After working here a while, some rather surreal situations become almost commonplace.

Hearing "Monster Mash" playing from little rocks on the ground on a sunny June day.

Waving "hello" to a five-foot-tall, fluffy puppy dog, and half expecting him to answer.

Parking a few spaces down from "S. Claus."

And then there's this:

Not sure whether one of the Lewis & Clark Trail cars decided to take a joy ride and visit his friends in the Thanksgiving section...or if there was a bit of maintenance that needed to take place in the shop, but our crew member returned it safely before the park opened that morning.

Thanks to one of our IT interns for taking this photo. Another surreality: his name is Pat Koch (no relation). The funny part is Patrick is totally into computers and Mrs. Koch never met a computer she couldn't do without.

That solemn statement was made by eight-year-old Dalton. He's from Mason, Ohio, and his mom entered this photo in our Facebook Fan Page Photo Contest.

Dalton's mom grew up in Vincennes and visited us often when we were called Santa Claus Land. She's impressed, she says, with "what you've done with the place."

Do you have some special photos from a past visit to Holiday World & Splashin' Safari? Become a Fan on our Facebook page and upload them. Must be at least 13 years old and not a park employee or relative of one. And who knows? You just might win two tickets.

Working for a family-owned business is almost always a pleasure. But every so often the staff witnesses the personal side as it seeps over to the business side. Every so often, Will and Mrs. Koch go from being business-owner-and-his-director-of-values to simply son and mother.

Will offered to share an example, and how he gets around it:

I enjoy chocolate chip cookies very much. The ladies in Mrs. Klaus’ Kitchen get a kick out of my fairly regular visits in there (OK—almost daily). On the other hand, Mom has been in there and told them that I shouldn’t have chocolate chip cookies, because of my “condition.” (Will is diabetic.)

So, Laverne developed a plan to overcome this obstacle—she created a bag designed to disguise the harmful goodies as healthful fruit. Now, when I go to Mrs. Klaus' for my cookies, I take the bag with me and no one’s any the wiser.

Well, the cat's out of the bag now, Will. From now on you may need to don a funny nose, glasses and trench coat to obtain your contraband.

Indeed, your last cookie may have crumbled...

Naw, his name's not Al, it's Michael. (Couldn't resist...)

Sometimes a family's best souvenir is the delicious evidence of silliness carried home in the camera.

Errin's family visited recently from Newark, Ohio. She says her family camped here for a week and each of their three children got to bring a friend along.

This is Michael, a friend of Errin's son Thor. (Okay...and how cool a name is Thor?)

Errin says this picture is extra fun because Michael is normally a rather quiet fellow. They really got a kick out of his antics.

And so, apparently, did the carousel horse in the background. Can't you just hear a little whinny?

...Track Busters!

Yesterday morning, members of our Coaster Maintenance Technicians crew detected some fatigue on a section of the top steel on The Voyage's track.

The four of them (from left, Bryan, Arch, Tim, and Chad) hopped to it and replaced the steel in time for The Voyage to open right on time.

What's your favorite element of The Voyage? Head over here vote in our poll and see what others have to say.

It's a pretty difficult challenge choosing the winners of our Facebook Fan Page Photo Contest.

In just a few weeks, more than 500 wonderful photos have been uploaded. (May just have to extend the contest a few extra weeks...)

Our latest winning photo shows two children from Kokomo ending their day at Holiday World.

Seven-year old Alexis and her six-year-old brother Clayton were finishing their last day at the park when a light rain began, resulting in not one--but two--rainbows in the sky.

Do you have some special photos from a past visit to Holiday World & Splashin' Safari? Become a Fan on our Facebook page and upload them. Must be at least 13 years old and not a park employee or relative of one. And who knows? You just might win two tickets.

When we started our Facebook Fan Page Photo Contest, there were only 38 photos posted. Now there are 438!

The first week (last week), we actually had a tie. Coincidentally, both were photos taken of darling children on the Star Spangled Carousel.

It took a few extra days to contact Zachary's mom, but Part 2 of our tie was well worth the wait.

Zachary is two years old and was born in Guatemala. His family lives in Terre Haute.

Do you have some great park photos, too? Please join our Fan Page and upload a few. We're a week behind already and will announce another winner soon. Please remember you need to be at least 13 years old (and not a park employee or employee's relative) to enter.

Dear Pat:

It was nice to speak with you Wednesday afternoon. I think the kids are still a little awed that you (YOU!) would be walking around like a normal person.

We all appreciated the opportunity to tell you how nice your park is. After our chat, something happened that I just have to share it with you.

My 8-year-old son found a “lucky” quarter in the wave pool. Throughout the afternoon he talked about it, did tricks with it, and basically got way more that a quarter’s worth of enjoyment from it. Once the water park closed we headed over to the Thanksgiving part of the park. As we crossed the wooden bridge, he dropped it and we watched in dismay as it rolled to the edge and dropped into the grass near the service road below. Will was very sad. Way more than a quarter’s worth of sadness.

Like any mother desperate to keep this happy day as happy as possible, I headed back to Splashin’ Safari to try to get the coin back. There I found Ryan the Lifeguard and he quickly agreed to go get the quarter for me. In a minute or two he came back and handed it to me. I was delighted and ran back to my son. He was surprised and gave me a huge smile, but then pointed out that his lucky quarter was a 1998 “normal” one, but this one was a 2001 New York quarter. Either Ryan had found someone else’s quarter or he’d kindly given one of his own.

Isn’t that terrific? This would be a pretty good story, but it gets even better. Crossing the bridge again later, I saw three blue-shirted employees walking below. They happily retrieved Will’s quarter from the grass and tossed it back to me.

And that’s just one more reason why our family loves Holiday World.

Thank you for all you and your staff do to make Holiday World the magical place it is. And if you can track down Ryan, please return this quarter to him. It just might be as lucky as Will’s has been.

Sincerely,
Marjorie H.
Noblesville, Indiana
(we received permission from both the sender and the recipient to post this)

A week ago, our Facebook Fan page had a rather paltry number of fan photos.

Paltry as in 38. (And one of the 38 was a photo of our brochure askew on someone's coffee table.)

Something had to be done.

How 'bout a little contest?

...with two free tickets awarded to those who post our favorite photos. Suddenly, our 24,000+ fans jumped into action. We now have a far more respectable selection of 350+ fan photos. Here's this week's winning photo: 

This is Canarissa; she's two years old and is from Illinois.

Do you have some great photos? Head over to Facebook and become a "fan" then upload some great photos, either taken here at the park or somehow related to a visit here. You must be at least 13 to enter and sorry, but you can't be a park employee (or a relative of one). Your photo will show up on the HoliBlog and quite possibly in a photo slideshow on our website.

We'll pick a photo a week for the next three weeks. And if you didn't win this time, don't worry -- you still have a shot next week; we'll select from the full pool of photos each week.

Our first batch of Pilgrims Plunge b-roll (that's the footage you give TV news photographers as a consolation prize when you won't let them take their big honkin' cameras on a ride) was on a cold and cloudy day. On the re-take day last week, we had clouds again. But they were nothing at all like the first time.