Lagoon’s Primordial coming in 2023, many details still under wraps
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- The new Lagoon ride, Primordial, still under construction, is shown in this aerial photo taken on Sept. 11, 2022. The ride is expected to open for the 2023 season.
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- The new Lagoon ride, Primordial, still under construction, is shown in this aerial photo taken on Sept. 11, 2022. The ride is expected to open for the 2023 season.
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- The new Lagoon ride, Primordial, still under construction, is shown in this aerial photo taken on Sept. 11, 2022. The ride is expected to open for the 2023 season.
FARMINGTON — The teasing continues.
Lagoon Amusement Park released a video this week promoting its long-awaited, much-ballyhooed new ride, a roller coaster that’s to open to the public sometime in 2023.
“Over 7 years in the making, Lagoon is thrilled to announce, Primordial, the one-of-a-kind interactive coaster scheduled to open 2023! This is a ride experience like you have never seen,” reads the Facebook post accompanying the video.
The video, spliced with images of people on roller coasters and others looking expectantly skyward, also features an owl, a flying dragon and flames, though no description of what the actual ride will be like.
Lagoon spokesman Adam Leishman didn’t shed much more light as the amusement park operator aims to drum up anticipation. “The ride is like nothing in the world,” designed by the park and its contractors, he emphasized, and not an “off-the-shelf” ride manufactured for any old amusement park.
Cannibal, the roller coaster that plunges riders on a 116-degree “beyond vertical” free fall and BomBora, a roller coaster geared more to kids, were also similarly designed and built in house.
The interactive aspect cited in the Facebook post is apparently one of the distinguishing factors of Primordial.
“That’s one of the things you’re going to have to experience. That’s a big part of the attraction,” Leishman said. He said a dragon and owl “amongst other characters” somehow figure in the interactive aspect of the ride.
An aerial photo of the ride from September, work still continuing, indicates that much of the ride is inside a fabricated mountain of sorts. A green outside track leads up to a point near the top of the mountain. A decorative eagle in a nest is built onto the exterior of the mountain, which Coaster Studios, a YouTube channel focused on roller coasters, says is meant to keep real birds from nesting on the structure.
Riders at least 3 feet tall will be able to ride Primordial though those shorter than 4 feet tall will need to accompanied.
Though design work dates back seven years, actual construction started in 2018. Construction halted for part of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, delaying completion, according to Leishman. Lagoon still has not pinpointed a precise launch date next year for Primordial.