Cannibal

Lagoon has run its own ride-engineering department for decades, but before 2015 the park had never used it to design a full-scale steel thrill coaster from scratch — most of its modern additions came from outside manufacturers like Zierer, Maurer, and Vekoma.

Cannibal changed that. Lagoon's in-house team designed the mega coaster to climb 208 feet before tipping riders into a 116-degree beyond-vertical drop, a geometry more extreme than a true vertical fall, sending trains into an underground tunnel before a full second lift hill resets the pacing mid-ride. Three inversions and a 70 mph top speed round out a compact 2,735-foot circuit that punches well above its footprint.

On debut, Cannibal became the tallest and fastest roller coaster in Utah, a distinction that also made it one of the more surprising home-built coasters in the country — few American parks design and construct their own steel mega coasters rather than commissioning an established manufacturer.

A decade later, Cannibal remains Lagoon's flagship thrill ride and the clearest evidence of the park's unusual, largely self-sufficient approach to ride development.