A distinctive course with unusual elevation and shaping plays.

-Amenities: Quite solid. Concrete tees, Mach IIIs, signs with all hole info, though signs aren't helpful. Taped spokes for navigation.

-Elevation: Lions Den uses elevation in more unusual ways than I've seen elsewhere. There are the basic kinds of plays--gentle downhills, sloped greens, perched baskets, etc. But additionally, a lot of holes play with unusual elevation features, like multiple gulleys/ditches, uphill holes combined with low ceilings, and fairways that travel over lower ground than the rough rising to its side. It's extremely distinctive, and often lots of fun.

-Novice-Friendly Length: The shaping is too tricky for many novices, but lower power players with a good natural eye for disc flights could find this place enjoyable. Lots of holes under 200', and many more under 300'.

-Shot Shaping/Gameplay: An exceedingly strange collection of blind shots. The course opens with the most normal four holes of the entire course, but (5) and on, it seems as if every hole is blind with a crapshoot of possible routes. You could probably grenade many of the holes out here, but for normal players there's an odd assortment of options. Extreme angles are necessary on some holes, and I think the utility discs will come out for skips and strange flex shots often out here. Adding to the oddity, most holes are short. The majority have very thick foliage that's likely to stop you outside Circle 2, but very few will lead to frequent bogeys for most rec players.

This course is really weird. And hard to play.

-Lines: I think they don't exist on many holes. Unless you count lanes 3' wide, more than 100' down the fairway, as lines. Often the lines are simply weird, but more than once they cross into implausibility.

-Blind Shots: So, so many holes where you have to walk up the fairway to find the basket, return, throw, then wander a bunch to try to find your throw that flew out of sight. It's a real drag. One of the hardest courses to play quickly I've ever encountered. Additionally, risk of disc loss is particularly high throwing all these blind holes (especially with the concentration of thick trees).

-Overlapping Fairways: Speaks for itself. Could be dangerous, or just plain annoying.

-Navigation: Despite the taped spokes, this is a beast to navigate (pun intended). It's hard to tell what tee belongs to what hole, as sometimes alternate tees don't have signage. The hole overlap doesn't help with this, and throwing to the wrong basket is entirely likely. The course also plops you pretty far from hole (1) with no guidance for returning.

-Roughing It: On my play, lots of insects and lots of tall grass. Not a giant issue, but makes it less enjoyable.

The subjective side of me hated Lions' Den. I thought it was miserable to play, and very few of the bizarre lines appealed to me. After all, what's fun about walking down the fairway to find a hidden basket, throwing on a spitball guess of a fairway, inevitably hitting a tree and standing in tall grass to make an easy upshot, and barely carding birdies? The objective side of me recognizes that I probably had a bad experience. I could see a lot of players enjoying Lions Den, especially after they got to know it well. Overall, I've decided it's a pretty Decent course. Not Typical - it has far too many distinctions for that - but a middle of the road course that is worth it for some and not for others.