Utah’s Lagoon is certainly a charming park with a lot of genuine history. It’s kept up well, wonderfully landscaped, and staged at a real human scale. Cool, well-shaded, with a variety of things to see and do (even a water park). Yet I’d like to highlight some of its more interesting tropes, both good and bad, and comment on the most recent ways it has tried to compete with the likes of Disney and Universal.

I do want to first call attention to Lagoon’s wicked cool park map. This graphic is reproduced on the paper guidemap you’re handed at the front gate, and also mounted at poster size at various locations inside. The graphic style of textured, yet flat, digital illustrations is very contemporary. And although the scale of the grounds is distorted by this representation, it doesn’t get hokey like the more hyperbolic Cedar Fair maps.

The one thing that the park map doesn’t resonate with at all, however, are the disparate themes found within. I’ve already described the primary Midway area, so now I’ll look at some of the other motifs found at Lagoon.

Lagoon’s “Frontierland”

What’s an American theme park without a “Frontier Old Wild West” land of some kind? Actually, like the Ghost Town at Knott’s Berry Farm in Southern California, as well Greenfield Village at The Henry Ford and even Frontier Trail at Cedar Point, there are actual structures of historical significance here.

And like all those other places, the staging of them at Lagoon’s Pioneer Village is problematic and confusing. I’ve even found this to be true at actual museums.

This dedication plaque near the entrance to the area demonstrates what I’m talking about rather well. Indeed, Horace and Ethel Sorensen did found the village in 1938 near Salt Lake City. The couple intended it to be the same sort of open-air, “living history” museum as Colonial Williamsburg, which John D. Rockefeller Jr had begun restoring about ten years prior.

Lagoon bought the village and its half-dozen structures—lock, stock, and barrel—in 1975 from The National Society of the Sons of Utah Pioneers. As such, Pioneer Village is quite like Walter Knott’s relocated Ghost Town assemblage, which began in 1940 when Knott purchased his first antique structures from actual western towns such as Prescott, Arizona. Though you won’t find any mention of the 1975 purchase and relocation on the above plague or anywhere else that I could find at Lagoon.

The entrance signage for Pioneer Village is set in Louis Minott’s ever-misapplied Davida (1965) which is a Victorian phototype revival that is so very, very not “Old West.” It’s a common face which I also found at Lakeside Park in Denver at a Mexican food stand.

As I’ve documented at Cedar Point, Kings Island, and elsewhere, after the first Arrow log flume ride debuted at Six Flags Over Texas in 1963 (El Aserradero “The Sawmill” is still operating) they started popping up all across the country, then the world. If you’ve got a “Western” or “Frontier” area at your favorite local park—and even if you don’t—the ride is a standard trope.

I thought it was odd that the Lagoon model, installed in 1976, is eponymously just “Log Flume.” But it looks like there were over two dozen equivalents of an Untitled album for the Arrow flume ride at one point. Another couple handfuls exist abroad called, accurately, “Flume Ride.”

Around the corner, a path winds to the very rear edge of the Lagoon property. The park faces east and backs up to the foothills at the base of the Wasatch Range, which is quite picturesque. But it also offers a sense of true remoteness, something that you can’t get at a bermed park like Disneyland which is surrounded by suburbia.

Actually, that was one of the most remarkable things about the Disney park in Hong Kong which I visited back in 2008. There the Main Street USA and Sleeping Beauty Castle are dwarfed by the lush mountains of Lantau Island, with Discovery Bay and peaks like Lai Pik Shan in the distance. Being used to the California original, it was oddly off-putting at first. But over the course of the week I spent there, I really grew to appreciate the setting.

And that same charm of a kind of “real-life matte painting” is present here at Lagoon. You can really see how much the natural topography adds to the verisimilitude of the “Rattlesnake Grub” shack.

Some nice prop vignettes here of the Six Flags / Cedar Fair variety. This is something I’ve commented on at length for years and Lagoon is handling it rather well, more on the subtle side of things. In fact, this is the only such staged display of propping that I came across at the park.

And perhaps that’s because this is the newest themed area at Lagoon. The Rattlesnake Plaza expansion behind Pioneer Village was added to the park in 1997. It’s the home of (naturally) the aforementioned Rattlesnake Grub as well as Rattlesnake Rapids, a standard river rapids ride. Everything from the logo marquee above to the level of theming indicates a nineties-level attention to what has been working for Disney and Universal.

It’s a smaller river rapids ride than the more substantial ones at Cedar Fair parks. More like what I found at Valleyfair in Minnesota.

