Wonderland.

  The centrepiece of the park is Wonder Mountain.  In the summer it has flowing waterfalls and cliff divers.  In the winter a cascade of twinkling lights flows down the mountain. Everything was the same but with a wintery twist.

  A must have treat when visiting Wonderland is the funnel cakes.  You can't go wrong with some deep fried batter topped with strawberries and ice cream.  Festive funnel cakes let you enjoy new flavours like Eggnog Gingerbread and Candy Cane.

  We entered Medieval Fare which was temporarily being called Elf Village.

  One of the many shows was called Tinker's Toy Factory.  It was good to get inside the theatre and watch a show as well as for a chance to warm up.

   Another way to keep warm was with unlimited hot chocolate refills in our Winterfest mug.  All you had to do was line up at one of the many stations across the park and get your mug topped up again and again.

   Every section of the park was decorated and covered in lights and Christmas delights.  We walked down Candy Cane Lane where Snoopy and Woodstock rode their sled across a rainbow.

  We came across a line-up going into a group of Christmas trees.  We couldn't see through the trees to see what was going on.  We decided to join the line and find out what awaited us at the end.

  It turned out that this was Charlie Brown's Tree Lot and everyone was lined up to have their picture taken with Peppermint Patty and a thin little tree with only one ornament.  As we know, that little tree is full of Christmas spirit.

There were also giant Christmas trees filled with lights.

Just about every tree in the park was draped in glowing bulbs.  It really was an impressive display.

We wouldn't even dare to count how many lights might have been used to light up the park.  We would say for Wonderland to expect an oversized electric bill, nuch like these oversized lights.

 We started getting hungry again so what better to eat than some Christmas Veggie Poutine.

Around the park were many Christmas characters.  There were elves and reindeer and even elves on reindeer.  There were also some penguins dressed for the cold.

There were men made of both snow and gingerbread.

   There was a giant present made of lights.

 

 

Even the games were themed for Christmas.  The Milk Can game was renamed the Snowball Toss.  If you won you might go home with your very own bouncing Abominable Snowmonster from the Rudolph Christmas classic. 

  If you didn't win a prize, you could still go home with some Christmas decorations from the shops.  We liked the Fa La La La Llama ornament.

  As we headed out of the park we thought we heard a clatter.  Was it the hooves of reindeer landing on a roof?  Maybe it was the clickety clank of people being pulled to the top of a roller coaster?  Either way Wonderland had provided us with some thrills for yet another season.

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Map of Our World
Canada's Wonderland

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Post # 294

Across Canada At The Exhibition Grounds

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Address: 210 Princes' Blvd.
Date: September 2019
Website:  theex.com

    The Canadian National Exhibition takes place at the end of August each year and closes on Labour Day in September. When the Exhibition is not running, the grounds known as Exhibition Place are still open to vehicles and the public. If you are visiting Toronto from across Canada you can feel like you are back home thanks to the many streets that crisscross the grounds.

 We will start our journey from east to west.  All but one of Canada's provinces and territories are represented in the names of the streets.  The streets do not quite unfold as a map of Canada would, but we will show you one possible path you can take in order to visit them all.  We enter the Exhibition grounds from Fleet Street and find ourselves on Canada Boulevard.

 Canada Boulevard connects with Princes' Boulevard which is the main street that runs from the Princes' Gates (photo at top of blog) and through the grounds.

  The first provincial street we came across was Newfoundland Drive which also happens to be the easternmost of the provinces.  

Newfoundland Drive runs south from the Enercare Centre between the Automotive Building and Hotel X.

  The next road we pass is Nunavut Road.  This part of the road was formerly part of New Brunswick Way.  Much like the road, Nunavut the territory was formerly part of the Northwest Territories.  Sadly, Northwest Territories is the only unrepresented portion of Canada on these streets.  Hopefully at some point it will finally get included.

  Just a bit further along Prince's Boulevard, a road heads south.  This is the bottom portion of New Brunswick Way.  If you want to find a road sign for this street you will have to follow it through a parking lot and down to Lakeshore Blvd.  There you will find a traditional blue Toronto road sign instead of one of the fancier Exhibition Place signs.

If you head back up New Brunswick Way and take Nunavut Road north, you will end up on Nova Scotia Avenue.  As we mentioned before all the provinces are represented but they are all over the place as far as being presented in any sort of order.

