This story appears in the August 2026 issue of Utah Business. Subscribe.
The world’s highest drop-tower amusement ride was manufactured in North Logan, Utah. It took 300 tons of fabricated steel to build, and it stands at an astonishing 475 feet, taller than any building in downtown Salt Lake City.
To ship that tower from the production facility in the shadow of the Bear River Mountains in Cache Valley to a Six Flags theme park tucked amid the Tuwaiq Mountains in Saudi Arabia, the job must be completed in small pieces. It requires engineering 37-foot-6-inch pieces that can fit into 150 40-foot shipping containers, then shipping them across two oceans, two seas and a gulf to the Red Sea port of Jeddah. Then a Utah installation crew spends 18 months assembling it and safety-testing it a few thousand times with water-filled dummies.
This is the work S&S Worldwide does.
“We’re in the business of smiles,” says CEO Jason Mons, who joined the company 22 years ago after replying to a newspaper ad for a purchasing manager.
The company’s 100 or so employees design and build some of the world’s fastest roller coasters and tallest drop towers and swing rides, and they export them from their headquarters — two stories of warehouse, fabrication and office space adjacent to the runways of Logan-Cache Airport — to theme parks in the Middle East, East Asia and Australia.
Mons says S&S Worldwide is one of three companies in the United States that make steel roller coasters.
“Most businesses are going to China, going to Vietnam; they’re having products manufactured and then bringing them into the United States and selling them,” Mons says. “We’re actually exporting product, exporting the results of labor that is employed here. We don’t machine everything in-house. We’re going to machine shops here in Cache Valley, as well as some along the Wasatch Front, and buying some components that get assembled into a roller coaster, and those things are loaded into a container and shipped to China, or Saudi Arabia, or overland to Hersheypark or Six Flags.”
The making of S&S
S&S was founded in 1994 by Stan and Sandy Checketts — that’s where the S&S comes from — and was acquired in 2014 by the Japanese company Sansei Technologies.
Stan, who passed away in 2022 at the age of 80, was an avid and fearless snowmobiler who wanted to replicate the giggles and squeals he heard when he tossed his children in the air, then safely caught them in his arms. In the company’s early days, when a new tower ride was installed, Stan would stand at the very top of the ride, unharnessed, and pose for photos waving an American flag.
S&S invented the first pneumatic drop tower for Six Flags Mexico in 1996, set a world record in 2008 for steepest drop with its El Loco roller coaster in Indiana Beach, and pioneered 4D free-spin roller coasters with Batman: The Ride in 2015. It has built more than 400 thrill rides, unleashing adrenaline in more than 30 countries — all conceived and built by the team in North Logan.
“Who wouldn’t want to build roller coasters?” says Trever Dyer, global director of sales and marketing.
Dyer says S&S finds employees who may be working on defense projects and at aerospace companies.
“We find the right people who maybe don’t realize the skills they have are transferable to roller coasters,” Dyer says. “We’ll teach you the nuance of what you need to know for a roller coaster.”
Last summer, S&S treated its employees — engineers, procurement associates, welders, project managers and assembly technicians — to a day at Lagoon amusement park in Farmington for its summer party, where they rode the fruits of their labor. It’s a crowd that can’t help but geek out over the mechanics as they ride.
“My wife hates it when we go on a family vacation to Disney or SeaWorld,” Mons says with a laugh. “Most of the pictures I come home with are of queue gates and technical aspects of rides. Or I’m leaning over, explaining to my kids what the ‘tick-tick’ is when you go up a lift hill on a roller coaster.”
In the past year, S&S installed not only the record-shattering Sirocco Tower at Six Flags Qiddiya City in Saudi Arabia, but closer to home, at Lagoon, it unveiled the Nutcracker, a 150-foot-high swing ride that stands against the horizon as you drive I-15 through Davis County.
“Everybody loves Nutcracker,” says Julie Freed, Lagoon’s director of special events. “The most common response we hear from guests is that Nutcracker is a 10 out of 10 awesome thrill ride. The only guests who don’t like it are those who are too afraid to ride it. The response has been overwhelmingly positive, which is a win for both Lagoon and S&S.”
