Holiday World and Splashin’ Safari: A St. Louisan’s Guide to the Southern Indiana Theme Park

EDITOR’S NOTE: Updated for 2026.

If you live in St. Louis, there’s a chance you’ve seen a billboard ad for Holiday World and Splashin’ Safari in Santa Claus, Indiana. If you thought about it at all, you may have had a few questions, like:

• Where on earth is Santa Claus?
• What is Holiday World?
• Is this some tourist trap thing?

The answers are:

• A few hours east of St. Louis.
• An amusement park in the tradition of Six Flags, Silver Dollar City, or Dollywood.
• Only a little … but really, it’s a serious amusement park that is well worth a visit.

Oh, and…

• Free parking, free soft drinks, and free sunscreen.

More on that in a moment.

Let’s dig in.

Getting There

Holiday World and Splashin’ Safari is located in the tiny town of Santa Claus, Indiana, (population 2,500) in southwest Indiana not far from Evansville. It’s about 3 hours (roughly 200 miles) or so east of St. Louis (Google Maps link). STL drivers can take Interstate 64 and can either exit at U.S. 231 or — if they are headed straight to Holiday World — Indiana 162.

If you’re used to overtouristed places like, say, Branson or Pigeon Forge, you’ll find Santa Claus to be a refreshing change of pace. The town is positively quiet, and getting from place to place there is as easy as you could ask for. That includes getting to the town and to the theme park.

Hypothetically, you could make a day trip out of it from STL, especially if you wanted to keep things cheap, and we’ve known people who have done just that. We chose instead to spend a few nights in Santa Claus to get a fuller experience.

There are a handful of places to stay in and around Santa Claus, and more places if you’re willing to stay farther away in places like Jasper (Indiana), Owensboro (Kentucky), or Evansville (Indiana). Not every place we researched in Santa Claus proper had great reviews.

We ended up narrowing down our lodging to Santa’s Cottages, which is run by Holiday World, and Lincoln Pines Lakefront Resort. Both had great reviews, were just a few minutes from the park, and had similar amenities. We ended up going with Lincoln Pines because the smallest cottage had 1 1/2 baths compared to the 1 bathroom in Santa’s Cottages, but both appear to be good options.

Parking

Holiday World has two large parking lots, one north of Christmas Blvd. (yes, you heard that right) and one south. The North Lot is known as the Raven Lot while the South Lot is known as the Legend Lot, both named after wooden coasters in the park. The North Lot is directly adjacent to the park, although both lots are near to the entrance, as the South Lot is connected to the park entrance by a short walkway under Christmas Blvd. In addition, shuttles run regularly for those who can’t or don’t want to walk from the far end of the lot.

Parking is, as advertised, free.

Costs and Considerations

Holiday World is typically open from early May to the beginning of November. Daily park hours vary depending on the day of the week and the time of the year. You can find a complete calendar on the park’s calendar page.

The park offers both daily tickets as well as season passes. Season passes in 2026 range in cost from $160 to $230 before June 1st, and a little more afterward. Daily tickets range from $55 to $73 depending on what kind of daily ticket you get and what day it’s good for. Multi-day flex tickets are $89 for two days and $100 for three days. In 2026, the park also offers modest discounts for military, nurses, first responders, and teachers on single and multi-day tickets.

Given the pricing structure and the scope of the park — especially when the water park is open — we tend to think multi-day flex tickets are the best value for most out-of-towners, unless of course you’re looking to do things in one day.

As with most amusement parks nowadays, expect to go through security screening on your way in. If you are bringing in swimwear for Splashin’ Safari in separate bags that is allowed, but there is always a chance they’ll ask to search your bags.

As for that free soda and free sunscreen? It’s for real. There are soda oasis stations all over the park, and they have a range of soft drinks from Pepsi to Starry to Mug Root Beer. While certain drinks like Pepsi are found in every oasis, other options like unsweetened tea are only in certain stations.

