After all of our amusement park adventures this year I’m happy to close out the year’s photo collection with several ride photos from Knott’s Berry Farm.

Timber Mountain Log Ride was completely rethemed into Elf Mountain Christmas during Knott’s Merry Farm and, as Knott’s so often does, it got a custom digital frame for the ride photo as well (pictured at left).  This is the epitome of a holiday frame as it not only reflects the season, but the re-themed ride as well and still perfectly frames the riders themselves.  Zaira decided this was her absolute favorite frame of the year.  Congratulations Knott’s!

Ghostrider wasn’t re-themed and didn’t receive a special holiday frame, but there was pretty big news… They installed on-ride video cameras supplied by CD R!de. We didn’t buy a video, of course, because we’ve seen them before and they’re absolute garbage. But we did buy this wonderful photo. It’s always great when the other folx in the pic are having a great time as well. And now it’s time to ask a favor…

If you’re a fan of amusement park ride and roller coaster photos and you see any booth like Ghostrider’s that has both video and still photos, buy the photo! In fact, even if they don’t have video, buy the photo! The video systems aren’t coming in because they’re better or more popular. They’re coming in because people aren’t buying enough photos. The videos are not only horrible, but the systems are far more expensive to install and maintain. But the odds of a park admitting its mistake and going back to photos are slim. So buy photos when they’re available and help ensure your kids will have the opportunity to buy them as well. </rant>

Despite the horrible experience Zaira and I had being the “first ever” riders on Pony Express, when we saw that they had a special holiday frame we knew we’d have to ride it again.  I actually really like the way the snow is depicted in this digital frame, and the ride wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as it was back in May.  We also rode in the very front of the ‘car’ and actually managed to feel a little bit of the roller coaster forces affect us.  The ride-ops have definitely mellowed out on squeezing the restraints as tight as possible and I have a feeling they loosened up on the brakes as well.  Still not a quality coaster, but no longer an all-together negative experience.

Zaira and I mistakenly made our first pilgrimage down to Knott’s Merry Farm a few days after Christmas. It seems that, despite the event being advertised as running through the first week of January, the bulk of the Christmas activities actually ceased on Christmas Eve.  Live and learn.  We’ll go earlier next year.

We were still able to grab samples of their holiday digital frames, however, with my favorite being the one pictured at left. That’s our gate photo in front of the big Peanut’s Christmas display that replaced the Pony Express display near the front gate.

Zaira actually prefers the gift wrap border (pictured at right), though it still says Knott’s Berry Farm instead of Knott’s Merry Farm.  In fact, we could find almost no merchandise with the Knott’s Merry Farm name despite there still being a plethora of Knott’s Scary Farm merchandise available from as far back as six years ago.

We did manage to find Snoopy again!  Unfortunately, he had already sent his Santa outfit to the cleaners so only had this bizarre vest that Z and I assume some distant Aunt sent as a Christmas present.  We figured he was only wearing it during photo opps so he could send her “proof” of how much he loved it   Alas, although the other members of the Peanuts gang were performing in various shows and parades, none of them were available for photos in the two days we were there.

We also managed to catch sight of this holiday ornament ‘border’ while purchasing our pictures.  Although subtle I really like it and think it capures the holiday spirit very well while not overpowering the photo itself.

Zaira and I had never attended Gilroy Gardens (aka Bonfante Gardens) Holiday Lights celebration before this year, so decided to take the plunge despite their incredibly high prices for relatively little amusement value. What really put Gilroy Gardens over the top for me was the fact that the Peanuts Gang would be there for the holidays and I was looking forward to getting our pictures taken with them since we seem to have such difficulty locating them at Knott’s Berry Farm.

As you can see (above) we first came across Linus and Charlie Brown himself. It turns out that Linus is Zaira’s favorite Peanuts character (something I didn’t know) and she was not only excited to meet him, but also to have the opportunity to purchase an “official” Linus blanket during one of the shows.

Next we met up with Sally (aka Linus’ stalker) who happily informed us that Snoopy wanted to be Santa Claus. Now, Snoopy’s always been my favorite part of the Peanuts gang specifically because of his rich fantasy life, but it seemed odd that he had such a deire to be Santa.

