Lagoon at Last

It is not as though Lagoon is water that quenches some sort of life-sustaining thirst. It is an amusement park. But you might be easily confused and mistake one for the other if you had been in the car the many, many, many times my family passed Lagoon along I-15 on the way to Salt Lake City and heard my children pining for it like they might plead for something to quench their thirst.

"When are we going to Lagoon?" "Mom, I really really want to go to Lagoon? Can we go?"

Four years ago my answer was, "We aren't going to Lagoon because we are going to Taiwan."

The year after that I could still say, "We just went to Taiwan."

When that excuse faded, I answered, "We can't go to Lagoon because we are going to Seattle for a month."

And then, "We'll go to Lagoon when we aren't flying to the east coast to travel around seeing the sites there for nearly 7 weeks."

That year when we weren't going anywhere else finally came, and I might have come up with another excuse, but the Easter Bunny saved my children from death by Lagoon deprivation and got them tickets. We finally went to the precious Lagoon on May 29, 2019. It might have helped the Easter Bunny make the purchase that this was a school day which meant tickets were only $35 instead of $69, and that parking was free, AND that one of us got a chaperone pass so he only paid for 5 passes. For us, it meant Lagoon was PACKED with high schoolers who let everyone from their school in line in front of us. But we coped.

I was still recovering from multiple knee collapses, so I brought my cane and hobbled from ride to ride. Last time we went, Quent was working for Chem-Dry and we had returned from our epic trip to Florida. Because it took him so long to recover from motion sickness from the flight and cruise, he opted to sit out from the rides and stay with tiny Arthur. 

Thankfully, this time, he was ready and rearin' to go, because kids were too. Eloise was tall enough to ride everything and Arthur was tall enough AND gutsy enough to ride most of it. So I acted as the person from their school (and I am, after-all) and as soon as they got far enough through the line of one ride, I would leave them to go get in the back of another. This system worked pretty well, and in our hours there - from just after 9am to 4pm, they were able to ride upwards of 15 rides WITH a break for

I'm surrounded by TEENS!

lunch AND a break for a huge downpour and hail storm. (This May has been delightfully cool and rainy, but I think a few other school Lagoon days had been postponed for the weather, and that may have contributed to the place CRAWLING with teens.)

Perhaps most delightful to me in our time there was that MY teen got to come too! Thankfully, THIS year his "end of year performances" took place mid-May and his exams were the following week. So we had Kai excused from class and picked him up on our way to Lagoon - he lived with Freestone's family only about 10 minutes from there - and drop him off on our way back home.

It was quite a day. We brought an enormous picnic so we didn't have to spend any money on, or time buying food. It hit the spot because we had to get up pretty early to get Kai and get to Lagoon by 9am and most of us didn't have much of a breakfast. And, thankfully, there was plenty of left-overs because when the rains began to fall, eating again was another way to kill time.

Kai's pose is a typical ballet kid pose, which he thinks is hilarious when boys do it. It does look pretty silly. :)

When it began to rain, the Kai, EV, and Eloise had just gotten in line for Cannibal. I waited for them under a covered eating spot near the gift shop while Q to Arthur on a near-by ride. They said by the time they got ON Cannibal, the rain was falling so hard, they couldn't really open their eyes on the ride. When we connected back up with Quent and Arthur, the rain was coming down harder, so we found shelter in a pavilion and I sent Q back for our lunch, which though we'd left just under a tree, was not too far from where we were.

And it was a blessing he went and got it when he did because when he returned, it began to pour like it almost never does in Utah. But we snacked. And then we put on the ponchos I'd had the good sense to bring. (That was another huge blessing - just a quite whispering of "bring the ponchos" - and though the prompting was ever-so-faint, I followed it.) So the kids, armed with "protective rain gear," hit another ride - one of the only ones still running - and did the Flying Aces in the downpour, which might have made that ride more fun. 

Our large pavilion was now packed with drenched teens, filling with huge puddles of water from the run off, and everyone was shouting because the racket the hail on the metal room was making. Thankfully the storm lasted only about 15 or 20 minutes. As it began to let up, again, relatively dry in our ponchos, I took all the kids and headed for the Cannibal line. Before the storm, the wait had been nearly an hour. But the torrents had driven even the most adventurous for cover, and I wanted to beat them all back to the line.

We did! Not all, but we were within a few feet and behind only a few dozen when we got back in line. I still had my cane, but the kids had been raving consistently enough about the ride, and Arthur wanted to go, so I thought I'd store the cane while I was ON this ride and give it a try. After waiting for about 10 minutes, as the line in front of us swelled with "friends" and the ride behind us began to stack, I sent Arthur through the pack of teens to measure himself by the ride's entrance. I thought if he was too short, we'd exit the line before waiting longer. When he was tall enough, the teens erupted into a cheer for him, and that was fun. The ride was still closed - I think they needed to wait 20 minutes after the last thunder before they could re-open? And we joined a few chants to open the ride. When the worker at last came to open the gate, there was a huge cheer.

Q and I on the ski-lift style ride, catching a ride from one end
of the park to the other.

By now, it had stopped raining, so we were able to enjoy Cannibal fully. And boy was it enjoyed! Arthur talked about it for DAYS. In fact, he is STILL talking about it. We were all impressed that he was brave enough, and he was impressed he was tall enough. I was even impressed with Eloise, whose bravery we may have taken for granted because she is so very tall. But at OLDER than her age, I was too scared to go on the Colossus. (They DO still have that ride: a roller coaster with two upside-down loops, and right as Quent and ALL the kids were SEATED ON the ride, they closed it for technical issues. That was their first ride of the day. So thankfully I was in the Wild Mouse ride holding their spot, which nearly made up for it. And by then, I'd seen all the line butting first hand and decided I'd continue to help my crew in that way, so I left them to ride Wild Mouse and got in line for Wicked.)

Absolute total bravery champ!

Anyway, with Arthur riding nearly all the rides, and Kai being completely capable of being autonomous, we had a pretty fun time dividing our group and conquering Lagoon. Except for Colossus, the kids pretty much rode everything they wanted to. I was able to hit my favorites, even with a cane. I love the belly tickles on Tidal Wave, but when Arthur needed to be near the middle of the boat, I sacrificed and rode with him there. When we were younger, Q and I loved Turn of the Century - a merry-go-round style ride that rises and spins you flying in a swing - but that one nearly made me ill. (Getting old!) My favorite still, to me even more thrilling than Cannibal, is The Rocket's Re-Entry. I love the free-fall from such a height. Arthur WAS too short to go on this one. But I guess that means we'll need to come back next year!

Ah, the smiles! Q was teasing the people around him by talking loudly about how he "barfed the last time he rode this ride." Their nervousness greatly amused MY kids. I lead an obnoxious "Yay!" cheer long after the ride had slowed down, which mostly amused Quent.