Holiday World!!!

Woo-hoo! Our one goal for the summer was to visit Holiday World. I had never heard of it before moving to this part of Indiana, but it's a great family-oriented amusement park... roller coasters and water park. It is located in Santa Claus, IN which just seems like a super cute town and I'd love to take my dad there (he's a bit of a Santa Claus fan you might say) but we did not get to see much of it as our main goal was the park. We had originally planned to go with one friend, but it just didn't work out, so another couple happened to mention they were going and the timing was just right, so we car pooled with them. It worked out great and we had a ton of fun with them!



It was a blast! It was a fairly warm summer day, but not overwhelmingly so. It took a little more than 2 hours to get there but we got there shortly after it opened. It is called Holiday World in Santa Claus, IN... if you notice the entrance is the Christmas part of the park, and Gabriela is in front of a large Christmas tree. The other parts of the park include Halloween, 4th of July and Thanksgiving.



We did a few introduction rides (the big swings and a log ride),



We had lunch (that did not gauge us to the nth degree) then one round on one of the bigger coasters. I went with "the boys" as our friend is not a fan of big rides. It worked out perfect because while we did the roller coaster, she took Gabriela to the kiddie rides. My ride was really fun. We did not have to wait long and it was fast and fun. It was actually my first time on a roller coaster with my husband in all our years together, so it was a moment to enjoy!






After that, we headed off to the water park for the bulk of the afternoon. Sadly, we don't have any pictures from there as it was just not practical to carry our camera around, but we had a great time and it was much more kid friendly than I had expected. There was a little "lagoon" that had small water slides and about a foot deep for the little kids, but Gabriela loved it as she practiced her floating endlessly and she would sort of frog jump around too. There were also two sort of playgrounds, but it was all water... fountains spouting, water slides, buckets that dumped on you, etc. Very cute and fun, but it wasn't her favorite. We did several inner tube rides, which Gabriela was actually big enough to go with us and they were really fun. We didn't have to wait too long for anything. We had separated from our friends for a while but caught up with them at a perfect time, had a good snack, then did a couple more rides. Here's a funny... I threw Fares' wallet out! I was going to return it to the locker and do a few things with Gabriela to let them do a bigger ride, and as I left the snack area, I threw away some napkins, but also threw his wallet in too. I didn't realize it for about 2 minutes, after I had walked away about 500 feet or so. I had that inward panic, of "no I didn't really do that" Fortunately Fares understood my gestures as I returned and he remembered which trash can I had gone to and found it on top of course. Thank goodness I didn't space it any longer than I did. Yikes.

We got out of the water park just before the big crowd did and hit a few more rides. "The boys" wanted to do one of the other big roller coasters, this one we headed toward was "The Voyage" It is rated the #1 wooden roller coaster in the world! I decided not to go as I wanted to do something with Gabriela. I'm glad I didn't go as the boys stated it "kicked their butts" Here's why:

From a distance, the first climb before the drop


Going up


One of the last curves, nearing 70mph


After that, the boys had had their share of roller coasters. Us girls had a spin on the carousel:



We stopped for a late snack of funnel cakes, then had time for one last ride... the antique cars! Gabriela got her hands on the steering wheel, but it was difficult to steer and even harder to press the pedal, so I had to help.



On our way out we took a moment in front of the manger scene.


This place was so friendly, clean, nice, not too large to make walking from place to place a big trek, they really do have free soft drinks all day and in addition have free sun tan lotion in the water park and they really didn't gouge you on the food prices either. It was a great day, we had good company, decent weather, the lines were not enormous and it was just plain fun. We hope to go back next year!!