Lagoon Amusement Park Trip Report (Summer 2014)

I feel like I'm in a huge minority of coaster enthusiasts. I like B&M standups, Poltergeist is higher than Iron Rattler on my top steel list, and I generally prefer the simple atmosphere of old school theme parks to the high budget glitz and glam of top notch theme parks like Islands of Adventure and Disneyland.

So upon hearing that a family road trip of mine would be passing by Salt Lake City in Utah, home to easily one of the largest old school amusement parks in America, I jumped on the opportunity to check it out. So while mom and dad were out in downtown Salt Lake City, I took a short 20 minute drive to Lagoon to check the place out.

One of the very first sights of the park, the lift hill of the 1921 "Roller Coaster".

I happened to go on a Wednesday, which is one of the better days of the week to check out a park that's more ride heavy than show heavy due to the lesser crowds compared to the weekends. Ticket buying was easy, and by the time was 9:40 AM, I was already in the park's midway waiting for the rest of the park to open up at 10.

The park really nailed the "old school" feel to the park right off the bat with this sign in their main midway.

Interestingly enough, I actually got a ride on one of their two hokey jumpscare dark rides, Terroride. It was directly next to the main midway, one of the few parts of the park open before 10, and to my surprise, they were already letting riders on.

Campy goodness.

If you haven't been on a dark ride like this before, let me give you the rundown:

-You get in a small, 2 seater car.

-It zips along a set of powered rails through a bunch of completely non-sequitur show floors of cheap animatronics in latex skin jumping out at your car under blacklights.

-Repeat step 2 for a couple minutes.

-Get off, probably either laughing or shaking.

These rides are dumb fun, and lucky for us, Lagoon has two. More on that later. For now, waiting until 10.

The Southern midway of the park, just waiting to be opened up.

...And everyone behind me waiting to get to the southern end of the park.

As you might be able to tell, most of Lagoon's main rides are tucked away in the south end of the park, such as Cliffhanger, Spider, Colossus, Wicked, Roller Coaster, and a couple others that nobody cared about.

Up first for today was Wicked, their 2007 Zierer Tower launched coaster.

Wicked's REALLY cool sign out front.

But knowing my luck, bringing a backpack in line got me promptly pulled over by one of the ride ops who kindly explained to me that you weren't allowed to bring that kind of stuff into the stations, so I had to make a run back to the front of the park and back to drop stuff into a locker. No big deal, they cost only about $6 for the whole day.

Inside of Wicked's well designed station.

I got back to the ride expecting there to be a line, but the wait was only a couple of minutes because the loading was so amazingly fast. They're constantly loading two trains (Each train is four across with two rows, like a Eurofighter) and unloading one in the same building, and there's a single rider line to boot (which didn't open until the afternoon, so I had to wait in the regular line for the first couple rides).

Plus they have booster seats for smaller riders.

But enough about the station, and onto what the actual ride was like.

Wicked reminds me of Iron Rattler in a lot of ways. It's poorly paced, smooth, pretty forceful but only in certain parts, and has a couple of amazing moments that make me almost forget about the tons of little faults that cut it down from what could have been a top ten ride.

The first top hat, part of which is the second launch.

The ride that Wicked gives goes through a really bizarre layout. Out of the station comes a small turn which leads directly into a rolling launch, then it pulls up, then hits another launch strip, this one vertical. The first launch is a lot more forceful and the second one feels kind of unnecessary, but it's still fun.

Then the good stuff, starting with a really satisfying moment of ejector airtime at the top no matter where you're sitting (which, granted, is not a whole lot of difference).

Going down

The way back down is a great first drop, but it feels a lot shorter than it looks because of the fast pace it keeps up by now.

At the bottom of this hill is where the Gs are at their highest (almost 5 positive Gs) and the lap bar gets slammed down whether you like it or not. And because the lap bar is attached to the leg brace, even more discomfort ensues.

The train then pulls up into a very low to the ground speed hill which provides a little bit of floater air, and from there into a decent overbanked curve.

Then comes the main event.

Finally comes the Zero G roll. And I make absolutely no exaggeration when I say that this is easily in my top 3 inversions of all time, right next to Tatsu's pretzel loop and Iron Rattler's zero G roll.

