 Knott's Scary Farm has been open for a few weeks and is hitting on all cylinders. We went back to the event this past Saturday night and it was great to see some changes from opening night to now. We'll also be headed back on Halloween, it'll be our first year on Halloween so we're super excited about that. Written by Gregg Condon Below you'll find some pics from Saturday night (cell phone ones, we went to enjoy the event), all of our video's from opening night as well as some pictures the park sent us of Elvira officiating a wedding last weekend. All in all, a great spooky update from Knott's Scary Farm. But first, we'll start off with a look at the daytime event, Knott's Spooky Farm. Enjoy!!   Trick or Treat!!!  Only nice werewolves come out during the day   Wind Spooky Hollow? =)   The area looks like fun for families    It's nice to see them expanding the family offerings for Halloween outside of "Camp Spooky" but we were quite surprised to see nothing in that area of the park, at least what we could tell. But having stuff in ghost town is great as it gives the younger set more time to spend in the awesomeness that is ghost town. =) Next up was our Pre-Scare dinner and if you are going to Scary Farm on a weekend night, the Pre-Scare is an absolute must!! Not only is the food great, not only are the monsters in the pre-scare great, but getting that head start on the General Admission Crowd for the event means that you can get some of the mazes done quickly and make the most of your night.  If you are doing the Pre Scare be sure to request an early seating in Spurs so you'll already be in the park.  Love this Shock Top display   Everybody in your party gets a sports bottle with free refills all night.  It's the Cone of Shame!!!! I do not like the Cone of Shame.   The monsters in the Pre-Scare have lots of fun including taking selfies with you  One of the biggest benefits is the ability to get into the event early. We were able to do Paranormal Inc. twice before the event officially opened. Once the event starts one of our favorite places to just sit and relax is Fog Alley (just outside Ghost Town Grill). Despite the heat the talent here was amazing as always.
If you want to do My Bloody Clementine best to go early  Mmmm, Haunt Fog!!! =)  Below are all of our videos from opening night of Knott's Scary Farm. I put these in the order we did the mazes this past Saturday night so you can hopefully plan your trip if you are going to the event the next two weekends. We'll also add in additional thoughts about each maze. If you missed our opening night maze rankings, click here. Paranormal Inc: The general consensus among our group was this was once again the maze of the night and the best of the event, and maybe the best among the theme park haunts this year. It's simply amazing. Doing the Pre-Scare allowed us to go through this maze twice in the first 15 minutes of the event going through both sides. (warning: If you haven't done the event, this video does contain spoilers) The Toothfairy: We didn't do an opening night video of Toothfairy as it came out very dark and we didn't want to over-saturate it. While we did enjoy this maze more on Saturday than we did on opening night it seems to be lacking something from year one. It's still great and amazing but it needs "something" and I'm not quite sure what.  Voodoo: This maze has been great in the 5 or 6 times we've gone through it and Saturday night was no exception. Just fun, creepy and beautiful to look at. A definite must on every visit. Forevermore: We skipped Trick or Treat to come back later as that line was terribly long. I think it's because everybody see's that maze first. This turned out to be a great decision as we were able to walk right into Forevermore which had an hour+ wait later in the day. Forevermore was once again great but this one really depends on hitting the poem narration right on. Pinnochio Unstrung: So opening night we were pretty harsh to this maze as it just didn't do it for us. We hate doing that because we know how hard the talent works in these mazes. We're very glad to say that on Saturday we had the total opposite experience and the maze was amazingly fun. I'm still not sure if this one needs to return next year but we were very glad to see the maze and talent working so well. Dead of Winter: This maze is the perfect example of why you don't want to just go on opening night or the first weekend of an event like Knott's Scary Farm. While some mazes simply click from day one (Paranormal Inc) other mazes it takes awhile. Maybe it was the air conditioning but we had so much fun in this maze on Saturday night. Only issue we have is that there is still no facade or sign or anything for this maze. A light mapping like they have for Black Magic (see below) would be perfect for this maze. Gunslingers Grave: We loved this maze on opening night and we loved it on Saturday night. This maze consistently delivered for us and had the shortest lines on Saturday night which meant we went through multiple times. I'm wondering if people just gave up on this maze or if it's just one of the higher capacity ones. Either way, don't pass it by, it's a lot of fun. We also don't have a video for this one due to it being very dark.  Black Magic: The general consensus is that this maze may be on it's last year since it's only one of two returning mazes that didn't receive any improvements this year (the other being Pinocchio). If that's the case then it's going out on a high note as it was once again one of our favorites of the night. Trick or Treat: We went back to Trick or Treat about 12am and found the line to be about 35-40 minutes which is what it was earlier in the night. This maze had some great updates for this year and is in our opinion better than it's ever been. I had originally anticipated this being the last year for Trick or Treat and maybe being replaced with a Deadly 7 maze, but with the improvements I think this one may be back at least one more year. My Bloody Clementine: This was the only haunted attraction we didn't do on Saturday as the line was hovering at just about 2 hours throughout the night. We'll definitely be making sure we hit this early on Halloween. But below is our ride-through from opening night. Lastly, some fun pictures below that the park sent us of Elvira performing a wedding a couple of weekends ago. Looks like a fun time and congrats to the lucky couple!!! On Saturday, October 3, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, officiated her first-ever wedding at Knott’s Scary Farm for actress and model, LeeAnna Vamp and her fiancé Cameron. In honor of the Halloween season, the lucky couple united their immortal souls in the 2,100 seat, Charles M. Schulz Theatre, where Elvira’s all-new show – Elvira’s Asylum, takes place every night of Scary Farm. 
