When You’re Made to Thrill
The Backstory
A friend of mine who works in Florida has these posters hanging in his loft.
I’ve been obsessed with them since the first time I visited his house.
They’re posters of rides and coasters, but they’re stinking cool. They’re stylish and artistic. Each poster shows the essence of a roller coaster (or ride), but at the bottom it simply states the year in which the attraction was built, and the city.
It took me a couple of visits to this friend’s house, but I finally remembered to ask my friend where he got these amazing posters. As it turns out, they were from a company called Made to Thrill.
They take your classic theme park merchandise and make it stylish. This is not intended to offend lovers and buyers of classic theme park merch–I still love to pick up that stuff too, I just don’t wear it every day and put it on display. For reference: please see my entire collection of old theme park merch, old maps, and enamel pins.
Made to Thrill is the stuff I’ll wear any day. I visited the website and instantly purchased a poster of a favorite ride of mine that has been replaced, a t-shirt, and a B&M patch (if you don’t know B&M, first I want to thank you for reading so far into a post that goes deep into coaster fandom, second: it’s the manufacturer of Thunderbird).
The same friend (you know… the one with the posters) told me to reach out and make a request that they create posters for our four coasters.
The Beginning
In January, 2019, I go up the courage and sent the most unashamed fangirl email I’ve ever sent. If you don’t believe me… check out this actual excerpt from the email.
Shameless, right? And like that, I got to e-meet the brilliant artist and entrepreneur Josh (who, by the way, just started this as a hobby and still does this AS A HOBBY) and the first-ever Made to Thrill partnership with a park was born. In no time, Josh had developed this design which made me angry that I had never thought of “Land, Sea, Airtime” before:
We’ve done a few sneak peeks, and if you know Made to Thrill, you’ve already seen this collection, but I wanted to do an official blog post to talk about the 2020 Holiday World x Made to Thrill collection.
And I just want to add how much I LOVE seeing this logo.
To begin, I’m excited to share that Holiday World has its own set of posters.
Lauren, my sister, had to point out to me that the posters blend together (note the tree in The Raven and The Legend, and the sun in The Voyage and Thunderbird). But I’m obsessed now because they’re stunning! Since all four show up a little small next to each other, here are the individual posters:
The Raven
The Legend
The Voyage
Thunderbird
And a bonus vintage Santa Claus Land Poster
Josh used inspiration from old brochures, maps, etc. and created this masterpiece.
We even have stickers that are baby versions of the posters.
…For scale…
This isn’t just theme park merch, this is art!
I officially purchased the entire collection before anyone ever arrived at the park this season, but hurry up and get here, because I learned my lesson the hard way. It does sell out.
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