Everything about this roll from start to finish is perfect no matter what seat you're in, and after taking a ride in every quadrant of the train, I can say that with confidence. It provides a perfectly consistent feeling of ejector hangtime throughout the entire inversion, not just zero Gs. Just the right amount of lateral forces, and it's just the right length too.

And it's pretty, too.

But then comes the rest of the ride. After the fantastic first half comes a MCBR that trims off a lot of the ride's speed, and then come a couple of really boring and forceless turns that just kill time until it gets back into the station.

Overall, Wicked is a good ride only for its first half. Another thing that prevents it from being a truly great ride is those blasted leg braces, which honestly hurt after riding a couple times. After my fourth and final ride later in the day, I had two huge bruises on my shins from the completely unnecessarily tight restraints.

Finally onto something with much less painful trains.

For the second credit of the day, Colossus the Fire Dragon. If you've ever ridden a Schwarzkopf Looper before such as Lazer or Scorpion, there's not a whole lot of explaining to do. Swooping drop, a loop or two, then some drawn out helices that put you on the verge of greying out before hitting the brakes. It's smooth, forceful, and most of all, Colossus was actually pretty fun.

And man, is it photogenic.

Old school transfer track.

The sure sign of a coaster from the 80s: Taking forever to change banking.

The station looked something straight out of a fairground coaster.

And the loops tower over everything.

Have to love swooping dives.

And while Colossus and Wicked were probably the best two coasters in the park, they were far from all that Lagoon has to offer.

Such as the approximately 20 billion awesome flat rides that they have.

For example, their Huss Enterprise, named Centennial Screamer.

If you've been on one of these before, you'll know i'm not lying when I say how much fun these things are. Lagoon's was surprisingly forceful.

Plus they had a Maurer Spinning Coaster. Rattly, uncomfortable, didn't spin a whole lot, and kind of hurt to ride. Plus it was really unphotogenic. Not what I would call a barrel of fun.

Also featured in the south end of the park: a Maurer Wild Mouse, and just like their spinning coaster here, it was also really uncomfortable to ride. If only it had better restraints and smoother brakes it would have been a great ride.

By now I had done all of the major rides in the south end of the park minus a couple of flat rides, which I would go on to do later. For now, time for the chairlift ride to the north end of the park.

Forgot which company made this chairlift, but it had great capacity and looked nice. 

Like, really really nice. Like most of the stuff at Lagoon.

It also gives great views of rides like Cliffhanger, which was a Mondial ripoff of a Huss Top Spin. Closed today, and I keep hearing rumors that it's going to be removed. I guess it's a mechanical nightmare or something.

And who knew? I guess Lagoon is actually built next to a lagoon.

The kind of underwhelming main midway.

After getting off of the Skyride, I realised that the exit dumped passengers directly next to Lagoon's S&S tower and their Mondial Top Scan, the two star flat rides of the park.

So I figured, better now than later.

I present to you, Rocket...

...and Samurai.

Both are good rides, but Samurai really blew me away. I expected it to be painful and the kind of ride I would only ride once, but I ended up riding it twice again later because it was so good. Please look up a video of how a Mondial Top Scan works if you have no idea, otherwise it's useless trying to explain it.

In short, this ride will violate you in the best possible way. After you get off of it, it feels like you just had some kind of illegal sex, and it's AWESOME. Definitely one of my favorite spinning flat rides of all time now.

Rocket on the other hand is subpar, even for S&S combo towers. Not a whole lot of airtime on either of the two towers (one of the three doesn't actually have a ride on it)

Seriously, the third tower is just a skeleton. It's really weird. Also, the canopies over the line are trampoline nets.

Honestly, I still can't get over how amazingly unpredictable Top Scan rides are. Please ride one.

Seriously, Samurai is awesome.

There were a bunch of other neat flat rides in the north end of the park, including one of those weird Flying Scooters flats. This one was a lot better than Knotts' one, the only other one I've ridden.

Cable-snapping goodness.

And speaking of flat rides themed to airplanes, Lagoon got one of those fancy new Zamperla Air Race flats, and man are they a really unique ride.

This picture sums up the ride experience pretty nicely.