Overall Knott's Scary Farm continues to shine even after 43 years of scaring us (well not me). The overall event is as great as ever although we do anticipate some changes coming next year as they continue to deal with what to do with Camp Snoopy. We didn't even attempt to do Infected and we may not do it at all this year. I don't think we're the only ones. Have you been to Knott's Scary Farm or Knott's Spooky Farm this year? Be sure to let us know your thoughts below.  Last Saturday in the pre-Scary Farm heat we headed out to Knott's to walk around a bit and get some Ghostrider update pics. For those who don't know Southern California has been BOILING for the last week. The city I live in, 5 miles from the beach had it's hottest day ever last Thursday. Not just for that day, EVER. We were tied with Death Valley for the high in the country. But those are the sacrifices we make for you all. =) Written by Gregg Condon Enjoy this look at Ghostrider, they really aren't wasting any time on hopefully bringing this amazing coaster back to it's glory days. And we couldn't be happier. The entrance, doesn't appear to be any changes here yet, and there may not be which is fine. They aren't needed. We'd rather they focus the work on where it's really needed, the track.  Wood ready to be put to good use.  At this point it appears all of the existing track is gone and they are already starting to re-build.   Most of the work seems to be concentrated on the track, nothing in the queue has been touched from what we could tell. They are using the lower queue building for the Knott's Scary Farm maze Trick or Treat.  Some heavy duty work going on here.   Ghost Track on Ghostrider!!!  A look at the lift, all of the lights on the ride still turn on at night which is funny.  Moving outside the park as really, most of the ride is backstage or outside the park borders.  Sometimes it's easy to forget just how massive Ghostrider is since you can't see most of it from inside the park.    First Drop ... it'd be a pretty steep one right now.  Flyover Grand Ave.  The turnarounds are sans track ...    Moving around the other side towards Crescent St.  LOTS of wood. Lots of new, fresh, not going to break your neck wood. =)   New Track!!! Well, the actual track doesn't appear to be on yet, but new wood that will eventually support the track.  Somebody more geeky than me will have to determine if this looks wider than the old track. It kind of does to me but it could be because there is more wood here for support?   We are crazy excited for the ride to be back to it's former glory.   And we'll leave you with one final shot of the structure. But as I said above, we are crazy excited for this. While we love what parks have done with their existing coasters making them hybrids, we love that Knott's and Cedar Fair is keeping Ghostrider wood. It would have been very easy for them to just change the whole thing. For me, Ghostrider when it first opened would probably still be my #1 wooden coaster. Yes, more than El Toro or Phoenix. And if this new retracking can make Ghostrider be THAT good again ... simply can't wait. And I hope all of you who didn't get to enjoy Ghostrider when it first opened will enjoy it.  Alright, that's going to wrap it up for this update that is the massiveness that is Ghostrider. We'll have more from Knott's Spooky Farm and Knott's Scary Farm later this week as we had another great night in the fog this past Saturday. We should have another Ghostrider update in a few weeks as we'll be headed back to Knott's Scary Farm to spend Halloween with all our monster friends. |
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