Holiday World & Splashin' Safari, originally known as Santa Claus Land, is a theme park and water park located in Santa Claus, Indiana. The park opened in 1946 and features rides, live entertainment, and games. It is divided into four sections that celebrate Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July. Holiday World features three wooden roller coasters, most notably The Voyage, which has consistently ranked in Amusement Today's Golden Ticket Awards as one of the best in the world. The park is also home to three steel coasters.

The water park, Splashin' Safari, opened in 1993 and features two of the longest water coasters in the world, Wildebeest and Mammoth, the latter of which holds a Guinness World Record. The water park also contains a launched water coaster, raft rides, water slides, and other family-friendly water attractions.

Plans for Santa Claus Land were first conceived as a retirement project by Louis J. Koch, a former industrialist from Evansville, Indiana. In 1941, Koch visited the town of Santa Claus, Indiana. Upset that children came to a town named Santa Claus only to be dismayed when Santa Claus wasn't there, Koch developed the idea for a park where children could have fun and visit Santa year-round. Although initial construction plans were delayed by World War II, construction of Santa Claus Land eventually began on August 4, 1945. At the time, Indiana had only one amusement park, Indiana Beach (then called Ideal Beach).

Santa Claus Land opened on August 3, 1946. At no cost, the park offered a Santa Claus actor, a toy shop, toy displays, a restaurant and themed children's rides, one of which was the Freedom Train (which originally opened as the Santa Claus Land Railroad). With the park's success, Louis Koch's son, Bill Koch, took over as head of Santa Claus Land. In the following years, Bill Koch continued to add to the park, including the first Jeep-Go-Round ever manufactured, a new restaurant, and a deer farm which was eventually home to fourteen European white fallow deer.

Santa Claus Land charged admission for the first time in 1955; adults were charged 50 cents while children continued to be admitted for free. Despite the new cost of admission, attendance continued to grow with the park. The Pleasureland ride section, which exists today as Rudolph's Reindeer Ranch, debuted in 1955. In the early 1970s, additional children's rides, including Dasher's Seahorses, Comet's Rockets, Blitzen's Airplanes, and Prancer's Merry-Go-Round, were added to this section. From 1959 to 1961, the first live entertainment, the Willie Bartley Water Ski Thrill Show, performed on Lake Rudolph each summer. A choir composed of local children also performed at the park in 1970 and 1971.

In 1960, Bill Koch married Patricia "Pat" Yellig, the daughter of Jim Yellig, the park's Santa Claus actor. Bill and Pat Koch would have five children: Will, Kristi, Daniel, Philip, and Natalie.

In 1976, Santa Claus Land moved its entrance from State Road 162 to its present location on State Road 245. The park began to focus on appealing to families as a whole, rather than just children. The park had added nine new rides by 1984, eight of which they hoped would appeal to older children and adults alike.

By 1984, the Koch Family had realized the theming possibilities beyond Christmas. Santa Claus Land soon saw the first major expansion in park history with the addition of a Halloween section and a Fourth of July section. With the inclusion of more than just Christmas, Santa Claus Land formally changed its name to Holiday World. The Frightful Falls log flume and the Banshee Falling Star ride were added to the Halloween section in 1984 and 1986 respectively, the Raging Rapids river rapids ride was added to the Fourth of July section in 1990, and the Kringle's Kafé restaurant was built in the Christmas section.