Roller Coasters in Utah

When we talk about roller coasters in Utah, we’re mostly talking about Lagoon Amusement Park near Salt Lake City. But Utah also has a couple of mountain coasters and a location with a kiddie coaster. But still all basically in the area surrounding Salt Lake City. As always, make sure to check current prices and hours for each location before you visit!

Click on each coaster’s name below for a video of the ride! Ride all the roller coasters in Utah from home!

Lagoon Amusement Park

Lagoon is Utah’s biggest, and only, amusement park. Found in Farmington, about 20 minutes north of Salt Lake City proper. They have 11 roller coasters now, impressively mostly built in-house. Their newest looks exciting – Primordial is a coaster/dark ride hybrid inside a mountain with eight different possible endings. Cannibal is another impressive ride, with an over-90 degree first drop. Then they’ve got Colossus the Fire Dragon, a thrilling old Schwarzkopf, Wicked, another straight up & down job, a great wooden Roller Coaster, Jet Star 2 with a unique spiral lift hill, Spider, a spinning coaster, and a Wild Mouse. On the tamer side, we have a non-looping inverted Bat, the surf-themed Bombora, and the kiddie Puff the Little Fire Dragon.

Other rides in the park include two impressive haunted house dark rides, a drop tower, a spinny-armed Samurai ride, an old Rock-O-Plane, a swings ride over the lagoon, a train along the edge of the water and through a small zoo, a Skyride, Ferris wheel, swinging pirate ship, and all the usual favorites like bumper cars, scrambler, tilt-a-whirl, et. al. There are tons of kiddie rides, a large frontier village area, and huge picnic grounds, an extra-pay go-kart track, and a decent water park right in the middle of it all. They also have some impressive shows and at least a Halloween “frightmares” event.

Admission

What they don’t have is discounts. The biggest drawback to the casual visitor is the price! It’s currently $93 for a one-day ticket, plus at least $20 for parking. (More for oversized or preferred.) And that’s online. If you buy in person it’s $98, $100 during Frightmares. If you’re local, it seems almost better to fork out over $200 and try to go as much as possible during the short summer season.

I was around in March last year and they did offer discounts on opening weekends on their Facebook page. But in the end, they didn’t open due to snow. I’ll talk more about Lagoon in my next post and why I *almost* thought the price wasn’t worth it.

Park City Mountain Resort

About 40 minutes east of Salt Lake City is Park City Mountain Resort, home to Utah’s longest Mountain Coaster. Other summer activities include a chair lift, an old-school fiberglass Alpine Slide, mini-golf, disc golf, a trampoline jump, a short seated zip ride, a longer zip line, gem mining, a kids’ ropes course, and lots of hiking and mountain biking.

To ride just the Mountain Coaster costs $36, though you can bundle rides on the coaster and alpine slide for $56, and add the longer zip line for $81 total. You may have to purchase a $35 ride on the chair lift or gondola just to get to the activities. Everything else is priced separately. Parking in a resort lot costs $26.65 and might even require a reservation (but maybe not in the summer.) When I walked through Park City in March, I parked in a free lot by the library and walked less than 10 minutes to the base of the resort and the shopping village there. Note that it’s all skiing in the winter. The summer activities, including the mountain coaster, are only from about mid-June through September.

Snowbird

Next, we have Snowbird Ski Resort about 35 minutes south and east of Salt Lake City. During the summer, they have a Mountain Coaster (they don’t really try with the names here, do they?), more alpine slides, a big scenic tram, summer tubing, a chair lift, a ropes course, a controlled free fall, gem mining, inflatables, a few versions of kid’s playgrounds, and several opportunities to climb trees and walls.

It looks like the only way to ride the Mountain Coaster is to get an all-day activity pass which costs $69 on weekends and holidays or $63 during the week. And that includes unlimited rides on everything. (Except for gem mining, which can be as much as $30 extra.) The summer activities are available July-October. There is limited free parking, some paid parking by reservation, and extra free parking along the side of the highway.

Ricochet Canyon

Finally, Richochet Canyon is a tiny kid’s amusement park in an outdoor shopping & dining area called Gardner Village. (I swear I went to a place exactly like this further south to visit a dinosaur museum.) They mostly have pony rides, wagon rides, and a few types of trains, but they also have the Rattling Iron kiddie roller coaster.

Admission costs $5 for kids age 2-17, $2 for anyone older than that. (And free for anyone younger.) General admission includes a playground and a petting zoo. To ride anything costs 2-4 tickets, the coaster costing 2 ride tickets. Tickets are $1.50, but you may have to buy them in books, it’s hard to tell. The more tickets you buy at once, the better the deal. The rides are only open in the summer, although the petting zoo is open year-round, unless it snows too hard.

Waterparks in Utah

There aren’t very many waterparks in Utah. Though what there is, of course, is around Salt Lake City. There might be a few more 1-2 slide regional parks and splash pads, but nothing major.

• I almost forgot that Lagoon has a waterpark, Lagoon A Beach. They’ve got (I think) 9 slides, a lazy river, a lagoon rockwork pool, and a kid’s splash & activity pool. Admission is included in daily admission to the park, $93-98, plus $20 in parking. And if you want to use a tube on any slide that requires it, it costs $5.

• Splash Summit in Provo has 10 slides, a kids’ splash area, a wave pool, a lazy river, a waterfall pool, and a rope swing. Daily tickets cost $25 and under but you have to rent your tubes for $6 a day. Parking is $10 extra per car.
• Cowabunga Bay in Draper, about 20 minutes south of SLC, features 6 slides, a kid’s cove with 3 little slides, a lazy river, and a zero-depth entry pool. You pay for either a morning block or an afternoon block, which costs $24 and under. Though look for sale prices – right now there’s a 20% discount for two tickets in the same block for President’s Day. Parking is free.

• Cherry Hill is a campground and water/amusement park about 20 minutes north of SLC. They have 4 slides, a kid’s pirate play area and racing slide, a lazy river, and a couple of pools. There’s also a mini-golf course, a wooden maze, and a climbing wall, plus a playground, gem mining, and indoor foam-blaster room. Dining includes a pie shop! Just the water park costs $40 on Saturdays, $35 the rest of the week, and $2-3 cheaper when bought online. A King of the Hill pass includes the water park and all the dry activities for as much as $45 on Saturday, $40 during the week. All ticket options have half-day (after 4 pm) and “night rider” (after 6 pm) discounted options, as well as discounts for kids, seniors, military, and groups. The cheapest way to cool off is with an $18 night rider ticket, which is available on Saturdays too. Parking is free.

Did I miss anything? Have you been to any of these parks? What are you looking forward to doing this year? Let me know in the comments below!