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 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.

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…