S&S also designed the Rocket, a 217-foot-tall tower ride that launches Lagoon guests straight up in less than three seconds, generating 4.5 Gs of force on the way up and 2 Gs of force on the way down.
“The Rocket was installed in the park in 1999, and we are happy to continue the great working relationship we have with S&S’s incredible team,” says Freed.
S&S engineers design thrill rides primarily for Six Flags and SeaWorld parks, and they recently designed a Twizzler-branded swing ride for Hersheypark. S&S engineers design the ride in North Logan and provide the specs for component parts to local machine shops, and S&S technicians assemble the pieces in North Logan.
“We really are a manufacturer that sources locally and ships outside our community and brings money into the community,” Mons says. “We’re not just circulating money. We’re not exporting money to vendors around the globe. Most of it stays in the community here in Utah.”
While S&S manufactures in North Logan, Mons says, it doesn’t erect the full structure before shipping.
“All of those components have got to be built perfectly,” Mons says. “Everything has to bolt together perfectly in the field … We do not assemble the structure in North Logan. It’s getting shipped out as parts and pieces, and the first time it all gets put together is on site at the amusement park.”
Riding out a changing market
Mons says that U.S. tariffs in 2018, and more recently in 2025 and 2026, have altered the dynamics of global demand. Raw material costs — particularly for steel, where 50% tariffs have strangled foreign supply, bumping domestic pricing higher — have escalated for S&S relative to its European competitors, as have wages.
In an industry where several years pass between when an order is placed and when a new ride is installed, S&S has had to stay nimble.
“Twenty years ago when I joined the company, our market mix was mostly U.S. with some European customers,” Mons says. “Within five or six years of me joining S&S, China accounted for about 35% of our market. That declined significantly in 2018 with embargoes and trade wars to the point where China now accounts for 0% of our market.”
In May, S&S faced another shock when its Utah supplier of tracks — Intermountain Lift, based in Springville — was acquired by Polargy, a data center infrastructure manufacturer. Polargy announced Intermountain Lift’s manufacturing facility would be repurposed from welding coaster tracks to welding server stacks for data centers.
“There are no generic track builders left in the United States now because we’ve lost this company,” Dyer says. “Track bending is an art. We need track builders, and there are not a lot in the world.”
A new track for growth
Dyer says S&S is experiencing what he calls “barbell demand.” Big theme parks are demanding big-thrill rides, and smaller parks with smaller budgets are interested in family rides.
In response, S&S launched a family-friendly roller coaster called RailRyder this year. The single-rail coasters are contained enough to fit into family entertainment centers, and they cost $1.5 million to $3 million, one-tenth of what a big theme park might spend on a high-thrill coaster.
“RailRyder is what we refer to as a crossover, or gateway product,” Mons says. “It fills a gap in our portfolio for lower-cost, smaller-footprint family roller coasters. We have a prototype set up here at our headquarters. The single-rail system is so different from anything that exists in the world that we wanted to get customers out here to Utah to experience it.”
Last summer, S&S employees had an opportunity to invite friends and family to a company barbecue that included trying the new ride. A few employees told Mons their kids rode it more than a dozen times, which Mons takes as a sign that S&S is on the right track.
S&S also plans summer picnics that not only help to build a cohesive culture, but also spark conversations about what makes a great entertainment experience.
“Yes, we are in amusements, and yes, we do coasters worldwide, but the majority of our employees don’t get an opportunity to go out and see these coasters,” Mons says. “We do summer parties at Lagoon, similar to what other businesses in the state do, except we’re having conversations like ‘Did you see how that was operating?’ or ‘Did you see how this ride was manufactured?’ There’s a bigger picture.”
Oh, and by the way, that tick-tick sound you hear as the roller coaster is slowly climbing? There are at least 100 people in North Logan happy to explain that you’re hearing the anti-rollback device, a mechanical system that prevents the coaster from sliding backward.
That tick-tick translates the same whether you’re riding in the Happy Valley parks in China or the biggest theme parks in South Korea, Japan or the United Arab Emirates.
“We are truly a worldwide company,” Dyer says. “We’re not afraid to look at a project anywhere in the world. Most of the ride we can make right here in the state of Utah. I’m talking to a client right now, and there are only four companies in the world that can build this roller coaster, and we’re one of them.”