However, when we met Lucy she assured us that Snoopy did, in fact, want to be Santa Claus, dog germs and all! Don’t ask me why Lucy’s digital frame has wild animals on it. There are a grand total of zero animals at Gilroy Gardens. However, we were happy to add the digital frame to our collection and I do think they’re adorable in their Santa hats. It seems Snoopy isn’t the only one who worships the jolly fat man in the red suit.

Finally, we came across the wondrous beagle himself and, sure enough, he had become Santa Claus! Since we visited the park the day after Christmas Santa was on vacation and Snoopy was filling in for him at Santa’s Workshop! We also learned that at Santa’s Workshop on of the photo options was to have it in a snow globe! Since Z collects snow domes this was pretty exciting news as we’d never encountered this option before. Alas, it was not meant to be as they were all out of snowglobes But now we know to hassle other parks about it

We ended our evening (and purchased most of our photos) at the (apparently) temporary photo booth near the front gate where we were helped by Kathi. She was awesome! Not only did she provide superb customer service, but we talked with her for about 30 minutes about ride photos and amusement park photos in general. She’s also a big fan and totally understood our collecting nature! Unfortunately, I totally forgot to mention the site to her, so if you know Kathi from Gilroy Gardens could you please send her by? And pass along another thank you from Aahz and Zaira when you do!

Zaira and I have visited Knott’s Berry Farm four times now. And we finally managed to get our picture taken with Snoopy. But it wasn’t easy. In fact, we had to wait for the Camp Snoopy kids area to be transformed into Camp Spooky before we could finally find America’s favorite beagle.  Not only that, but we still had to hunt him down.  In fact, we found his staff photographer before Snoopy arrived and had a picture taken in front of his ‘house’ thinking that was the best we were going to to do.

Fortunately, for us, just after the picture above was taken we saw Snoopy (and his handler/escort, of course) enter the ‘on stage’ area (if that’s what Cedar Fair calls it) from a door tucked away in the corner.  Snoopy was one of the most gracious characters we’ve met on our park visits, even waving to us and encouraging us to wait just a few more minutes while his escort fixed his boots and straightened his pirate costume.  We waited patiently until he came over, gave Zaira a big beagle-y hug, and then posed along with us for the pic on the right. Snoopy wasn’t the only character haunting Camp Spooky on that lovely Sunday morning, though. WWe also found the folowing critters wandering about-

These have got to be some of the weirdest ‘monsters’ I’ve ever had the pleasure of encountering, but I guess they’re less frightening to the little kiddies when they’re this goofy. There was reportedly a Witch of some wort out and about on that day as well, but we kept missing her, so will have to wait until the 37th edition of Knott’s Scary Farm’s Halloween Haunt to immortalize her in our collection.  Of course, if you managed to grab a shot with her we’d love to post it up here.  BTW, I added the Haunt digital border myself after pulling it from the official photos we had taken yesterday.

Aside from our extended ‘Snoopy hunt’ we also kept managing to miss riding the Timber Mountain Log Ride on our previous visits. Well actually, we only missed it on the first two visits. Last night we did ride the Pyromaniax version of the ride, adding the re-themed photo to our collection.  Today, between monster hunts in Camp Spooky we also rode the ‘standard’ version of one of the oldest log flumes in America and picked up the picture to the right.  The dad behind us was teasing his two boys throughout the ride about how “spooky’ it was.  But they got the last laugh when they bought this photo’cause who’s the one who ends up looking the most nervous?

Knott’s Berry Farm literally invented the concept of the haunted amusement park thirty seven years ago. Now there’s hardly a theme park in the world that doesn’t do some level of revamp for Halloween. But Knott’s Scary Farm is still, by far, the best.  I hadn’t been to the Knott’s Halloween Haunt since 1996 and Zaira had never been so we were pretty excited to be able to attend opening weekend this year.  As always, Knott’s came through with flying colors, despite their takeover by Cedar Fair.