The sunscreen, an SPF 50 variety, can be found in large pump stations throughout the park. One caveat here is that the ones in Splashin’ Safari tended to empty out midday and weren’t always refilled.

Outside the park, Santa Claus is a small town, but there are some amenities, including a full-service grocery store called Holiday Foods, located a couple of blocks from Holiday World. It carries most of what you might need. One service we’ve never seen in a store before: the grocer’s bag workers will frequently carry your groceries to your car for you. We guess that they do it, in part, to keep carts from accumulating in the parking lot.

Things to Do

There are two sections of the park. One is the dry park, where you can find the coasters and other standard theme park stuff. The other is the water park, Splashin’ Safari, which serves up a number of water-based attractions.

The dry and water park sections have multiple access points between them, so going back and forth isn’t too hard provided you have the right footwear for each. It’s quite easy to, say, ride some water rides, drift into the dry park for a spell, and then head back to the water section.

The dry part of the park is divided into four holiday themes: Christmas, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, and Halloween. Each of them has its own feel, right down to the soundtrack for each section. The atmosphere is immersive and fun. The coasters have storage cubbies while you’re on rides, so you can tote a small backpack or crossbody bag around the park.

The wet part has a single theme, but it’s cool in its own right. Slides or water shoes are not a bad idea in Splashin’ Safari, as you will be doing a lot of walking on pavement. We also rented a large locker to store our gear.

This park has a lot to do, especially if you’re into rides. There are multiple roller coasters, multiple water coasters (yes, they’re a thing, and they’re awesome), various other rides, along with a scattering of shows and other amusements. We flew upside-down through the air on the slightly terrifying but incredible launch coaster, Thunderbird. We roared more than a mile along The Voyage, one of the smoothest wooden coasters we’ve ever experienced. We also braved a surprisingly intense trip forward and backward on Good Gravy.

In Splashin’ Safari, we jetted up hills on a boat in Wildebeast and Cheetah Chase. (One of the best water rides in the park, Mammoth Water Coaster, was down for repair on the days we visited.)

Holiday World has plenty more beyond just coasters. You can ride bumper cars, a vertical launch ride, a carousel, spin rides for kids, and Model T cars that even kids can drive. As a lifetime St. Louisan, I was left nostalgic for the days when our local Six Flags had bumper cars or Moon Cars or that spinning ride where you got stuck to the wall, since Holiday World has all of those things.

The water park likewise has the usual lineup of tube slides, lazy rivers, and other water features that complement the water coaster scene.

Our family was divided on which part of the park they liked best, and that goes to show how good both of them are.

We also appreciated the shows. There were just a handful, but they were entertaining. On the days we visited, there was a comedy hypnotist, a stunt show, and a few other singing and dancing acts.

The food, meanwhile, was fine. It was standard theme park fare — burgers, pizza, nachos, etc. — and while it wasn’t amazing, it was good, and the prices were fair. One member of our family was excited to see Dole Whip make an appearance.

Our Thoughts

Confession: when I purchased two day flex tickets, I wasn’t certain we’d have enough to do to fill out two days.

I was wrong.

We stayed from open to close both days and were busy the whole time, and that was riding only a few things more than once. Some of that is that certain lines could be a little long, especially later in the day, but most of it was that there is just a lot to do. We spent our first day in the dry section of the park, and most of our second day in the water park. During colder times, there is obviously less to do, but during the summer, the park has a lot to offer. We think it compares favorably to Silver Dollar City in its overall quality.

As a family who has recently been to Disney World and who also has season passes to Six Flags St. Louis, we were admittedly unsure coming into things what we would think of Holiday World. It exceeded our expectations. The atmosphere is very good, the rides are smooth and well-constructed, and the freebies are more fun than they should be. It’s nice to need a little jolt of caffeine in the afternoon and grab a small cup of Pepsi or unsweetened tea to help me power through.

It wasn’t the cheapest trip, not with three days in a cabin and two days in the park, but everyone in our party agreed it was well worth it. I suspect we will come back again someday.