On Monday, the Utah Olympic Park kicked off the unofficial start to its summer season with Community Day.
The park celebrated by giving visitors half-priced activity passes for the day.
While the park has been open for summer activities like tubing, zip lining and alpine sliding since Memorial Day weekend, many local schools just let out for the summer on Friday, which is why the park held Community Day on Monday, so more kids could come and enjoy.
Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation Marketing and Communications Director Melanie Welch said that the event drew large amounts of visitors to the park. They even sold out of gold passes for the day, still offering wheeled bobsled rides and tours of the park all of Monday.
“It’s gone really well,” Welch said. “The park has been full. … I think people have been enjoying the activities.”
Welch said that the park’s goals on Monday were to introduce their array of summer activities to newcomers and celebrate the start to the summer with them.
This summer, the park’s gold passes will get visitors 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. unlimited access to all their activities, a break from seasons past when the gold pass only offered access for half the day. The passes range from $80 to $95, depending on the day, and can be purchased on the park’s website or in-person.
Individual activity tickets are also sold at the park. Discounts on all tickets and passes are available to Utah residents.
“This is a bigger bang for your buck,” Welch said about all-day gold passes. “You can spend the entire day in the venue on one pass.”
The money raised from summer activities at the park feeds into the Legacy Foundation’s fund, helping maintain and upgrade the Utah Olympic Park, Soldier Hollow Nordic Center in Midway and the Utah Olympic Oval in Kearns. Each activities pass indirectly supports the dreams of local Olympians who train at the three venues, who visitors to the park will get to see at the park’s other events this summer: the Flying Ace All-Stars Freestyle Shows and Olympic and Paralympic Day, both happening in June.
At the Flying Aces shows on Friday and Saturday nights throughout the summer, the world’s best freestyle skiers will throw their best tricks into the park’s freestyle training pool. At Olympic and Paralympic Day on June 27, visitors will be able to meet some local Olympians and partake in activities like curling, laser biathlon and a skeleton push track.
“This is exciting coming off of a Winter Olympic year,” Welch said. “It’s a great way to showcase the facility from a winter sport perspective. … We expect those shows to be busy this summer.”
Welch said Park City’s Nick Page, Casey Dawson and Zach Miller will be among the participants in Olympic and Paralympic Day, available to meet and greet visitors. All three competed in the Milano Cortina Games this winter in moguls skiing, speed skating and para snowboarding, respectively. Dawson claimed a silver medal in the team pursuit race.
“I remember being a young kid coming to the Olympic and Paralympic celebration at the park, and being inspired by the athletes I looked up to,” Page said. “To be on the other side now, and to hopefully inspire the future generations, means a lot.”
Welch said that last year’s Olympic and Paralympic Day and the presence of the Games fueled increased participation in activities at the Legacy Foundation’s three venues. She’d like newcomers to the park and the other venues to explore, even if they don’t partake in any of the activities.
“You can come up and check out the museums and the venue for free,” Welch said. “You can watch athletes train in the pool. … If you don’t want to partake in some of the adventure activities, you can certainly still come up to the venue and take it all in.”