Here in Rattlesnake Plaza, it’s evident that everything is newly built. It looks themed and it’s meant to look themed.

Walking back in the Pioneer Village area, the lines start to blur again. Old and new, relocated and constructed, historical and themed, all whipped into a single frappé.

Old? New? Relocated? Custom built? It’s the same problem I had on Cedar Point’s Frontier Trail. And I’d argue that the rugged landscaping and natural backdrop makes this even more difficult to discern.

Some of these buildings, I can’t even tell the origin. Is this from the original Pioneer Village dating back to the 1930s? It houses a circus memorabilia museum, so the “Big Top” aesthetic fits. But the building is clearly quite old. Maybe this is thematic design from an earlier era.

No clue about this one. Just looks like a repainted house.

A Moment of Surrealism

Just around the bend, I found this structure which is clearly of vintage condition and was moved from the original Pioneer Village. However, as I got closer I noticed that the interior had been hollowed out.

Welcome to The Twilight Zone, Lagoon edition. What was once an antique building has been gutted, painted black with an exposed ceiling structure which resembles an Urban Outfitters location. The retail checkout in the center of the room appears to be floating in space; in the void. This reminded me a lot of the false front work on the classic Star Trek episode “Spectre of the Gun” which I commented on when I was discussing Deadwood, South Dakota.

The trimmings make me think of the interior design faux-folksiness of the Cracker Barrel chain.

Just My Cup of Tea

As I wandered through the grounds looking at some of the less-themed and more standard amusement fair elements, I can across a Disney-flashback if there ever was one, the Tipsey Tea Cups. Curiously the graphics and typography on the entrance signage resemble the 2010 Disney/Tim Burton live-action Alice in Wonderland adaptation rather than the company’s 1951 animated one which I saw being aped rather directly at Enchanted Forest in Oregon to the point of potential legal action. After all, Disney has proved itself to be zealously litigious in the past.

I was surprised to later learn that the “teacups ride” is actually a standard genre at all kinds of amusement parks all over the world, so Lagoon is innocent as far as I’m concerned with regards to attraction plagiarism.

From my cursory research, it’s unclear if Disneyland’s Mad Tea Party (1955) as developed by Arrow is the true predecessor to all of these other rides, or simply a refinement of an earlier amusement concept.

Theme Park Orientalism

Lastly for this post, I’d like to highlight a common enough sight at American parks—the somewhat stereotypical representation of Asian design and architectural forms. This pagoda and the surrounding gardens are home to one Jumping Dragon ride.

Let’s run down the list. Dragon? Check. Although he doesn’t appear to be “jumping.” A variant of “Wonton” or “Chopstick” lettering, which many in the Asian-American community have a problem and design commentators have gotten hip by declaring racist unless actually ”enjoyed” by Asian businesses? Check again. Lagoon might be able to get away with it, but this kind of typographic treatment has certainly gotten big companies into trouble before.

Faux-imperial statuary? Check.

Wrought iron fencing with faux-imperial graphic symbols? Check.

Japanese stone lanterns (these particular Tōrō are Kasuga-dōrō), because what is the difference between gardens in China, Japan, and other parts of East Asia anyway? Check.

Oh, and everything painted fire engine red, including the electrical boxes? Check, and mate.

At the complete opposite north end of Lagoon park, I found Samurai. This spinner ride’s queue even has its own Torii gate.

Look, I can’t very fairly single out Lagoon for this. They’re far from the only park sporting the Wonton Look™. I grew up going to Six Flags Magic Mountain with its Ninja (the park calls it “The Black Belt of Coasters,” I’m not kidding), one of only three Arrow suspended models left operating in the United States.

The surrounding themed area, which has been at Magic Mountain since opening day in 1971, is called Samurai Summit and sports all the expected trimmings that we’re seeing here at Lagoon. Tatsu, a Bolliger & Mabillard flying coaster, was added to that California park in 2006. At least that’s a Japanese word which has multiple authentic meanings (though I bet they’re leaning into “dragon”).

The lanscaping and cartoonish “exotisism” here at Lagoon is just like what I found at Worlds of Fun, which has an entire themed Asia area. Not surprisingly, it dates from the same period as Magic Mountain’s Samurai Summit (early 1970s), and you generally don’t see this kind of stuff past the 1980s (Ninja opened in 1988). Spending time at Worlds of Fun—and having a look back at the marketing used for the park’s opening and in its early years—prompted me to ask, “Can theming be racist?” and I still don’t have an answer. I think it still deserves discussion.

Continued in Part 3.