OGDEN — It’s said that “all the world’s a stage.”

Ogden and surrounding towns provided a stage for arts and culture throughout 2025, from preparing to welcome the world to the region to the evolution of the state’s largest amusement park, furry fandom, national recognition of area attractions and more. This is a roundup of some of the biggest entertainment stories of the year that was 2025.

Preparing for the world

In 2024, Salt Lake City — and by extension, Northern Utah — was officially awarded the 2034 Winter Olympics and Paralympics.

Rob Nielsen, Standard-Examiner

In 2025, the region began laying the groundwork to make the Games a reality.

This included the formation of steering committees in May that incorporated members of the Ogden community, including Ogden Mayor Ben Nadolski, who was named to the Host Communities Committee; Kym Buttschardt, owner of Roosters Brewing Co. and Restaurant Group, and Nolan Karras, former Utah speaker of the House, who have been appointed to the Finance and Audit Committee; and then-Weber State University President Brad Mortensen, who was selected for the Ethics Committee while continuing his role on the 2034 Steering Committee.

“Being at the table as Olympic plans take shape is a rare opportunity to help chart our future,” Nadolski said at the time. “The Games bring more than world-class athletes–they bring global attention, economic opportunity, and a chance to build a culture and legacy of sport that develops character in our kids and creates lasting opportunity for our community.”

May also included the beginning of a tour by the Organizing Committee for the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games to various communities along the Wasatch Front to discuss planning for the games.

In November, while marking 3,000 days until the opening of the games, the branding of the 2034 Winter Olympics was announced with the unveiling of a sculpture depicting “Utah 2034” at the Salt Lake City International Airport.

Courtesy Alexia Martinez, Ogden City

“The 2034 Winter Olympics are going to unify the world, but they’re also going to unify our state,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said at the event. “The focus isn’t just on those 100 countries that are going to be coming here. The focus is also on those 29 counties all across this state. This isn’t just the Salt Lake Olympics. It’s not just the Wasatch Front Olympics. This is our Olympics. It’s all of us together, and I can’t wait.”

Attractions coming and going

Lagoon Amusement Park had a year of major changes in 2025.

This season included the introduction of a handful of new rides in a newly minted section of Pioneer Village known as The District.  Built on the site of the former log flume, The District’s new rides included Steamworx and a thrill ride named Time Tinker. The park’s helicopter ride was also re-imagined as Rivets & Rotors.

The park also reintroduced the Carousel Candy store, the original of which had been destroyed in a fire in 2021.

Grace Watters, Standard-Examiner

Meanwhile, the park also spent 2025 divesting itself of its zoo element. Throughout the year, animals were re-homed elsewhere. The zoo element had been a source of controversy over the years due to accusations the animals were held in substandard conditions.

Lagoon spokesperson Adam Leishman told the Standard-Examiner in March that the decision to remove the park’s zoo elements came down to the realities of space the park faces as it aims to evolve with the times.

“Lagoon is in Farmington City — we’ve been here for almost 140 years — and the way the lay of the land is, we are landlocked,” he said. “We are always trying to enhance and bring new attractions to the park, and the decision was to close down the exhibits so we can develop that for future attractions and experiences for our guests.”

And with the 2025 season winding down, Lagoon Amusement Park announced its next big attraction in October — a S&S Worldwide “Screamin’ Swing” by the name of Nutcracker — which is set to be completed and open to riders during the 2026 season.

National recognition

Rob Nielsen, Standard-Examiner

Want to see Ogden-area attractions receive national accolades from a major publication? You wanna see Ogden-area attractions do it again?

Good, because that’s exactly what happened with Historic 25th Street, Snowbasin Resort and Ogden’s Christmas Village in various USA Today 10BEST Reader’s Choice Awards contests in 2025. Each of these rankings were based on the votes of readers from all across the country.

In April, it was announced that Historic 25th Street had finished third in the Best Main Streets category — the same ranking it achieved in 2024.

“We were just overjoyed to hear that we made the top three again, for the second year in a row,” Visit Ogden Director of Marketing and Communications Taylor Hartman told the Standard-Examiner in April. “It’s such a point of pride for the community. 25th Street is such an anchor point for our community. It’s a hub, everybody knows it, and to have that ranking again and to have voters from all over the United States tell us what we believe to be true — that we have one of the coolest Main Streets around. That means a lot to both us at Visit Ogden and to the community.”