The top left photo is the cardboard frame created specifically for Halloween Haunt.  Oddly it was only available with the set photo pictured on the right. We came across this photo opp pretty quickly and Z jumped at the chance to have her picture taken in a coffin. As a father I’ve got to say this did creep me out just a bit and her mother is horrified by this picture. But Z’s all about vampires at the moment thanks to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books.

As always, Knott’s went all out with their theming and created a wonderfully spooky custom digital frame for Halloween haunt this year. In addition to using it for the gate photos (left), they also had photographers throughout the park to capture ‘monster attacks’ and other set photos near the scare zones.  The one to the right was taken in front of Xcaliber in the CarnEvil zone.

But it’s not just haunted mazes and scare zones that transforms Knott’s Berry Farm into Knott’s Scary Farm!  They are also the masters at re-theming rides.  The Timber Mountain Log Ride has regularly been converted to Pyromaniax for several years now – adding fire effects, “live” monsters, and other goodies to its usually tranquil setting. As excited as I always am to find new holiday digital frames I must say I’m a bit disappointed in the Knott’s team on this one count. The Halloween frame for Pyromanix is pretty cool, but it doesn’t seem to fit the “toxic fire” theme set by Pyromaniax. In fact it would much better match the Camp GonnaGetcha retheming of Logger’s Run at California’s Great America (which didn’t have a holiday frame at all).  The top half of the frame has definitely creepi-fied the old saw mill building, but the burbling blood and dismembered arms, while suitably Halloween themed, don’t seem to go with this ride’s theme.

Zaira and I had the pleasure of attending the opening night (aka Media Event) of the first-ever Halloween Haunt event at California’s Great America. The park has had Halloween events in the past, but nothing of this scale and not for many years.  Cedar Fair is to be applauded for tapping the crew from Knott’s Scary Farm to create Halloween Haunt at Great America as well.

Unfortunately, they barely scratched the surface of the custom, Halloween-themed digital frame.  The only one they had available was for the gate photos which you can see above.  They did go to quite a bit of effort to completely re-theme their Loggers Run log flume ride as Camp GonnaGetcha, but then dropped the ball by only having the standard digital frame available.  Luckily, for Z and I, we still needed to add the official California’s Great America digital frame to our collection.

Still, when it comes to Holiday ride photos, they’ve got a lot to learn from their older brother to the south: Knott’s Scary Farm.  You can read my full review of the event at my primary blog, Philaahzophy.

I really wish I could include Cedar Fair’s online photo service in this comparison, but I have yet to actually have a Cedar Fair park actually upload my photos as promised in the park. Considering the several hundred dollars I’ve spent on the Six Flags and Hard Rock online photo shops this is truly their loss. But that doesn’t make the “losing” of those photos any less painful for us

Since both Six Flags and Hard Rock use Kodak as their photo processor the systems are nearly identical-

1. When your gate photo is taken at Hard Rock Park or any Six Flags park the photographer should give you a small plastic card (like a credit card) with a number on it. If they don’t give you a card, ask for one.
2. Whenever you have a picture taken in the park, whether it’s a character photo, a set piece, or a ride photo ask the photographer or booth attendant to add the pictures to your card so you can purchase them online.
3. Visit the appropriate site for your park. The entrance screen should look like this -
   
4. At this point you can simply enter the number from your card and log-in or create your account if it’s your first visit.
5. You should now be on the screen containing all of the pictures you had added to your card during your visit to the park. This is also the first place that Six Flags separates itself from Hard Rock Park. You may notice the “Six Flags Photo Gallery” tab on the Six Flags screen. This will take you to a broad selection of professional photographs of the various Six Flags parks. While the vast majority of these photographs are gorgeous I’m not sure why anyone would want to pay these prices for generic photographs.
6. Speaking of the prices, this is what really separates the two sites-
   

