Aerial Antics: Lagoon

Lagoon Amusement Park's slogan currently is "Lagoon - It's what FUN is!" Well, I've never been to the park but decided to make it the focus of this week's Aerial Antics because, well, it does look like fun to me. Really!

Located just outside Salt Lake City in Utah, Lagoon has had a long and colorful history, dating all the way back to 1896. Present day finds the park a full fledged amusement park, offering guests a combination of thrilling rides and attractions, a water park, RV park, campground, and more.

One of the park's oldest operating rides is the aptly named Roller Coaster, seen above. The wooden ride opened in 1921 and is a John Miller design. Due to the nature of the park's development, the ride is now a 'parking lot coaster' - but not in the Six Flags sense where it was done on purpose!

I won't say it this week, but since there's two coasters in this photo you know what that means! The coaster on the bottom of the image, Colossus The Fire Dragon, has always been of special interest to me. It's a portable Schwarzkopf double looping ride, exactly like Laser, formerly at Dorney Park, only it has an extra helix at the end. It's now the only one of it's kind operating in America.

At the top of the photo we can see the park's most recent coaster addition under construction. Named Wicked, the coaster was manufactured by Zierer and opened in 2007. It features a 55 m.p.h. launch directly up a vertical tower. It's also probably pretty comparable in size and scope to Kennywood's still unnamed coaster for 2010.

These rides are not really crammed in a row like this, I just wanted to condense things. This is Lagoon's set of coasters that aren't one of a kind, but still fun! On the left is the Bat, a Vekoma family suspended coaster that opened in 2005.

Now this middle photo is really special. First, it shows the park's classic Schwarzkopf Jet Star 2, but second it has a plane in it! Yes! People actually sit and look at Bing aerials to find stuff like this, and just by accident I found an image that has a plane flying through it. To paraphrase Sabrina, I got mad skillz.

Okay the last coaster on the right is the Spider, a spinning coaster designed by Maurer Sohne. We rode one of these at Waldameer this summer, and it was a pretty good time. Lagoon's version has a pretty unique color scheme, as well, with pinkish purple supports and red track.

Finally, we see the park's river rapids ride, named Rattlesnake Rapids. I've always thought this one looked very interesting, and this aerial only confirms that for me. I love how heavily landscaped the ride's 'inland' area is, and it features a nice assortment of rapids, water falls, and a tunnel to boot. It was designed by Intamin and added to the park in 1997.

If you want to check out the aerials yourself, here's a link.