FARMINGTON – Lagoon amusement park will open its gates April 19 with new rides, games and musical and dance entertainment.

Lagoon will be open weekends until Memorial Day, then open daily at 11 a.m. through Labor Day. After Sept. 1 it will go back to a weekends-only schedule until the park closes at the end of September.

Prices for parking and unlimited ride passes will be the same as last year, according to Ron Van Woerden, Lagoon’s advertising manager and entertainment director.

Park officials say they’ve spent more than $1 million this year to build the new rides and games and refurbish the park from top to bottom.

Thousands of flowers, trees and shrubs, brick walkways and fountains grace the 65-acre amusement complex that started on the east shore of the Great Salt Lake July 15, 1886, and moved to its present location 10 years later.

Van Woerden said the park will hold a relatively quiet observance of its 100^th birthday July 15, and plans a magnificent celebration during the 1987 season.

New additions this year to the park’s more than 100 rides and games include the German-made Flying Carpet, which has cars that go up and down like a magic carpet. The ride is being built in the new north midway area that was added to the park this year.

Another ride in the new north midway is the Flying Aces, whose two-seater airplane-like cars move from side to side as they course through the air around a central pylon when the car’s vertical sail is manipulated.

The Flying Aces was taken down in 1983 to make room for the Music Theater that was built in the south midway area. It has been taken from storage and completely refurbished, Van Woerden said.

The Scaliwags, a new children’s ride, has been set up in Mother Goose Land and includes cars made from colorful cartoon-like animals.

Pioneer Village, established at Lagoon in 1976, has several new exhibits, Van Woerden said, including a display of pioneer tools and Indian artifacts.

“The village is so large and interesting and contains so many exhibits that we are working with the American Museum Association to make Pioneer Village an accredited museum.”

Lagoon has become the state’s largest employer of talented musicians, singers, dancers and actors, Van Woerden said. And the park will have more than 100 entertainers this season.

Among the new entertainment groups at Lagoon will be Surf’s Up, a group that plays and sings both modern music and nostalgic pieces.

The Lagoon Show Band, Country Side and the gunslingers who put on a shoot-out in Pioneer Village began practicing this week for the park’s April 19 opening. The rest of the park’s entertainers will begin their season May 24.

Countryside, made up of eight musicians and four singers, recently returned from a 50-day tour of the Orient.

The park is almost a city within a city and has its own fire department, security force and medical staff and a variety of places for its employees and park visitors to eat.

In addition to dozens of fast food shops at Lagoon, the park will have a brand new restaurant this year, The Restaurant in Opera House Square, which will serve meals at lunch and dinner time.

Lagoon’s zoo, the Wild Kingdom, is the second largest zoo in Utah, and has many new cages and fences and a new tiger named Sheena. She joins a variety of animals, including two other tigers, two lions, a bear, four mountain lions, two leopards, a dozen buffalo, a herd of elk, many fallow deer, goats called audads from South America, golden eagles, raccoons, wild pigs, two camels and two lamas and a profusion of birds, including swans, geese, pheasants and peacocks.

The park’s buildings and grounds are becoming so numerous that Lagoon has had to steadily increase its year-round maintenance department, which now numbers more than 50.

Van Woerden said one worker, Tom Lewis, took one of the newborn fallow dear home with him last fall to make sure the animal, which was having some trouble staying alive, survived.

“He used to bring the baby deer to the park with him regularly on a leash, just as if it were a dog, and treated it just like a favorite pet. The deer is thriving today at the Wild Kingdom.”

Lagoon will employ more than 1,000 temporary workers at the park this year. Employees are treated to a variety of parties, trips, free movies and other adventures and are paid bonuses at the end of the season for working the whole summer. Many temporary employees will also receive college scholarships, Van Woerden said.

Lagoon was originally built 2½ miles west of its present site – on the shore of the Great Salt Lake – when the lake was at a high level. The amusement park was called Lake Park when it was first built by railroad magnate Simon Bamberger, who owned several local railroad lines coming into Salt Lake City.

When the lake receded in 1893, it left the park’s buildings far from the shore and standing in the mud. Bamberger moved the entire park east to Farmington in 1896 and rebuilt it around a large lagoon, which gave the park its new name. It reopened July 12, 1896, and for decades, park visitors enjoyed swimming and boating in the lagoon.

The park flourished in Farmington throughout the early part of the 1900s and was closed for only two years, during World War II when it became difficult to obtain food, gasoline and other supplies necessary to run the park.

In 1946, Lagoon was acquired by the Freed family of Salt Lake City, which formed a corporation to manage the amusement park. Since then, the park has grown steadily, so much so in fact that the original lagoon in the center of the park has dwindled to a small lake hardly a fourth its original size.

In February, the lake, which is fed by natural springs and Farmington Creek, was partially drained to allow workers to build a 30-foot fountain in the center of the lake. Fish that inhabit the lake survived the drainage and the construction work and can again be seen swimming near shore where they seem to wait and beg for popcorn and other morsels from park visitors.

Many of the large golden-colored fish were moved to a small pond near the lake and seem to enjoy their new water home, Van Woerden said.

Among the buildings at Lagoon is Lake Park Terrace, built originally for Bamberger’s Lake Park and moved to Farmington 90 years ago. It was designed by Richard Kletting who designed Utah’s Capitol.

While many rumors have circulated year after year that Lagoon is going to close its huge swimming pool built in 1927, the million-gallon pool will be open again this year beginning Memorial Day from noon to 7 p.m.

Many of Lagoon’s rides are one-of-a-kind works of art. The merry-go-round, built by the Herschell Spillman Co. in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1906, with hand-carved wooden animals, is priceless. Lagoon’s artists and craftsmen each year restore the animals’ colorful exteriors to like-new condition and mechanics keep the ride in excellent working order.

Bruce Hills