   Item	Six Flags	Hard Rock
   5×7 Print	$12.99	$14.99
   8×10 Print	$16.99	$18.99
   Wallets (4)	$12.99	$14.99
   5×7 & Wallets (4)	$19.99	$19.99
   Two 5×7 Prints	$19.99	N/A
   16×20 Poster	$24.99	$29.99
   5×7 Print	$12.99	$14.99
   Photo Download	$44.99	$39.99
   11oz Ceramic Mug	$24.99	N/A
   Travel Mug	N/A	$29.99
   16oz Frosted Stein	N/A	$29.99
   Mouse Pad	$19.99	$19.99
   Snowflake Ornament	N/A	$24.99
   Baby Onesie	$29.99	N/A
   Beach Tote	N/A	$39.99
   Melamine Plate	$29.99	N/A
   Coasters (4)	N/A	$29.99
   Greeting Cards (20)	$29.99	N/A
   Playing Cards	N/A	$31.99
   Jigsaw Puzzle	N/A	$35.99
   T-Shirt Adult (S-XXL)	$24.99	N/A
   Black T-Shirt (S-XXL)	N/A	$24.99
   T-Shirt Youth (S-L)	$24.99	N/A
   Sweatshirt (S-XXL)	$31.99	N/A

   All prices are plus tax and shipping & handling

7. I actually got a little ahead of myself with those prices…
   Before you actually add your items to your shopping cart you can add various logos, borders and digital frames to them. You can also crop the photo and/or zoom in/out or reposition it in any of four directions. As can be seen from the various photos we’ve posted here the selection of add-ons at the Six Flags site far outshines Hard Rock at this point in time.
8. Once you’ve selected all of your photos and other items you simply go to check out where you can pay with any major credit card.
9. I’ve never ordered any custom items (the prices seem exorbitant to me for the most part), but I’ve ordered several photos from both sites and they’ve always arrived in less than a week.

I highly doubt anyone’s going to choose to visit or not visit a park based on their online souvenir photo website, but now those of you who were wondering how it all worked can see for yourselves. Hopefully I’ll get a working code for the Cedar Point website at some point in the future so I can add their information here as well.

When I found out that I could bid on a chance to be the first rider on Knott’s Berry Farm’s newest roller coaster, Pony Express, I jumped at the chance. in fact, despite the auction(s) already being up for three days I was the first person to bid. I shuold have known Cedar Fair would screw me again. I ended up winning four seats – two on the first train and two on the second. I got four seats so I could share this experience with Zaira, her half-brother Gavin, and my ex-wife. Total cost for the tickets and hotel stay was around $450. Which would have been just fine, except we weren’t the first riders. No, that honor went to people who won some KIIS-FM radio contest, not those, like myself, who donated cold hard cash to a charity of Knott’s Berry Farm’s choice.

We didn’t even manage to get the honor of “first ride photo” on Pony Express because, despite eight or so runs beofre us that morning (the camera flashing each time) they didn’t manage to capture the photos on our first run, so we had to go again just to get the photo.  At least they didn’t charge us for it too…

Much like the photo booth for Psycho Mouse at California’s Great America this photo booth is hidden in the exit path. In fact it’s a good 30 yards or more up the exit path making it near impossible to locate from outside the ride even when you’re looking for it.

Never the less, we did manage to find it, which pleased Zaira to no end as it was a very hot day and we’d simply popped over from a Coin Show at the Santa Clara Convention Center across the street from Great America.   This makes our third different log flume (and the fifth water ride) to be added to our collection.  Not a bad showing given my distaste for such rides.

Photo #067

Zaira and I visited the “new” Gilroy Gardens on Opening Day 2008 in order to see if Cedar Fair was handling it any better than they were handling Great America. Our primary goal was actually to get a new Timber Twister ride photo with the new Gilroy Gardens logo and perhaps their nifty mascot: Gil the Garlic Clove.

Unfortunately, despite having more than 18 months for the transition Gilroy Gardens was even farther behind in the transition and, despite it being the official Opening Day, the photo booth for Timber Twister was closed all day.

I simply can’t understand why these companies disregard the revenue generating opportunity of on-ride photos. I suppose they have a better view of the economics than I do, but Zaira and I regularly set aside extra budget resources in order to buy photos. If you are a fan of ride photos (and I assume you are if you’re reading this site) be sure to purchase as many photos as you can and encourage your local park management to not only maintain their current photo booths but to open more as well!