Lagoon - Utah's Disney World

I know that this is hard – nigh impossible – to believe, but despite calling Utah home for nine glorious years, we had never visited Lagoon.

We took our first trip to Utah’s fun Mecca (slogan: "It’s what fun is") last week and were very pleasantly surprised by the largest family-owned amusement park left in the U.S. Granted, the day had its oddities, such as the Pioneer Village, which includes what is apparently a very large and fine collection of guns and other assorted weaponry and several old Mormon meeting houses that were moved to Lagoon from around the state... but Pioneer Village also had a pretty darn fine water rapids ride so I can’t criticize too harshly. Sam went on his first loop-de-loop roller coaster and both boys rode a first wooden roller coaster, my favorite part of the day (Sam was a fan, Ben not so much).

We were jolted into a newfound appreciation for just how different it is to have a girl when Sasha spied a singing-and-dancing musical spectacular and was immediately and immovably rooted to the spot until the show’s completion. After relieving Steve so he could go ride a roller coaster with Sam (one person could not be expected to endure that whole show, and I was flabbergasted at the length of the production. Wow. Really long. Not a good thing. They should have modeled the musical extravaganza after the Extreme Parrots show we saw earlier in the day. Yes, bizarre name, but reasonable length.) I sat down between Ben and Sasha for the remainder of the spectacle.

In the middle of the Ode to Billy Joel I leaned over to Ben and asked, "Ben, are you enjoying this?" To which I received a puzzled yet emphatic, "No, I think it's kind of weird" (roger that). Then I leaned over to Sash and asked the same question. Without removing her transfixed eyes from the stage she whispered, "Yah, I gike it a wot" as she swayed along to the music and mimicked the dancers' hand motions.

Good times, good times. Glad that we could all agree that the Ferris Wheel was the perfect way to close out a great day at Lagoon.
And a shout-out to inContact for footing the bill for the day's fun. If there's anything I like better than a day off of work at an amusement park with my family, it's getting it all for free. Best work summer party I've ever been to!