There's a lot of things that this coaster is poised to get really, really right (Rant incoming).
- Finally we get something in the dry park where Holiday World is not trying to feverishly bloat their Thanksgiving area or needlessly expand their footprint. This is going to bring more energy and a much-needed headliner to an existing area, and hopefully fit in snugly without feeling tacked on.
- The coaster directly improves what came before it. Raging Rapids was very short and did very little, it was an especially lame duck water ride compared to Splashing Safari.
- Thematically it doesn't tie into Splashing Safari at all, but the entrance will be directly adjacent to the waterpark's main entrance plaza. If they were to install signage and pave a wider access path better tying it to the new Fourth of July pavement then it would be able to draw waterpark guests as well in a way that the original ride wasn't built to. A majority of their summer attendance is in the waterpark and this attraction should be geared to handle those guests. They understand this and tried with Pilgrim's Plunge/Giraffica, although it wasn't effective because of how far out it was.
- Building on the latter sentence, when Giraffica went under they tried to build this in 2016 as admitted in an interview the other day, maybe as a direct replacement to that, but the funds weren't there after Thunderbird. Waiting might have handed them another benefit, as in the 2020's Mack began producing their water coasters with tri-tube track instead of just the flat rails. Their older installations proved to age really poorly and most have seen track replacements at some point. On top of that when Mack was developing this first second-generation water coaster for Nigloland in France, the park famously objected to Mack's insistence on having a midcourse block zone right before the drop (as was custom for them), and threw together some kind of thesis showing them that having an uninterrupted layout between the lift hill and splashdown would not affect throughput. Mack took this to heart and has since rolled with the philosophy for "budget" pitches at mid-size parks. Therefore waiting has given Holiday World both better hardware and design.
- This Cannonball competition is such a zany universal idea that will resonate really well with guests and can be presented extremely effectively while on a budget. All you really need is nice dressing and your community pool, albeit without the random chemical stains near the changerooms. Just keep the ChatGPT usage to a minimum if not zero please, I know you're guilty of this HW.
- Groups! Families! Almost everyone can do this!
- The colour scheme is perfect.
