The hints from Holiday World have continued a bit, and Coaster Nation has done a good job tracking them. The original claw mark teaser was followed by a Christmas in July [COLOR=#1B8EDE !important]video[/COLOR] where Santa gives the Splashin’ Safari mascot character, Safari Sam, a gift containing a ton of socks with little Cheetahs on them. The Cheetah, being the fastest of the cats, also matches up with the text hints of the first clue asking people to sign up to the news letter to “be the fastest to know what’s happening in 2020”.
A [COLOR=#1B8EDE !important]final[/COLOR] clue gives us the date of August 6, 2019, so now we know when the announcement will happen for this new Cheetah themed attraction that seems destined for Splashin’ Safari, but they’ve added one more curious possibility. A “leaked” layout plan found somewhere else seems to show off some kind of new water coaster attraction that would reuse the old splashdown pool and station of the retired Pilgrim’s Plunge attraction. The layout appears to run in reverse this time, splashing down and taking a leisurely turn around back into the station at the end. But since this would be cheetah themed, that seems to imply that the rest of the layout would be all about speed, starting off with a launch through the structure of The Voyage and go west towards Splashin’ Safari for a bunch of high speed turns before returning through The Voyage to make the final splashdown.
Ironically, the most logical possibility right now would be from Intamin who repurposed the elevator style lift system they used on Pigrim’s Plunge to create a new series of water coaster attractions around the world. So far they have made four of them, all added to international markets:” Mirabilandia (Italy - 2012), Xishuangbanna Sunac Land (China - 2015), Land of Legends (Turkey - 2016) and Energylandia (Poland - 2018). Also at the IAAPA 2018, Intamin was also promoting a new evolution of their water coaster concept that would ditch the elevator lift system in favor of a magnetic launch.
August 6th is in a little over a week, so we won't have to wait long to find out.