HOLIDAY WORLD & Splashin’ Safari
Santa Claus, Indiana (Abbreviation: HW)
 Park News - (4/6/2025) Holiday World has issued some interesting news over the past week. For starters the park has now lowered the minimum height requirement to ride the impressive Thunderbird wing coaster (from B&M) from 52 inches down to just 48 inches. This follows along with the opening of the launched Rapterra wing coaster at Kings Dominion, which was able to open with a 48 inch height requirement from the start due to “updated testing” from the manufacturer. B&M then alerted Holiday World that they too would be clear to lower their height requirement this season.
The other bit of news is that Holiday World has officially acquired the “Santa’s Cottages Resort” and now finally has their own lodging destination to provide to their guests looking for a longer stay. I’m not familiar with Santa’s Cottages myself, but according to the press release it is a 23-acre lakeside resort with walking trails, playgrounds and a pool The resort is located about 2.5 miles to the west of Holiday World on 162 / W Christmas Blvd.
(4/3/2025) As pointed out by a local radio station, the 2025 season makes for a very special anniversary for a major park attraction at Holiday World. The Raven turns 30 this year, and while Holiday World may have first opened back in 1946, it was the addition of The Raven in 1995 that really put Holiday World “on the map” with the addition of the park’s first really famous wooden roller coaster.
The Raven quickly caught the attention of the local area roller coaster enthusiasts who sang the ride’s praises far and wide. Keep in mind that the big beautiful world wide web was only just starting out back then, as 1995 was right about when America Online (aka: AOL) really had just started to take off with the more tech-savvy out there. Believe it or not, AOL used to charge their used by the hour until late 1996.
Despite it all, tales of The Raven and Holiday World began to spread across cyberspace via the rec.roller-coaster news group. It didn’t stop there… Holiday World added Legend in 2000, Voyage in 2006, Thunderbird is 2015, and the family fun of Good Gravy in 2024, to say nothing of all the impressive waterslides that were also added during years in-between the coasters. But in many ways, had Holiday World not had the vision to build The Raven 30 years ago, the evolution of the park may have been quite a different one.
2026?? - Raging Rapids Replacement - Rumor - (10/27/2024) While Holiday World really hasn’t announced anything major for the 2025 season yet, you may recall that Holiday World surprised everyone by closing down the former Raging Rapids ride way back in June 2023. A year later we received some photo updates that work had begun to clear some of the site out while appearing to leave the flume trough and some of the themed buildings.
While everyone was hoping something new would be built here for 2025, at this point i’m not certain of that timeline any more for this particular spot in the park and wondering if this may now be a 2026 project.
A new photo sent in this week shows that the site now appears to have been leveled, and according to the reader it appeared that the concrete from the former ride was also being crunched up and recycled into smaller rock sized pieces to be re-used for something else. Another reason I’m saying this may be a 2026 project is it looks like they’ve seeded and scattered hay or straw over a large section of the site, along with a couple of water sprayers on tripods, so it looks like the immediate plan is to try and grow a light layer of grass on the site until they are ready to dig in and start building something else in the future. Why grass? For aesthetic reasons, an open grassy field is much more pleasing than a big dirt lot that will turn into a mud hole every time it rains.
I’m sure Holiday World may have something in store for 2025, but we may need to start looking for signs elsewhere in the park, like maybe in the waterpark somewhere.
(7/20/2024) A newsletter from Holiday World mentions the park’s current nightime Drone Show, which is now performing nightly through to August 4th at 9pm. The notice also mentions that they will be holding a ‘special show’ on August 3rd in celebration of Holiday World’s 78th birthday.
Now, nothing has been said yet officially about what the park has planned for 2025, but if you recall, Holiday World did unexpectedly close their Raging Rapids attraction in mid June 2023 after 33 years of service. They have yet to announce what will replace it, though the social media post at the time did mention that “We intend to return the sound of laughter to Boulder Canyon as soon as we possibly can.”
How might these two events tie together? Over the past several years, Holiday World has been known to drop hints about future attractions, and even drop full reveals, during their final Drone Shows of the season. So… like I said, nothing official has been said yet, but if I were in the area, I’d be interested to see just what is in this special anniversary show taking place on August 3rd.
As for the current status of the old Rapids ride after sitting closed for a year, we’ve been told that there have been signs of activity there and that the old loading building has been removed, landscaping is also being removed and some excavators are on site, though it doesn’t look like they’ve started to rip apart the flume trough itself yet for the most part.
Whatever is planned for 2025, it looks like this is where we should be focusing our attention right now.
2027 - Mystery Attraction - Rumor - (4/7/2025) While it wasn’t a blatant tease necessary, it was noticed that in a promotional video Holiday World posted about lowering the height requirement for Thunderbird, they did almost randomly drop the number “2027” into the message. While I’m hoping we don’t have to wait all the way until 2027 until Holiday World adds a major new ride… perhaps this is the wait until they add their next new roller coaster, or the next one that may have a 52 inch height requirement.
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