The forces that you get on the ride are really bizarre and give you a feeling of spinning out of control and spinning completely in control at the same time. It really is a cool sensation and I genuinely hope more parks get these, although they're a bit on the more expensive side of flat rides. The only real complaint that I have with these rides, is that the headrest is a piece of hard plastic. Luckily the ride is smooth so it's not that big of an issue, but it kind of hurts if you're not expecting it.

While they're not the most comfortable, the cars still look really cool.

So at this point I figured I might as well make my way back to the south end of the park to hit anything important that I missed. Over in the east end of the park is where they put their water park, family section, and water rides. Naturally, it was time to start credit whoring on some of the family coasters.

Starting with Bat, their Vekoma Junior Invert.

I had never ridden a Vekoma Junior Invert before, and after hearing all of the hate that Vekoma gets for being such a bad coaster manufacturer, I was prepared for a little less than stellar.

The actual ride experience I got was the opposite of what I expected, and Bat ended up being a well paced, surprisingly long, surprisingly forceful, well landscaped, and flat out fun ride. I feel a little weird for saying this, but if Bat was less bumpy and had a nicer looking station, this would be the perfect family coaster.

Thankfully, Lagoon actually did have a perfect family coaster.

Speaking of surprisingly good family coasters, Bombora. This weird little ride was actually developed in-house by some guys working at Lagoon, but it feels like it was made by someone with a lot more experience. Seriously, this may sound weird, but this ride is genuinely the second best coaster in the park.

It's not particularly forceful, but the layout is interesting, it's VERY well paced, very smooth, the restraints are incredibly comfortable, it's got a couple moments of light airtime, it's got an onboard audio system (my weakness), a nice lighting package, it's photogenic, compact, and just a damn good ride all around.

Seriously, just look at the unnatural amount of fun these people are having.

Sure it only had one train running when I was there, but the ops were efficient and that really made up for it.

Also, did I mention how good of staff Lagoon has?

Plus, the transfer track is really cool too. See how it turns instead of slides into place?

But enough obnoxious praise of Bombora. Even if it's a really good ride. There are more things at Lagoon to admire.

Like this... Thing. I guess it's the smallest version of Zierer's Tivoli coasters.

I guess my credit whoring stopped with a screeching halt when I found out that I couldn't ride the park's smallest coaster, Puff, unless I had a small child accompanying me. Since I was at the park alone, that was out of the question unless I wanted to be the creepiest person at the park.

But they had this thing.

There were few places I was actually allowed to be creepy at this park and ride kiddy rides alone, one of which was their dual drop towers. Frog hoppers step aside, I have a new favorite family tower ride. These things were so much fun. Plus the ride op was cute, and that's always a plus.

Great theming out of nowhere.

And then they had a family Musik Express style ride called Jumping Dragon, which had proper lap bars and some more than half decent theming. Sadly the ride was really dull and forceless. At least it went backwards.

At this point I figured I'd finally eat some dinner and head over towards the north end of the park again, which was where the park's huge (and fairly photogenic) ferris wheel was waiting for me.

It really does look nice, doesn't it?

From here you can get a pretty cool view of the north end of the park, plus a sneak peak of the park's new ride.

It's a coaster, and the rumored name for it is Cannibal.

There's not a ton you can tell about this ride because the only track that's been laid down is the station and final brake run, but looking at the supports, it's pretty evident that it's either going to have an elevator lift or a drop section. Also, this is the second coaster being developed in-house by Lagoon themselves.

Also next to the giant wheel was an old school Paratrooper flat.

\

And you can't see from the picture, but this thing is fast. And a lot of fun. It's like a drunk ferris wheel.

Taking a break from flat rides finally, I went on to get one of the last two credits of the day, the utterly bizarre Schwarzkopf beast, Jet Star.

Every coaster at Lagoon has a diagram like this explaining the layout and train design of the ride. Which is actually pretty cool.

Or more specifically, Jet Star 2, which makes no sense because there was never a Jet Star 1 at Lagoon.

This ride is so messed up and weird.

So many things about this ride are really off and wrong. First of all, the trains. Or rather, cars. Each one feels like the love child of a log flume boat and a Matterhorn Bobsleds train, and they're basically toboggans with very minimal restraints. It never feels dangerous though.

But hey, these people are having fun on it.