We will take a left hand turn on Manitoba Drive and eventually we will end up at Princes' Boulevard again.

  Before we get to Princes' Boulevard we will pass Quebec Street.

   If we turn left at Princes' Boulevard we will pass the Princess Margaret Fountain.  

 Turn left again and you are on Prince Edward Island Crescent.  Despite being the smallest province in both size and population, it is almost as long as Ontario Drive.  

  After leaving Prince Edward Island Crescent turn left again and now you are on the road named after Canada's most populous province.  Take an Ontario drive along Ontario Drive as it curves back into Princes' Boulevard again.

   Heading past the Princess Margaret Fountain once more, now the road becomes Saskatchewan.

  While you can drive from Saskatchewan to British Columbia you can't do it without passing through Alberta first.  At the Exhibition grounds you can drive Saskatchewan Road and turn directly onto British Columbia Road.

  Don't worry, the next street is Alberta Circle.  Alberta was not left out.

  The last street we visit in order to complete our cross country journey is Yukon Place.  It wraps around the Liberty Grand (pictured below).  

There you have it.  Ten provinces and two territories later and we have visited most of Canada in one short trip.

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Map of Our World
Exhibition Place

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Post # 293

Monsters Mummies & Mayhem

Location: Hollywood, California, USA
Address: 1660 N Highland Ave.
Date: June 2019
Website:  thehollywoodmuseum.com/

    The Hollywood Museum in Los Angeles has so many movie props and memorabilia that they fill every nook and cranny.  Since it is the Halloween season we thought we would revisit their basement and a few classic horror movie icons.

  First off is an old classic, Frankenstein. While the novel was written in 1818, we are talking movies here. This Frankenstein was played by Boris Karloff in the 1931 film and is seen above with his bride from the 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein.

  There were life masks of Boris Karloff and Bela Legosi. Bela Legosi had played Dracula and along with Boris was part of Universal Studio's classic monster movies.

   Another early creature that scared audiences was the great ape, King Kong.  The original King Kong was a stop motion model.  The museum had various King Kongs on display.

  Flying ahead a few decades there were some birds from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.  We are not sure if these were just props or former movie stars preserved for future generations.

  While not a movie monster herself, Elvira became very popular in the 1980s as a host presenting B grade horror movies.  Horror movies had never really gone away, but the 80s saw a group of classic horror villains rise to stardom and appear in numerous sequels.

  Michael Meyers changed Haloween night forever and gained his place as one of the greatest characters in slasher film history.  Michael escapes from a sanitarium and visits his hometown for a night of fright and murder.  Jamie Lee Curtis stars as a babysitter that Michael is stalking while wearing a plain white mask.  So far there have been eleven Halloween films.

   The next mask wearer to terrorize teenagers is Jason Voorhees from the Friday The 13th movies.  He drowned as a boy and is best known for wearing his hockey mask while slashing his way through twelve (or is it only eleven?) movies.  This franchise just has to make Friday The 13th: The 13th.

  The next horror franchise to arrive in the 1980s started with A Nightmare On Elm Street.  This movie starred Freddy Krueger who terrorized teenagers in their dreams.  Johnny Depp's Hollywood dreams came true after being one of Freddy's victims.  There have only been nine movies in this series but there was a Freddy vs Jason cross-over movie made.

  In the late 80s came Chucky.  He was a psychotic, knife wielding doll from the Child's Play movies.  Only 8 movies made so far.  He did find love in Bride of Chucky just like Frankenstein did over 60 years before him.  If you have ever seen videos of dogs wearing costumes, and we know you have, the Chucky costume is one of the best.

  The museum is crammed with movie props and costumes from many other films.  There was this stick figure from The Blair Witch Project. The Blair Witch Project grossed almost 250 million dollars on a budget of less than 500 thousand.  It's shaky hand held camera work caused as much tension and fear as it did nausea.

   After having a role in A Nightmare On Elm Street, Johnny Depp spent a lot of time making movies with a Halloween feel to them thanks to director Tim Burton.  Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas is both a Halloween and a Christmas classic.  Johnny's Sweeney Todd costume was on display. 

   We headed upstairs again to escape from the horrors we had seen in the basement.  We did spot a couple more monsters up in a corner.  Mike Wazowski and Sulley from Monsters Inc. are a little less creepy than the hundereds of items you can find in The Hollywood Museum's dungeon.

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Map of Our World
The Hollywood Museum

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Post # 292