Lagoon

The final park of the day and the main part of the trip was Lagoon, a great family run park that Christof and I enjoyed along with the European Coaster Club in 2012. In organising the North-West and Canada trip this park had initially been included but dropped to allow us to hit more of Canada. So this trip hung around visiting this park and with it starting in Texas is the reason why the road trip was so long. 

Since 2012, there has been one new rollercoaster added to the park; a new custom built coaster called the Cannibal, which had been getting rave reviews and despite having been here before, knowing that I was going to be riding this made a re-visit to this park a good thing.

I headed straight over to this ride ignoring the warnings about losing my stuff. I had no intention of photographing on-ride so my bag was thrown into a locker, which was free unlike the Six Flags parks.

The coaster is incredible with a huge enclosed vertical lift hill leading to a beyond vertical drop and a number of inversions and unique elements. 

The drop is great but a drop that wasn't so great was my camera which fell off a fence I'd temporarily put it on resulting in the sensor thinking the camera was being held upside down rendering it impossible to use.

Cannibal is good enough to make my top 5 list. It does have some minor operational issues as it broke down a couple of times on our first visit and failed to open on our second visit the next day. They do operate a single rider queue which is sweet; Six Flags take note. 

Elsewhere I could just take my time whilst those Lagoon virgins ran around getting the 10 coasters that the park has.

The park is home to two Schwarzkopfs coasters which made this a must-do to those in the group who are a fan of those rides. The Jet-Star suffered from having a no-single rider rule but it's a powerful coaster, a little bit too violent for me. 

On the plus side it is great to see the rides in such immaculate condition. 

The bat is a bit of a shaky suspended coaster.

Bombora is another custom built coaster and a fun ride. It has a cool sound system on board.

The carousel here is an old one, built at the end of the 19th century and again in immaculate condition. The park are clearly passionate about the rides in their collection.

To escape the heat (yes it was hot again) I would find myself in the shade of their dance/music performance shows. They were alright.

One that I was happy to not ride this time was the kiddy coaster. I don't believe the others had any issues being allowed on this. Take note other parks!

The mouse is the standard layout and another that I was happy to ignore.

Quite tricky to photograph due to the placement of the ride, Wicked is the launched inverting coaster that caught me completely off guard last time I rode it (I was whipped up into the hill and over before I'd even realised it had started leading to a little bit of whiplash). Being a little more ready for it this time made it easier to ride. It's enjoyable but with now suffers from overlapping with Cannibal with regards to ride experience. Still, this one had a good queue highlighting that the focus hadn't shifted completely.

The second Schwarkopf coaster is the peculiarly named "Colossus The Fire Dragon". It's another nicely maintained old ride, this one offering 2 large loops rather than intense laterals that the other subjects you to.

Last time I was here I wasn't aware of a huge section at the rear of the park and I'd missed the water rides, so I chose to ensure I checked them out this time. The flume looked pretty average.

The rapids however looked really good though I wasn't really up for riding them. Mostly because of this section of ride where you travel under a waterfall and where in most parks it would switch off as you got close, but here it kept going resulting in every raft getting completely drenched in water. 

The fear in the riders as they realised this made it very amusing for those of us watching.

The park has 2 dark rides, proving that they were really going out there way to ensure everyone could have a good time. These were fun and a mix of old classic animatronic-heavy style and slightly newer visual tricks types of rides.

The chairlift runs across most of the front of the park offering a good opportunity to take photos of the rides and park.

It's such a beautiful park, even more so with the mountains in the background. 

A small zoo can be found at the rear right of the park. It was quite hot though and I don't know if that's good for the animals or not.

The wooden coaster has been here since 1921, so quite an old ride and not too far off it's 100th birthday. As mentioned before it's being well looked after and is still running well.

I finished the day taking photos of what is now one of my favourite rides in the U.S. The park have done an incredible job with this ride and the fact they've done it themselves is quite something. 

It easy qualifies as the coaster of the day, and possible the best of the trip.

Lagoon is a terrific park and the only issue one can possibly cite is its location. Salt Lake City is not on any obvious route if you're over here looking to ride rollercoasters. My suggestion would be to have it as a day trip out of San Fransisco or LA which are the nearest major cities.

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