In November, it was announced that Snowbasin had also received a second consecutive 10BEST recognition, placing first in the “Best Ski Resort in the U.S. and Canada” category

“It means a great deal to myself and to my team,” Snowbasin Resort Chief Operating Officer and General Manager Davy Ratchford told the Standard-Examiner after the ranking had been announced. “The effort that we’re putting forth is working and people all over America are seeing it.”

Finally, in December, Ogden’s Christmas Village took center stage in December with a second-place finish in the”Best Public Holiday Lights Display (2025)” contest. This was an improvement on the display’s third-place finish in 2024.

Ogden City Communications Director Mike McBride said a lot makes Christmas Village stand out against the other light displays.

“It speaks volumes about the strength of this community,” he said. “Ogden’s display isn’t built on scale or spectacle but rather is built on connection, history and a tradition that families have shared for generations. What started off as a simple parade has grown into a statehood tradition. To see our hometown display stand alongside some of the most iconic holiday destinations in the world is a testament to the heart of Ogden and the people who keep this tradition alive.”

Snowbasin milestone

One of the area’s biggest ski resorts celebrated a big milestone in 2025.

The 2025-26 ski season marks Snowbasin Resort’s 85th ski season.

“There’s only a handful of resorts that have been in existence longer than we have,” Ratchford told the Standard-Examiner in October.

In anticipation of that milestone, the resort made some big changes, including the implementation of radio frequency identification, or RFID, technology meant to make the ticket-scanning experience easier and the replacement of the Becker chairlift.

“I’m incredibly proud of the team and the effort they’ve put in to these enhancements this summer,” Ratchford said. “We’ve been doing this for the last couple of summers and investing in the resort. What I’m really excited about is for people to see and experience this from opening day on.”

He said this anniversary and these upgrades come during an exciting time for Snowbasin Resort.

“We’re coming off an amazing year where we were ranked the No. 1 resort in America and there’s a lot of pride in that,” he said. “We’re excited to continue that high level of service coming into this winter season.”

A paw-rate’s life

Fandoms had their moment in Northern Utah in 2025 as well.

This includes furry fandom, which celebrated Anthro Weekend Utah in August.

People dressed as wolves, foxes, cats, lions, sharks, dragons, Pokémon, dogs of many breeds and a bevy of other creatures big and small descended on the Davis Conference Center in Layton for the seventh celebration of the three-day event, which took on the pirate theme “Anchors AWU — Battle of the Barkaneers.”

“The furry fandom, in a nutshell, is people who really like anthropomorphic characters and animal art,” event cofounder Giga told the Standard-Examiner in August. “If you think about things like old-school Disney, things like Robin Hood or new-school — things like ‘Zootopia’ — if you’re a fan of that, maybe you might fit into the furry community. It really is just kind of how you feel.”

They said the event had some humble origins.

“It has grown so much,” they said. “Our first year was a two-day convention. … It started with me and my convention co-chair; his name is JoJo. There was a previous event here and it had just closed its doors and they weren’t hosting it anymore. We were kind of bummed and decided to talk about it a little bit. I ran some numbers and thought to myself, ‘You know, if we wanted to, I think if we brought in just this many people — about 250 people — we would be able to break even.'”

In 2025, the convention drew 2,601 attendees while raising nearly $35,000 for Nuzzles & Co Pet Rescue and Adoption of Park City.

“The furry community is welcoming to everybody — it’s very much a safe space and it’s a home that I wish that I had when I was a young queer person growing up. And as somebody who can provide that to people now, I just feel incredibly privileged and incredibly honored to create those safe spaces,” Giga said. “The furry community is a place where you can walk in with a character, basically put on a completely new identity that is unique to who you are, be yourself in a way you haven’t been accepted as before and, no matter what, you are instantly accepted.

“You can show up as a fox, a wolf, whatever else and immediately everybody will call you by your character name, they’ll refer to you by the pronouns that you would like to use, and there’s just never been any judgement around that. I think, as such an accepting space, it is incredibly attractive to LGBTQ+ people to show up and be perceived the way they’ve always wanted to be perceived.”

AWU is set to return to Layton July 31-Aug. 2, 2026, with the theme “Mech vs. Kaiju, PAWSific Rim!”