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Knott's Scary Farm 2005 Review
By R.J. Cavender

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The last Friday before Halloween I was lucky enough to be able to spend the evening at Knott's Berry Farms 33rd Annual Halloween Haunt. Or, as it's better known at that time of year, 'Knott's Scary Farm". For my money, it was one of the best amusement part experiences I've ever had.

For twenty-five nights in October, the Snoopy themed Knott's Berry Farm transforms into a one-hundred-and-sixty acre living nightmare complete with a dozen haunted houses, themed versions of the parks main rides, and a thousand fully-costumed street performers roaming the darkness to scare you.

The costumed employee's known as 'scare masters' are really a whole bucketful of hellish fun. Imagine you're standing in line, not paying attention, and suddenly you turn your head and you' re face-to-face with a decomposing clown with needle sharp teeth and a huge blue afro. Or you're walking through a foggy section of the park ( smoke machines are everywhere!) and what you think is just another park visitor walks straight at out through the dark and suddenly the produce a running chainsaw from behind their back and chase you and your friends down the walkway. It' s just like being in a living nightmare. There's never a second that you are 'safe'. Plus, watching grown adults run from people in rubber masks is downright hilarious.

The haunted houses were top notch entertainment. Make no mistake, the park recommends the Halloween Haunt be visited by guests 13 and over. Once I hit my first haunted house I knew why. Each one of the haunted attractions had a different theme, with "Hatchet High", "Lore of the Vampire" and "Carnival of Carnivorous Clown from Outer Space in 3-D" just being a few of the twelve freaky attractions. The 3-D attractions were new this year and they were by far my favorite, with kudos going to the park for not digging at paying guests for much extra for the purchase of the 3-D glasses. They were available at the front of each 3-D attraction for a mere dollar, and one pair is all you'll need for three separate houses.

The haunted houses were done to the highest of standards, and I found myself really impressed with the effort that must have gone into building these with such smart design. Each house had several unique tricks and lots of hidden passages, making each trip through the attraction new, versatile, and unique. I'll admit it; I jumped more than my fair share. The builders of the spook houses were inventive in their usage of false walls within the structures, and quite masterful in their craft of diverting your attention. Once they have you focused on something scary in a certain area of a room, something totally unexpected will come at you from the other direction.

The lines outside the attractions looked rather ominous at first, but once you got into line they actually moved rather quickly The wait for the haunted houses was only about five to ten minutes, with the average wait for most of the park's roller coasters being about fifteen to twenty minutes. Knott's reserves the right to sell only a predetermined amount of tickets for the Halloween Haunt, so the park is considerably less crowded than you'd expect. I was surprised at how quick it was to navigate the park, get through the beer line, or stop in and use the restroom. Even for a Friday night just days before Halloween, the park was bustling, but nowhere near what I would consider to be overly crowded.

Knott's Scary Farm was the world's first Halloween theme park event and remains the world' s largest theme park Halloween event even today. The origins of the Halloween celebration go all the way back to October 31, 1973 with some modest Halloween decorations in the Ghost Town portion of the park and a couple dozen live monsters lurking in the fog to scare unsuspecting visitors. The first walk-through maze was added the next year.
By the third year Wolfman Jack was hired as the park's first celebrity host, a gig he returned to five times over. And both Elvira®, Mistress of the DarkTM, and the Cryptkeeper® have also served as Halloween Haunt hosts over the years.

This year there was no host that I knew of, but there was a big budget stage show mid-park that had blood and guts flying through the air synchronized to choreographed stunts and impressive pyrotechnic effects. The stage show is called "The Hanging" and it's another tradition at Knott's that lampoons the celebrities and pop icons of the year and pits the famous against the best of the infamous of the horror world in a battle royale ala "Celebrity Death Match". It may be your only chance to see Michael Meyers and Jason Voorhees take on the likes of Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. Lots of fun, and gallons of blood!

After seeing all the sights we could, the group and I decided to take in a few rollercoaster's. We' d hit almost every haunted house there was to see, so we turned our sites to the evening skyline. Unfortunately, quite a few other people had the same idea around that time. The lines looked long on most of the rides, so we waited until we saw a few that looked like the wait time would be less than the half-hour that we had left.

The first coaster we rode was Jaguar! (The exclamation point is part of the ride's name, I assure you.) An added bonus we didn't know about was that the entire walkway up to the platform of the coaster was transformed into an Aztec themed sacrificial haunted house. One last haunting for the night was a pleasant surprise. The coaster itself was a thunderous thriller that takes passengers on a fast moving trip in and out of many of the park's main attractions Jaguar(!) has three separate lift hills and exerted some heavy g-force on some of the more daring curves. Never a dull second, and a sure hit with the riders who like to ride with there hands thrown up over their heads the entire time.

Montezooma's Revenge (again, the park's spelling, not mine) was our last stop of the night, a crazy high speed coaster that starts out insane and only gets better from there. When the coaster leaves the station it accelerates from zero to fifty-five miles-per-hour in a matter of three seconds. Then the rider is hurled through a seven story full forward loop before ascending what feels like a straight up climb until it slowly comes to a stop suspending the rider in a good two seconds of weightless 'hang time'. Then gravity takes its toll, and the coaster descends the heights, pulls you backwards through the same loop, backwards through the station and out the OTHER side where you ascend another nearly vertical climb backwards. You reach the top o f that climb and have the same sort of hang time, but facing the ground below you this time. Then the coaster slams back towards the station when gravity takes control of it again, and you brake in the station at near full speed. It was breakneck and breathtaking. It's the sort of coaster you get off of and get right back in line to ride again.

All in all, this years Knott's Scary Farm was a better than most experience and certainly an event I will plan for in advance next year. My only near complaint would be the ticket price. Not that I found it to be too expensive, but I could see some folks being put off by a forty-one dollar ticket price. It was more if you didn't buy them in advance. Maybe that is the point after all, to make it slightly higher than average and it will keep the crowds to a manageable size. But, slightly overpriced or not, I'll be going back next year. After all, it was seven hours of after-dark entertainment like I'd never seen before. Something like that, I'm willing to pay a decent price for year after year. A haunted great time was had by all.