Canada's Wonderland and the Toronto Santa Claus Parade

[MisterSG1]

In the KECO and Paramount era, Canada's Wonderland always ran a float in the Toronto Santa Claus Parade to my knowledge. A brief history of this parade, the now defunct department store chain Eaton's first ran this parade in 1905 to usher in the arrival of Santa Claus to the department store. Supposedly, this is where the inspiration for the Macy's Parade comes from, as I understand its original purpose as well was to usher in Santa to the Macy's store on 34th Street. Eaton's hasn't been involved with the parade since 1982, and it continues to this day as a large scale parade.

Anyways, a regular sponsor since their founding was Canada's Wonderland, it's kind of unusual really, in the sense of Beach Boys singing Christmas songs kind of unusual. Canada's Wonderland is not open for business for 5 and a half months, and yet they always ran a parade. On a youtube video, I had managed to find the float they ran in the 1990 and 2001 parades:

 

I can recall the 1998 parade featured the Rugrats characters and had a roller coaster but I can't seem to find that float anywhere.

In 2001, they tried to theme the float after what they were, an amusement park by making a roller coaster float.

 

 

And finally, I managed to find an image of another float they ran in the 2006 season:

Source: https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/105/301446957_65e28a1f81_z.jpg?zz=1

The above photo resembles Wonderland more with a structure somewhat similar to Wonder Mountain.

 

As far as I know, since Cedar Fair's ownership of Wonderland, they have never ran a float in the parade ever. As I stated earlier, participation in the parade seems kind of weird for this time of the year. However, Wonderland is starting WinterFest next year, and well I thought it'd be a no brainer to run a float again to advertise the event. On top of that, with having Planet Snoopy, such theming of the float with one of the most timeless Christmas specials ever, A Charlie Brown Christmas, it really is quite easy to come up with something grand for the parade.

 

Did Kings Island ever do something similar in Cincy?

[SonofBaconator]

10 minutes ago, MisterSG1 said:

Did Kings Island ever do something similar in Cincy?

Snoopy has made an appearance in the Findley Market Opening Day Parade that the city hosts every year to kick off the first game of the Cincinnati Reds' season. I think it was only in 2010 that he marched in the parade to promote the new Planet Snoopy- several other Peanuts characters sometimes attend mascot events at Great American Ballpark.