Wednesday 14th
We got up at a fairly decent time, checked out of our lovely Hollywood hotel and then drove back down to Anaheim for Knotts Berry Farm. I was quite looking forward to this park and I'm glad it was a quiet day, I think it was busy our day may have gone quite differently. It should also be noted that no matter how we looked at it when originally planning this trip we weren't able to do the Scary Farm event. Anywho, I'm getting distracted here. Despite having an online thingy the queue for the 3 ticket booths where we had to exchange them were crazy slow and had long queues despite having about 5 people in each line *rolls eyes*. A slightly frustrating start then, but we were soon on our way in and running around inside the park.
Ghostrider was obviously spiting, was surprised to see new bits of wood going down for the track already...
We decided to head to the back of the park where Iron Reef was. This meant going through the old West area which is incredible. For a start there was an old guy who was playing a banjo...
We grabbed a quick snack for breakfast. We admired this awesome fountain...
It was then time to walk straight on Voyage to the Iron Reef. If you haven't heard what this is yet, it is a Triotech shooty dark ride which has a cool underwater/steampunk theme. I'm going to start with a negative - the cars. Just, what were they thinking??? Basically you sit down and then the whole of the front section of the car has to be manually pushed towards you to lock you in, meaning that everyone thinks they have loads of leg room/bag space and then all of a sudden, like a galactic waste disposal room the front is coming towards you and you begin to run out of space! Very poor design all round.
However the ride itself totally blew my expectations out of the water. I should admit that they were quite low because Cedar Fair making a modern dark ride is a new thing. Unless you spend ages hearing the spiel in the queueline the story basically makes no sense but everything looks quite nice. I also didn't quite understand why vehicles had to go around in pairs (not like capacity was great anyway due to that whole manual car closure thing) - sometimes this meant you felt a bit too late into the action (if you are in the second car), I dunno, it's weird. There's also plenty of dead sections between screens which was annoying.
Good things then? It's very good fun, and more importantly, it's re-ridable. There was a fantastic moment too where you're looking at one screen then this creature thing swims rapidly towards you and then "past" you on to another screen which is behind you, it was simple but worked wonders. We all genuinely enjoyed it and looked forward to getting on again - but there were creds to get!
We headed along to the rest of the coast themed area. It looked like it had recently gone through a re-theme, was this due to Iron Reef? Either way, it looked quite nice with it's bright colours and caught the look of seaside attractions really well. Feel like that is somewhat a backhanded compliment though as most of those attractions are quite ugly and grubby.
Still, there were creds everywhere. We chose to get coast rider out of the way first. It was meh, it also seemed to grind along the track which was weird. +1
It was then on to the suitably named Boomerang, Boomerang. It was ok but the restraints managed to dig into my shoulders making for a fairly unpleasant ride.
It was then on to Xcelerator which was quite brilliant. Then again I think Stealth is quite good (strong launch, plenty of airtime on that little hill) and this was just an extended version, good times.
We then queued up for the log flume which was apparently where all the people were hiding. The ride was fun but all that effort on the internal scenes seemed pointless as you just go past them so quickly. Just like Splash Mountain we got drenched on the internal drop. After that we found the main drop to be quite pathetic, a shame.
We then went on the little mine train ride. This also had quite a queue. It was an unusual attraction, rather interesting though considering its age.
We then went to watch Mystery Lodge which I'd seen Gavin reference like 20 times due to all the similar shows opening in China lately. It was a cool show, the final effect is pulled off extremely well.
Never did go insider this haunt museum
We then walked on to Pony Express which has a good launch and then pretty much turns around and then back into the station. Lame.
As it was next to it we then went on the rapids which were pretty good. Just nowhere near the high standard set by the one at California Adventure a week beforehand.
We then went for some food. With no prior knowledge about what is meant to be good etc we ended up in this amazing little restaurant called Ghost Town Grill. All the waitresses were old ladies and they were fab, it reminded me of Silver Dollar City and Dollywood and all their fab staff. The food was pretty epic too and was reasonable.
Fact map was fab
A burger the size of Patrick's face
There was an actual blacksmith doing his thing. Yet another thing that reminded me of SDC/DW.
The Ghost town area was just so awesome. The fact map claimed a lot of the buildings are originals that the original owner transported to the site.
It was then time to continue to the cred hunt. First up was Jaguar, the stupidly long Tivoli. It does gain some decent speed at times but overall it's not that exciting. Station theming was fab though.
