Pros:
Pageant Hill DGC is a fun little mountain course is the Black hills of South Dakota. The surrounding area and drive in is absolutely gorgeous. Many epic views from the top of the course.
The course starts out pretty ho-hum with a few mostly open shots with a few trees in play before taking off around hole 3. From there it's pure mountain golf at it's finest.
The baskets here are Mach III's. These are all in pretty solid shape and caught just fine. There's a couple pin positions per hole. These seem to not always only add distance, but also to change the shape of the fairway up quite a bit. Many of the baskets also had large poles with an orange flag attached to the top. This really helped with spotting the pins, especially the ones in the long positions.
The tee signs are the generic white plastic/fiber glass ones you usually see at city parks or public schools. These have the hole #, par, distances to each pin location, and very rudimentary hole map and a next tee arrow. Pretty basic but servicable.
The tee pads are nice and grippy concrete. These were all level or at least pretty close to level and are decent sized. No complaints for these. One tee per hole.
The design here is top notch. You'll need all the tricks in your bag to score well here. Scrambling will be essential as the course is heavily wooded and you're going to get tree kicks off the fairway. There's an excellent mix of left to right and right to left turning shots off the tee. The mix of uphill and downhill shots is split more evenly than Spearfish, where it seems like it's almost all uphill.
The distances are on the shorter side for the most part, but that's fine with the terrain and trees involved here. Hole 18 is a cool, fairly tight tunnel shot back down the hill.
There course is free and permanent. There's a restroom by either 15 or 16 and by the parking lot and a few benches scattered throughout.
Cons:
The tee signs leave a lot to be desired for a course of this caliber. Probably the biggest con for sure. A more detailed map showing what pin is in play would be the best upgrade they could do IMO. It's rather annoying having to walk the fairway to find the basket.
Not really a con, more a PSA. Make sure to bring plenty of water as this is a pretty challenging hike of a course. Expect a couple hours to play a round, depending on your group size and speed of play.
Finding the next tee wasn't always the easiest. The Udisc map was used quite a bit out here. There's quite a few longer walks and some backtracking to get to the next tee pad.
As mentioned in the previous review, there's walking trails scattered around the course. A lot of them are hard to see from the tee, so be careful to look out before you throw. This is especially true for hole 18. The fairway is basically just a walking trail to get up or back down the hill to the parking lot.
Other Thoughts:
I really enjoyed this course. I'd play this one again in a heartbeat. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere, but I'd recommend taking the time to make the drive out here to play this if you're anywhere nearby. Excellent course in a beautiful part of the state.
From what I've gathered reading up for this trip is that there's kind of two camps. The Spearfish camp and the Pageant camp. Some people swear by one more than the other. I played Spearfish the day prior and rated it a 4, but I'd actually give it a 4.25 if I could. This one is a 4 all day but that's it. Not taking anything away from it, but Spearfish is a step better in my mind. That said you can't go wrong with either one. Play them both if you get the chance.