If you want to visit a theme park that cares about the guest experience with free parking, soda, and sunscreen, this park is for you! Located just an hour outside of Louisville, this park is easy to get to. If you're flying in, Louisville is the closest major airport, and renting a car is the best and only option since Santa Claus is a small populated town with no Uber/Lyft services to the major cities. Once inside the park, there's lots to see and do, and if you’re a coaster enthusiast, you already know which coasters to hit!

The rollercoasters here consist of 3 world-class wooden coasters, 1 launched wing coaster, 1 family boomerang, and 1 kiddie coaster; so 6 rollercoasters! Out of all the coasters, The Voyage is my favorite as it goes through the woods, and makes for an awesome night ride if the park closes later. If rollercoasters isn’t your thing, there are also several flat rides and attractions all throughout. Didn’t do any flat rides on my visit, but I did a dark ride called gobbler getaway. In general, my favorite blasters dark ride because it’s adorable, targets are well calibrated, and a great way to get out of the hot sun. My top 5 rides are Voyage, Legend, Raven, Thunderbird, and Good Gravy! For this park, they have a pretty good Top 3 for wooden coasters, with The Voyage being most peoples favorite wooden coaster.

As for the Splashin' Safari waterpark, since I was mainly there for the coasters, and did half of my day at Kentucky Kingdom, I didn’t get to experience it as much since I arrived at the waterpark less than 2.5 hrs before closing. The waterpark was great. Nice lazy river, awesome water coasters, and plenty of water slides which mainly consisted of raft slides. Something to note, if you’re a single rider, do your ride research in advance since some slides do not allow single riders. The major slides that do allow for it are Wildebeest and Mammoth, which has a dedicated single rider line. If you plan on ordering a revisit or a multi-day flex ticket, it’d be best to do one-day dry park, and the other day waterpark since this park has so much to do that you just need another day. Just keeping that in mind, for a better waterpark experience, it’s best to make sure you have a plus one since you can do so much more in parties of 2.

The park staff were phenomenal, and have great customer service. I can tell that they care for their guests and experience making sure each guest feel welcome for being at Holiday World. Ask them a question, they most likely have the answer for you. The ride operators were awesome! I like the fact that you can put your pocket-sized items in baskets, and handing it to them (they’ll take your bags too if you’re okay with it) once you’re about to ride, indicating that they want you to get on the ride and dispatch it as soon as possible. That right there is how most parks should run it. If you go on a slow day, and want to take advantage of re-rides on the rollercoasters, as long as there’s an empty row, or asking another single rider they’re okay with it, the ride ops will allow it with no limit unless there’s a full station.

Lastly, about the Holiday’s in the Sky show, absolutely amazing! Say the park closes at 8pm, the park will leave the Thanksgiving section of the park open until 9pm when the drone and firework show starts! Which means while most of the families are partying at the dance plaza before the show, if you want to marathon The Voyage, and get that night ride experience everyone talks about, this is the perfect opportunity to do so!

Overall, Holiday World is the best independently owned theme park I've been to, and cannot wait to return in the near future! Not only to ride the world class wooden coasters, but to explore more of the Splashin' Safari waterpark and making it a full day experience out of it!