It was then time for Montezooma's Revenge, a Schwarzkopf shuttle loop coaster. I've ridden a few of these now and they never fail to amaze me. The forces through the loop is just insane and the kick from the launch is just brilliant.
It was then back round to Sierra Sidewinder (not sure why we walked past it before Jaguar). We got some amazing spinning action and it's quite a fun layout.
It was then time for Silver Bullet. This was brilliant, the zero g was fantastic, it was intense and that final helix was insane. Yeah, we needed to do that again and luckily no one was in the queue so we just stayed on <3 Twice was enough in a row though, it's just too intense to keep re-riding.
We kept seeing Boysenberry mentioned on all the food menus, this sign really cleared things up. However they were under Silver Bullet which seemed like an unusual location to grow berries. Oh and fun fact, they also sold ice slush drinks with Boysenberry flavour, they're obsessed with the stuff.
We then decided to take it down a notch so we grabbed some water and waited for the stagecoach to arrive for a random little tour of half the park. We were sat on the top at the back, it was slightly terrifying. It also offered some unique views of some parts of the park.
How many creds can you see?
Wasn't sure what this construction site was for, think it's for an expansion of the Ghost town?
We then decided to have another go on Voyage to the Iron Reef. Still enjoyed it despite it's flaws. Oh and one section the calibration on the guns completely went mental, that was annoying. We then decided to have a go on the dodgems.
We then did the Surfside gliders which was fun.
We then grabbed an ice drink to help cool down and sat down for the Wild West stunt show. The humour/script was aimed at the little ones which made it quite hard to watch (it was just a bit too silly). There were some nice moments in there but overall I didn't enjoy it.
We then ran around and got another ride in on Silver Bullet which was still excellent. I attempted to get on the little kiddy cred but I was just a bit too tall to get on. Drat.
Love day of the dead theming
Patrick and I then had two goes on Montezooma's Revenge. We had the whole train to ourselves which was fab. It's just soooo good.
The park was now closing and just before we leave Patrick realised he's left his camera somewhere. We try to trace back our steps to try and work out where he'd left it. While Patrick waited patiently in guest services we went to check out the drink stand we had visited just before the wild west show. Turns out it was there but they sent it to guest services. Yay. We then spent what felt like bloody eternity waiting for some senior member of staff to come along to open the safe with a special key to hand back his camera. However the lady that came to help was miserable and just the worst. She came in like it was some horrible chore, faffed around with another issue someone was having and then finally opened the safe and instead of finishing off by handing it back to Patrick she just left it on the side and left without even telling one of the other lovely staff members. The lady we initially dealt with finally realised and gave the manager lady a dirty look like a proper "wtf are you doing?". Couldn't believe how rude that lady was, acting all important and you know what she went back to doing? Standing outside not doing anything. Urgh. #endrant
We then did a bit of tat shopping but there was barely anything ride related which was sad. There was a cool old map on one of the walls though...
We then got back into the car and made our way to our next (and also our last) hotel. The Castle Inn & Suites near Disneyland. This was mainly due to cost of hotels more than anything, we weirdly found anything outside Anaheim to be crazy money in comparison. Oh well, it meant that we could take a wander into Downtown Disney and check out Trader Sams at the Disneyland hotel.
Trader Sams is an epic Tiki-bar with epic theming everywhere you look. We decided to grab some cocktails and some food. It didn't take long before someone ordered one of the special cocktails which starts off some sort of event. For example one sets off a Volcanic eruption (projection stuff through a fake window), one sets off a storm which is lighting effects and staff spraying water into the air. It's generally great fun and the staff are amazing. The food was also pretty darn good. Have some poor photos...
Yay, I got a shrunken head souvenir cup. It contained ALL of the rum
Really glad we went in here. Patrick and I were a little concerned before going in because it's tiny and if we didn't get a table it would have just been awkward. So we were very happy when a table became free shortly after we arrived. Highly recommend checking out, even if it's for a few minutes to check out the effects. I'd love to see something like this come to Paris.
We then went back to the hotel and got a proper good nights rest before another long day.
I really liked Knotts, it's not perfect but it has a great selection of attractions with some really stand out ones (looking at you Silver Bullet). I think some areas look rather sad compared to others but it'll be interesting to see how the park changes over the next 5 or so years. I think we all just enjoyed ourselves though and that's the main thing. Had it been busy I'd have totally been telling a different tale me thinks.
Thanks for reading! Only 2 more days to go!
