Emily.CruisesEmily loves to Cruise and Travel!
Emily.Cruises
Holiday World is a regional theme park in Southern Indiana. While their notable radio ads play in the St. Louis area, telling of “Free Parking! Free Sunscreen! Free Soft Drinks!”, it had been somewhere we had never ventured to before. At this year’s school auction two tickets were available. We placed our bid, won the tickets, and drove to Indiana over the weekend of June 21st, 2025.
There are not a lot of hotel/motel options near the park. There’s a Comfort Inn off of interstate 64 about 10 miles from the park and that’s about it. If one is looking for another hotel chain the options are Jasper, Indiana or Owensboro, Kentucky. We chose Jasper, at the Hampton Inn as Hilton is our preferred Hotel group. Also note that time zones in Indiana are dependent on what county you stay in. For instance Dubois County, where our Hotel was located, is in the Eastern Time Zone in the summer. Holiday world itself is in a county that is in the Central Time Zone. Owensboro resides in the same time zone as Holiday World. This is something to keep in mind when choosing where to stay when visiting.
Once you’ve made it to Santa Clause, Indiana the park entrance is simple. A quick drive around and we had no problem finding a place to park. We noted there were restrooms located at the front of the parking lot along with a large picnic area all nicely maintained. We then entered the tunnel under the road and proceeded to the main entrance where we were greeted by a security checkpoint and then the ticket booth where we needed a single day ticket for one of us as our auction win was for 2 tickets. We quickly learned that the park does not accept American Express: just Mastercard, Visa, and Discover. So this day’s expenses got put on the Disney Visa. Entry fee was $75 for one day, which is on par with Six Flags Saint Louis. However unlike Six Flags there wasn’t an additional fee for parking.
Upon entering you find yourself in Christmas land. Each of the four themed areas are themed around different holidays: Christmas, Halloween, 4th of July, and Thanksgiving. If you miss “All I want for Christmas” in June…well you’ve found the right place as that was the song which greeted our arrival on this Sunday morning. One can tell this was the original part of the park as it has shopping, air conditioned indoor dining, and several shops. The rides in this section are definitely aimed at younger kids under 54″ tall. Our 7 year old is 46″ tall so if we had waited another year or too she would be too tall for many of the rides at this park.
However these kiddie friendly rides are not limited to just the Christmas section of the park. One will find similar rides in all 4 areas of the park including their Holidog Land near the rear of 4th of July land. Here they had a small train, which goes through statues of several popular nurses rhymes such as little bo peep and Jack and the Bean Stalk. It also contains a playground, splash pad, kid sized teacup ride, a kiddie coaster called “The Howler”, and our daughter’s favorite ride the “Dogone Trail” jeeps.
Included in the price of your ticket is the Splash’n Safari water park located inside the main park, much like accessing Hurricane Harbor at Six Flags Saint Louis. It proved to be very popular among the guests, however we had left our swimming suits in the car and really didn’t feel like going back for them. (Plus our daughter had spent the previous day in a swimming pool all afternoon). That is a nice bonus on hot days, and the park is small enough that one can really enjoy the rides and the water park on a single day’s admission.
The park has more to offer than just kiddie rides and a water park. It is home to multiple wooden and a couple of steel roller coasters for the bigger kids and adults. Attendance was low allowing us on to just about any ride with minimum wait and the ability to ride everything multiple times if we wished. As far as roller coasters go, Dad rode The Voyage (claimed to be the best wooden roller coaster in the world more multiple years) and the Howler with Emily. (Our daughter hates the idea of roller coasters. She only had one public freak out in her toddler years and that was on the Monorail at Disney World because she thought it was going to do loop-de-loops). It was a very well designed hybrid coaster (steel support with wooden track) that offered many hills, drops, and high banking turns. Unfortunately we’re to the age where riding multiple coasters without Advil is no longer possible.
The Howler is a very good introductory coaster for small kids, although adults can ride with the little ones, but even that had our daughter in tears as she really does not like roller coasters…even the kiddie ones. Unfortunately for adults it does jerk on start and the backrest comes to the exact wrong spot if you’re an adult when it does jerk into motion.
When the park advertises free soft drinks they mean it. There are multiple Pepsi Oasis scattered around with plenty of cups and many options for cold drinks including local favorites like Big Red, a strawberry cream soda…if you like cream sodas. This is a brand not seen in Missouri anymore, but could be found in our local IGA’s back in the 1980’s. It was a favorite of the prior owner of our ’58 Cameo.
You can find air conditioned seating at the restaurants in Christmas Land as well we Thanksgiving. Options in 4th July, such as the Alamo where we ate, and Halloween tend to be outdoor eating as well as the options in the Holidog kids area. One thing to note is that one stand in 4th of July offers a variety of Gluten Free options should your party require such dietary restrictions.
Our meals consisted of Dad having a Burrito, Mom had a Quesadilla, and Emily enjoyed a pretzel and part of Mom’s Quesadilla from The Alamo. Throughout the day we also enjoyed a Churro as well as their famous blue ice cream treats. We also guzzled down our share of Gatorade and Starry from the many Pepsi Oasis around the park.
The other nice freebie Holiday World offers is that of free Sunscreen with industrial sized jugs found throughout the park. However sometimes they’d be empty and most of the time we used our own sunscreen, but in case you forgot or thought the sun wouldn’t come out to play it’s a nice reminder to reapply as you walk through the park.
Throughout the park there are carnival games that cost extra to play. At certain venues you can purchase as pass book of tickets to use at these games. Normally this is not something we would indulge in even though our Daughter loves games. Usually these games are a waste of money, but given we weren’t charge for parking, soda and gatorade, or sunscreen throughout the park we felt okay in spending the $25 for the passbook of tickets. This is not something we would normally get, but given we weren’t being charged for soda, sunscreen, and parking…well we could afford it.
Yes. We will absolutely be making a return visit to this park. It was refreshing to spend a day at a theme park without feeling nickeled and dimed at every turn. The park is small and even if you wanted to include time at the water park it is pretty easy to see and do everything in just one day. It is not a multi day park in our opinion. It is especially good for families with smaller children, although if you have a range or have thrill seekers there is a nice balance in this park to appeal to all.