Good Gravy! Holiday World opens the 2024 season today, complete with the first “family boomerang” coaster in North America. The new Thanksgiving-themed ride takes off from “grandma’s kitchen” and is geared toward offering fun for family members of all ages.
Leah Koch-Blumhardt, 4th-generation owner of Holiday World, said they wanted to provide a ride that was in between the ones for smaller kids and coasters offering bigger thrills. The new ride — named Good Gravy! — does just that.
“We really haven’t had anything kind of in between. So we want to see something that really meets kids in the middle,” Koch said. “We want to see people riding together as a family, and we want to see the queue bringing back memories, and that’s the feedback we’ve heard so far.
The ride reaches a maximum speed of 37 miles per hour and stretches 1,500 feet. Riders enter a gravy boat-framed cart and are immediately pulled backward a short distance before launching forward. After a couple of minor twists and turns, the coaster’s track ends, and the ride then continues in reverse to send riders back to the station backward. The ride peaks at 7 stories high.
Netherlands-based company Vekoma Rides was contacted for the design and fabrication of Good Gravy! roughly 2 years ago. Ricardo Etges, Vekoma’s vice president of sales, said they designed the ride to make it unique to the Holiday World grounds.
Due to its success overseas, the company had been planning to bring a family boomerang-style ride to North America for some years.
“So, having the opportunity to open the first one here with this custom-designed layout was, of course, this fantastic thing that only the world came up with,” Etges said.
Before riders get on the coaster, they’ll wait in a queue themed after a mid-century modern and vintage grandparent’s house.
“We knew that as a family coaster, this might not be the most exciting to all of our guests. So we made sure that we wanted to really play with the theme and make sure that it was something fun and different,” Koch said.
Holiday World held a raffle to decide the first riders of the new coaster, and they got to experience it Friday morning.
Paul Puckett, a grandfather, enjoyed not only the ride but also its overall aesthetic. Puckett said he had not been to Holiday World since he was 14. After more than 60 years away, he came back to enjoy this ride with his grandson.
“I’ve heard so much about Holiday World, and I’m impressed with what they’ve done to it. There’s nothing like it,” Puckett said. “Good Gravy! was a lot of fun. It was almost too much for me, but it was a short ride. It was a lot of fun.”
Holiday World officially is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on May 4-5 and May 11-12. Splashin’ Safari will open on May 18, when Holiday World also begins extended hours. For more information on the park’s hours, click here.