And even though this ride is kinda bumpy, the seats are hot, the pacing is weird, the only restraints you have are the people sitting around you, the laterals hurt, the ride is creaky and old, and the entire thing feels like it should have been taken out about twenty years ago, this ride is actually still pretty fun. I'm surprised that I liked it as much as I did, which still wasn't even that much, but I didn't really expect much out of this ride.

It also does that signature Schwarzkopf thing of "obnoxiously slow banking".

Also, remember how I was saying that Lagoon had two of those hokey jumpscare dark rides?

Well here's the other one.

The signage was terrible on this ride, so nobody knew where this ride was. Which meant that this ride never had a line. Ever. This one, called Dracula's Castle, was definitely better than Terroride, because this one didn't have the obnoxiously cheap jumpscares of the other ride. At least not as many of them. Plus, the theming on this one was much better.

So at this point in the day, there was only one more coaster to ride before I could say that I did all of them that I could, and that lead me straight to Roller Coaster, the super old school John A. Miller woodie from the 1920s.

And that is a sight that I like to see.

And this ride really feels like it's old. Casual theme park goers will always tell you that a wooden coaster will feel "creaky" and "as if the ride is about to fall apart", but now I really see where it comes from.

Seriously, it looks like it's been through some hard times. Like a fire in the 50s for example.

The backseat sucked. The front seat was a lot of fun, and it had airtime. Moving on.

But first, a look at the sign.

Anyway, guess what's up next?

You guessed it, more awesome old school flat rides.

Lagoon had one of those awesome old school Eli Bridge Company Scramblers, and I'm pretty sure this is the exact same model as the one from Fiesta Texas. And they're both pretty flippin' awesome. Long cycle, and it was fast. Just the way I like any flat ride.

Plus a Tilt-a-Whirl! These are always good. I still like Valleyfair's more though.

And the bumper cars were AWESOME. They were fast, comfortable, there was a big arena, and it was chaotic as all hell.

And they had a proper Muzik Express. Which was really bad, actually. It was pretty slow and it only ran one direction, and it was pretty ugly.

Remember how I said that Lagoon had a water park? I checked that out too. I only ended up getting 4 body slide credits from the park because you had to pay extra to rent a tube, which you needed for the tube slides and the lazy river. I didn't want to spend extra, so I just decided to go for the few credits I could get, and moved on.

It actually looks pretty cool from a distance.

While I still had my swimsuit on, I figured I'd might as well go on a water ride run, so I headed to the far east end of the park to check out their log flume and river rapids ride. I was really disappointed, as the line for the river rapids was almost two hours, and the log flume was just a terrible ride. Worst log flume I've been on, period. And their dingy slide was closed.

So then I got my actual clothes back on and decided to start having fun again.

Naturally, I checked out the one major flat ride that I hadn't been on yet that wasn't closed, Rock-o-Plane.

Whereas Samurai violated you in the best possible way, this ride just plain violated you. It honestly hurt. And the capacity was crap. And it was hot and the restraints were bad and it was weird.

I actually got stuck on this ride for a good bit, which allowed me to take this pretty neat shot of Wild Mouse.

By now it was almost night time, so I figured that I'd get in a few more rides before the park closed again at 10 PM.

It's a shame the park closes so soon, because the rides here have AWESOME light packages. This picture may not do it justice, but Colossus has the most ominous sign I've ever seen. Ever. It's so intimidating.

Also, this park had neon signs everywhere.

Sadly, their pirate ship was closed.

The only two night rides I really got at Lagoon were Bombora and Air Race, which were both even better at nighttime.

I wish this picture showed it, but the seashells and stuff on the side of the train light up.

Air Race looked really cool at night too.

Seriously, I didn't get enough time to appreciate the nice lighting the rides have at night. It's a shame my camera takes crappy night shots.

Overall, Lagoon is awesome. It's really a classic amusement park in every sense of the phrase, and it really reminds me of a better Valleyfair. With more rides, a better setting, better theming, and generally just better in every way. Except Valleyfair had better coasters.

I ended up having a hell of a whole lot of fun at Lagoon, and I would definitely call it a must-visit park if you're anywhere within a couple hundred miles of the place or on a west coast amusement park binge. It's got a good atmosphere, great staff, fun rides, it's not too big, not too expensive, and I'm really starting to run out of things to say for this place.

Just go here already, alright?

-Skyler