I grew up in Utah in the Salt Lake Valley. My house was about a 35-minute drive away from Lagoon Amusement Park. Even though I lived fairly close to the park, I only visited Lagoon eight times while I was growing up. I now live in Twin Falls, Idaho which is three hours away from Lagoon. I’ve been to Lagoon seven times so far this year, and have plans to go at least three more times.
What’s made the difference in how many times I’ve been to Lagoon this year versus my younger years? This year, I have a Lagoon Season Pass.
My husband and I decided to buy our family season passes to Lagoon this year. This is something we have talked about doing for several years. We wanted to wait until our four children were tall enough to ride all the rides and old enough that they would want to ride the rides. We also didn’t want to worry about nap times.
We purchased the passes as a Family Christmas Present. We felt our kids had enough toys and it was time to buy them something that would last the whole year. Everyone was really excited when we told them we had bought season passes.
I want to share some of the things we have learned from having these passes.
Passes pay for themselves after about 2 visits
If you know you want to visit Lagoon three or more times in a season, it’s worth it to buy the passes. I went the extra mile and made a chart that calculates how much we are “paying” per visit with our passes. On our eighth visit later this month, it will be like we are paying $19.00 per person.
The best time to buy is around Black Friday in November
The lowest prices of the season will be available during the Black Friday sale at the end of November. Last year, the sale lasted about a week. We already knew that we’d be purchasing the passes as a family Christmas gift so this worked perfectly with our timing.
Upload your pictures online ahead of time
My husband took care of uploading our pictures to our Lagoon Portal about a week before the park opened. On opening day, he just had to show our pictures on his phone. Later in the year, we stopped by the season pass office and had our passes printed. My sister and her family also bought season passes, but they didn’t upload pictures. On opening day, they had to wait in a long line to get their pictures taken and their passes printed. I think we were in the park for an hour before they got in.
Buy a parking pass for the season
You have to pay for parking every time you go to Lagoon. This year, it is $18 per vehicle per visit. There is also a parking pass for the season. It’s $75 for a season and pays for itself after the 4th visit. You can buy the pass online along with your season pass, or you can purchase it from the parking lot attendants on your first visit. We opted to just buy the pass on our first visit.
It helps to have family or friends to stay with
One reason we were able to buy season passes this year is that we have several family members within an hour of the park. My sister lives 11 minutes away from the park. We’ve stayed with her a few times. We usually stay with my in-laws who are 40 minutes away and have plenty of space for us. I’m not sure we would go to the park as often as we have if we had to pay for a hotel every time we planned to visit.
With a pass, you don’t feel obligated to stay all day
There have been times we were in the park from the minute it opened until it closed. But other times, we just go to the park for about 4 hours. For example, on Easter weekend, we went to the park for about 3 hours on Saturday and then hung out with family the rest of the day. I like that I don’t feel the pressure to ride every single ride every time we visit.
You can bring a cooler of food into the park
There are plenty of concession options within the park, but they are rather expensive— especially when you are visiting as a family. Thankfully, Lagoon allows coolers into the park. (Not all amusement parks are this gracious. I’ve had plenty of lunches in parking lots at other amusement parks.) You can bring your coolers full of food into the park and leave them on the pavilions towards the back of the park. No one will bother your stuff back there. My family travels pretty light so we usually only have one cooler. But I’ve seen other families bring in tents or canopies and set up a day camp on the grassy areas in the back.
Lagoon-A-Beach is less expensive if you have season passes
I’m not a huge fan of Lagoon-a-beach. It’s a little too chaotic and crowded for my brain. But it is a great place to cool off on hot summer days. You have to pay extra if you want to rent tubes at Lagoon-A-Beach. You need the tubes to go on some of the water slides. If you have a season pass, you don’t have to pay as much for the tubes as people that only have day passes.
The one thing I don’t like…
There is only one thing I haven’t liked about having season passes to Lagoon. I feel like Lagoon has taken up our whole year. We go to Lagoon once a month. That in itself has been really fun. But it’s come at the expense of other things we like to do for fun. Usually, we go camping as a family several times a summer. But we haven’t gone once this year because Lagoon has taken up all our free weekends. Same with some of the smaller things we like to do. Usually, we’ll go bowling or mini golfing a few times throughout the year. But this year, most of our recreation budget is tied up in the Lagoon Passes or used to buy gas to travel to Lagoon.
I would 100% buy season passes to Lagoon again. But I don’t plan on buying them next year or even the next. There are other things I want to do with my family besides spend all our free time at Lagoon.
That being said, I have really enjoyed having passes this year.
It’s been wonderful to experience the many rides with my children. I love hearing their laughter and seeing the joy on their faces. I love planning out the routes we’ll take through the park—and then making last-minute changes when we see a short line. I love going to the park in the evening and seeing all the rides lit up.
The first time we went on Colossus I told my kids, “Merry Christmas” at the top of the chain hill. After all, this was our big Christmas present for the year. This has definitely been one of the most memorable presents I’ve ever given my family.
