HOLIDAY WORLD & Splashin’ Safari
Santa Claus, Indiana (Abbreviation: HW)
 Park News - (7/20/2024) 2025 Ragin Rapids Replacement Progress Update
(2/10/2024) The local news dropped by Holiday World to check out how things are going at the construction site for the new “Good Gravy!” roller coaster. Other projects in the works are refinishing work on some of the waterslides, replacing track sections on all three of their wooden coasters and more.
2024 - Good Gravy! Family Coaster - (4/12/2024) Things are looking “Good” over at Holiday World as they prepare to open the new “Good Gravy!” family shuttle coaster. The park has even posted a video where they’ve loaded all the seats with giant plush Turkeys and sent the train for a test run to get their approval.
Look for Good Gravy to open to guests on May 11th, 2024.
(3/17/2024) Good news from Holiday World was released, as the “Good Gravy!” roller coaster has successfully completed the first test run! Check it out below! On a somewhat related note, I’m told that the park has also launched a newly updated and modernized version of their website as well for the 2024 season so check it out.
(11/25/2023) Holiday World has posted an animated preview video of the themed queue you will experience when getting in line for the new Good Gravy! roller coaster in 2024. The animated preview takes you right into “Grandma’s House”, past the living room, bathroom, past the kids bedroom, the study and more as you approach the loading station (the garage) just past the dining room and kitchen.
(11/21/2023) Created by Vekoma, the Good Gravy roller coaster train coming to Holiday World has to be one of the most uniquely themed roller coaster trains ever designed. Themed like a giant gravy boat that you might find sitting on Grandma’s Thanksgiving table this week, it even has a big gooey drop of gravy flowing out of the front. The train was on display for the attendees at the IAAPA Expo in Orlando last week, which you can see by following the link above.
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.
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