We got up at a fairly decent time, checked out of our lovely Hollywood hotel and then drove back down to Anaheim for Knotts Berry Farm. I was quite looking forward to this park and I'm glad it was a quiet day, I think it was busy our day may have gone quite differently. It should also be noted that no matter how we looked at it when originally planning this trip we weren't able to do the Scary Farm event. Anywho, I'm getting distracted here. Despite having an online thingy the queue for the 3 ticket booths where we had to exchange them were crazy slow and had long queues despite having about 5 people in each line *rolls eyes*. A slightly frustrating start then, but we were soon on our way in and running around inside the park.
Ghostrider was obviously spiting, was surprised to see new bits of wood going down for the track already...
We decided to head to the back of the park where Iron Reef was. This meant going through the old West area which is incredible. For a start there was an old guy who was playing a banjo...
We grabbed a quick snack for breakfast. We admired this awesome fountain...
It was then time to walk straight on Voyage to the Iron Reef. If you haven't heard what this is yet, it is a Triotech shooty dark ride which has a cool underwater/steampunk theme. I'm going to start with a negative - the cars. Just, what were they thinking??? Basically you sit down and then the whole of the front section of the car has to be manually pushed towards you to lock you in, meaning that everyone thinks they have loads of leg room/bag space and then all of a sudden, like a galactic waste disposal room the front is coming towards you and you begin to run out of space! Very poor design all round.
However the ride itself totally blew my expectations out of the water. I should admit that they were quite low because Cedar Fair making a modern dark ride is a new thing. Unless you spend ages hearing the spiel in the queueline the story basically makes no sense but everything looks quite nice. I also didn't quite understand why vehicles had to go around in pairs (not like capacity was great anyway due to that whole manual car closure thing) - sometimes this meant you felt a bit too late into the action (if you are in the second car), I dunno, it's weird. There's also plenty of dead sections between screens which was annoying.
Good things then? It's very good fun, and more importantly, it's re-ridable. There was a fantastic moment too where you're looking at one screen then this creature thing swims rapidly towards you and then "past" you on to another screen which is behind you, it was simple but worked wonders. We all genuinely enjoyed it and looked forward to getting on again - but there were creds to get!
We headed along to the rest of the coast themed area. It looked like it had recently gone through a re-theme, was this due to Iron Reef? Either way, it looked quite nice with it's bright colours and caught the look of seaside attractions really well. Feel like that is somewhat a backhanded compliment though as most of those attractions are quite ugly and grubby.
Still, there were creds everywhere. We chose to get coast rider out of the way first. It was meh, it also seemed to grind along the track which was weird. +1
It was then on to the suitably named Boomerang, Boomerang. It was ok but the restraints managed to dig into my shoulders making for a fairly unpleasant ride.
It was then on to Xcelerator which was quite brilliant. Then again I think Stealth is quite good (strong launch, plenty of airtime on that little hill) and this was just an extended version, good times.
We then queued up for the log flume which was apparently where all the people were hiding. The ride was fun but all that effort on the internal scenes seemed pointless as you just go past them so quickly. Just like Splash Mountain we got drenched on the internal drop. After that we found the main drop to be quite pathetic, a shame.
We then went on the little mine train ride. This also had quite a queue. It was an unusual attraction, rather interesting though considering its age.
We then went to watch Mystery Lodge which I'd seen Gavin reference like 20 times due to all the similar shows opening in China lately. It was a cool show, the final effect is pulled off extremely well.
Never did go insider this haunt museum
We then walked on to Pony Express which has a good launch and then pretty much turns around and then back into the station. Lame.
As it was next to it we then went on the rapids which were pretty good. Just nowhere near the high standard set by the one at California Adventure a week beforehand.
We then went for some food. With no prior knowledge about what is meant to be good etc we ended up in this amazing little restaurant called Ghost Town Grill. All the waitresses were old ladies and they were fab, it reminded me of Silver Dollar City and Dollywood and all their fab staff. The food was pretty epic too and was reasonable.
Fact map was fab
A burger the size of Patrick's face
There was an actual blacksmith doing his thing. Yet another thing that reminded me of SDC/DW.
The Ghost town area was just so awesome. The fact map claimed a lot of the buildings are originals that the original owner transported to the site.
It was then time to continue to the cred hunt. First up was Jaguar, the stupidly long Tivoli. It does gain some decent speed at times but overall it's not that exciting. Station theming was fab though.
