Holiday World Announces 2020 Opening Date

Holiday World was originally scheduled to open for the 2020 season this past weekend, but like so many other things, uncertainty around the COVID-19 pandemic pushed that back for an undetermined amount of time. Officials with the park said a few weeks ago when making the decision they were looking at "early June" to start the season. It looks like they'll be able to stick to that timeline.

In a statement posted on their website dated May 1st, 2020 from Director of Communications, Leah Koch, officials have marked Sunday, June 14th as the opening date of the season.

Leah's complete statement reads as follows:

During his twenty-some years serving Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari as park president, my dad—Will Koch Jr.—never missed an opening day. Especially not when a new attraction was on the line. We do everything in our power to uphold his same standard—though circumstances this year kept us from our originally scheduled opening day.

We’re now excited to share that in accordance with Gov. Holcomb’s Back on Track Indiana Plan, we intend to open our gates on June 14.

You may have a lot of questions, and we’re going to do our best to answer them below, but just know that if this alters your plans, we’re still going to take care of you.

We’re also changing our operations in ways you may or may not notice. We’re going to have hand sanitizer readily available all over the park, and we may ask your patience while we sanitize our rides. We’re even likely to limit park attendance while we figure out how to operate as safely as possible.  Keep checking in at this page as we’ll be posting our official safety and sanitization procedures in a few short weeks. After all, we’ve been the cleanest park in the world for two decades. We’re going to do our best to keep the park as clean and as safe as possible.

Our small-but-mighty team is now excitedly working hard to get ready. As a family-owned park, we’re feeling the pressure, but we’re also proving how mighty we are when we work together. And now that we have a target date to work toward, we’re moving full-speed ahead.

We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us to be ready to welcome Guests, but in the meantime, please keep following guidelines from the CDC and your state. Summer is within our grasp if we can just be patient a little while longer.

See you in June, friends.

-Leah Koch,

Fourth-Generation Owner and Director of Communications on behalf of the Koch Family

As Koch mentions in her statement, the park has received a number of questions, including the status of their new attraction, Cheetah Chase in Splashin' Safari. The dual, racing water coaster was on track to make its debut this season before the pandemic forced construction to stop. According to the answer provided on their site, the plan is to pick up where they left off as soon as possible. However, they do state they had "some setbacks with the construction schedule," and that "It’s still too soon to tell" when they'll be able to open the ride to guests.

You can see answers to other questions, including what the late opening means for season ticket holders, on the Holiday World website.

[Source: Holiday World & Splashin' Safari]