Holiday World July Trip

[RollerColt]

The day we had been waiting for finally arrived! Both of my kids were tall enough to ride most of the rides at Holiday World. And so, one very early cloudy morning in July we were off for their first ever visit!

We're about 3 hours away from the park, which is of course a big difference compared to Kings Island but still not too bad. The time change really helps for the drive down. We arrived right at opening, and immediately went to Thanksgiving. My kids have been wanting to ride Good Gravy! for a while and to be honest I was equally excited to get my first ride. We were immediately blown away by the area as we walked to the entrance. Theming was on point. Plenty of space for kids to run around and play, plenty of seating for the adults to rest and watch the coaster. We appreciated the shade and all the little details. 

Another thing that surprised us was having the entire queue inside a grandma's house. With air conditioning! Absolutely genius, Holiday World! We barely paid attention to the wait time as we inspected every inch of all the decorations and rooms. Before we knew it, we were already in the main station. This was a huge contrast to Soap Box Racers, which felt like an eternity to wait in line for. The station team was on point. Super fast, super efficient. They didn't waste a second of time. Not bad for a single train operation!

As for the ride itself? Good Gravy! is just such a fun and wonderful experience. Just a joy from start to finish. The ride layout is great, the spike is just steep enough for a bit of thrill and of course the scenery is hilarious. And the smoothness. My goodness... It was so buttery smooth. Like the smoothest I've ever experienced on a roller coaster in my life. With the line moving so fast, we went back for more gravy again and again. Needless to say, my kids are now properly hooked on roller coasters!

Despite my kid's love of roller coasters, they were simply not ready yet to handle Voyage and Thunderbird. Luckily for them, my wife loves spinning flat rides. So as they did the Turkey Whirl and the indoor Gobbler dark ride, I said hello to my old friends. Voyage as always was world class. Relentless, high octane yet surprisingly pretty smooth. These people know how to properly retrack their rides!! Thunderbird: smooth, forceful and classic. The Thanksgiving area has really developed since the last time I visited. 

We knew there were some big rides we wanted to hit up for Splashin' Safari, so we made our way to the Alamo (after all these years still has some of the best queso!) for a quick lunch and then went to the waterpark. And this is where some trouble happened, though we wouldn't realize it at the time... The lockers... So we get into Splashin' Safari, get changed and then find a locker. I noticed right away that a significant portion weren't working for the day, but no matter as there were still plenty that had the green light on. So we merrily find an open locker, and I noticed that the interactive screen was being a bit buggy. I tried to choose new locker, but it just sat there... Now here's where I screwed up: I should've just walked away to find another set of lockers. But no, I foolishly scan my Apple Pay and magically a locker opened. Again, not really thinking much of it, we put our stuff inside and hurry to Cheetah Chase. More on the lockers later! So Cheetah Chase. We could not get how slow the queue line is. It took us a very long time to get to the station, and we quickly learned why the capacity was struggling: people just weren't good a following directions in terms of standing on the scale for weight measurement. Ride ops had to constantly correct guests who seemed to just start wandering around the station... Facepalm... We finally get to our turn to load... and then the announcement blares all over the park... Lightning reported in a storm headed to Holiday World... UGH... A lot of people sat down and planned to wait out the storm, but by luck a gentleman behind us had his phone out with radar. It was a huge complex of storms. I knew immediately this wasn't going to be some 40 minute delay... So we begrudgingly left to find shelter before the storms hit. As it would turn out, that would be the end of our waterpark experience for the day. Lightning and storms for hours... We did manage to get some food at the Wildebeestro which was pretty good though a bit pricey. 

As the rain continued to pour, we decided to change back into our normal clothes and made our way to the shops to kill time. Found some really cool merchandise advertising Cannonball! Finally around 6 the storms passed and all the rides reopened. With all of the rain a good amount of people had left by this point so away we went to ride pretty much every flat ride offered. Eagles, Antique Cars (way better layout compared to KI), bumper cars (one way is lame...), kids were too afraid of Liberty Launch (and I was honestly okay with that, it usually gives me a headache for some reason), did the chair swings, the crow's nest (what an amazing view!) and then the kids went back for some more gravy! 

Kids and wife did the scrambler while I rode Raven (so much fun, it's still got it!) and I ended my night on Legend. Holy heck... they had Legend straight up hauling! What a ride! We got some ice cream from Udderly Blue and headed home. 

While the waterpark experience was a bummer, pretty much everything else was great as always with Holiday World. My kids were blown away by the free drink stations everywhere haha. My daughter kept asking if it was legit. This park just continues to be one of my all time favorites. And with Cannonball coming next year, I think they're just getting better with age. 

Having the worry free weather guarantee was also amazing. One of the greatest ideas for a theme park. We returned a few weeks later and got to finally experience the waterpark in all it's glory. Only thing we still haven't done was Cheetah Chase lol... After the first fiasco I decided for us to skip that long line and just do all of the other slides and rides. Maybe next year!

 

[Gordon Bombay]

This was a great read and it sounds like your family had a wonderful day, however... I need the ending story of the lockers!

[RollerColt]

1 hour ago, Gordon Bombay said:

This was a great read and it sounds like your family had a wonderful day, however... I need the ending story of the lockers!

Hahaha goodness me I can't believe I forgot the ending to that part of the story!

So it's raining pretty hard, quite windy, but we don't mind too much since we're still in our swimsuits. We get to the locker and I select the option to open... and then I stare at the screen for a long moment. My wife, puzzled, asks what's wrong and I just point to the screen: 

It's asking for a PIN. 

Standard procedure right? Completely normal. Only problem was, I didn't recall the darned thing asking for me to create a PIN... Uh oh... I start putting in stuff like phone numbers and birthdates... nothing worked. A staff member happened to walk by and must've immediately noticed the looks of dread on our soaked faces hahaha... Within minutes she's got guest relations talking with us and after we explained our situation they got one of the service support staff to come unlock the locker for us. And this guy was fantastic. Very humorous, light hearted and smart. He asked us a few questions about what was in the locker: we tell him the exact brand of backpack and color, even the make and model of the vehicle we were driving. He told us this stuff happened all the time and most likely someone before us initiated the locker rental process but stopped just short of paying. He said a lot of people see the price, not realizing lockers aren't free so they just walk away when it asks for payment. 

It went from a very stressful experience to one we've been laughing about for weeks now. And when we came back the second time for our worry free weather day, I made sure to check the screen asked for a PIN before paying! Live and learn!