It was then time for Montezooma's Revenge, a Schwarzkopf shuttle loop coaster. I've ridden a few of these now and they never fail to amaze me. The forces through the loop is just insane and the kick from the launch is just brilliant.
It was then back round to Sierra Sidewinder (not sure why we walked past it before Jaguar). We got some amazing spinning action and it's quite a fun layout.
It was then time for Silver Bullet. This was brilliant, the zero g was fantastic, it was intense and that final helix was insane. Yeah, we needed to do that again and luckily no one was in the queue so we just stayed on <3 Twice was enough in a row though, it's just too intense to keep re-riding.
We kept seeing Boysenberry mentioned on all the food menus, this sign really cleared things up. However they were under Silver Bullet which seemed like an unusual location to grow berries. Oh and fun fact, they also sold ice slush drinks with Boysenberry flavour, they're obsessed with the stuff.
We then decided to take it down a notch so we grabbed some water and waited for the stagecoach to arrive for a random little tour of half the park. We were sat on the top at the back, it was slightly terrifying. It also offered some unique views of some parts of the park.
How many creds can you see?
Wasn't sure what this construction site was for, think it's for an expansion of the Ghost town?
We then decided to have another go on Voyage to the Iron Reef. Still enjoyed it despite it's flaws. Oh and one section the calibration on the guns completely went mental, that was annoying. We then decided to have a go on the dodgems.
We then did the Surfside gliders which was fun.
We then grabbed an ice drink to help cool down and sat down for the Wild West stunt show. The humour/script was aimed at the little ones which made it quite hard to watch (it was just a bit too silly). There were some nice moments in there but overall I didn't enjoy it.
We then ran around and got another ride in on Silver Bullet which was still excellent. I attempted to get on the little kiddy cred but I was just a bit too tall to get on. Drat.
Love day of the dead theming
Patrick and I then had two goes on Montezooma's Revenge. We had the whole train to ourselves which was fab. It's just soooo good.
The park was now closing and just before we leave Patrick realised he's left his camera somewhere. We try to trace back our steps to try and work out where he'd left it. While Patrick waited patiently in guest services we went to check out the drink stand we had visited just before the wild west show. Turns out it was there but they sent it to guest services. Yay. We then spent what felt like bloody eternity waiting for some senior member of staff to come along to open the safe with a special key to hand back his camera. However the lady that came to help was miserable and just the worst. She came in like it was some horrible chore, faffed around with another issue someone was having and then finally opened the safe and instead of finishing off by handing it back to Patrick she just left it on the side and left without even telling one of the other lovely staff members. The lady we initially dealt with finally realised and gave the manager lady a dirty look like a proper "wtf are you doing?". Couldn't believe how rude that lady was, acting all important and you know what she went back to doing? Standing outside not doing anything. Urgh. #endrant
We then did a bit of tat shopping but there was barely anything ride related which was sad. There was a cool old map on one of the walls though...
We then got back into the car and made our way to our next (and also our last) hotel. The Castle Inn & Suites near Disneyland. This was mainly due to cost of hotels more than anything, we weirdly found anything outside Anaheim to be crazy money in comparison. Oh well, it meant that we could take a wander into Downtown Disney and check out Trader Sams at the Disneyland hotel.
Trader Sams is an epic Tiki-bar with epic theming everywhere you look. We decided to grab some cocktails and some food. It didn't take long before someone ordered one of the special cocktails which starts off some sort of event. For example one sets off a Volcanic eruption (projection stuff through a fake window), one sets off a storm which is lighting effects and staff spraying water into the air. It's generally great fun and the staff are amazing. The food was also pretty darn good. Have some poor photos...
Yay, I got a shrunken head souvenir cup. It contained ALL of the rum
Really glad we went in here. Patrick and I were a little concerned before going in because it's tiny and if we didn't get a table it would have just been awkward. So we were very happy when a table became free shortly after we arrived. Highly recommend checking out, even if it's for a few minutes to check out the effects. I'd love to see something like this come to Paris.
We then went back to the hotel and got a proper good nights rest before another long day.
I really liked Knotts, it's not perfect but it has a great selection of attractions with some really stand out ones (looking at you Silver Bullet). I think some areas look rather sad compared to others but it'll be interesting to see how the park changes over the next 5 or so years. I think we all just enjoyed ourselves though and that's the main thing. Had it been busy I'd have totally been telling a different tale me thinks.
Thanks for reading! Only 2 more days to go!
