Login Using Facebook Knott's Berry Farm
8039 Beach Blvd, Buena Park, CA 90620 (714) 220-5200
Hours
| M: | 9-5 |
| T: | 9-5 |
| W: | 9-5 |
| T: | 9-5 |
| F: | 9-5 |
| S: | Closed |
| S: | Closed |
Location
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LA Weekly Best Of
Los Angeles, CABest L.A. Roller Coaster: Mild-Mannered Water Coaster
There is a certain class of rides that is not quite waterslide, not quite roller coaster proper. Water-coasters are distinct from rides like Big Foot Rapids at Knott's, where you and your party clamber aboard a large circular rubber innertube with seats, are carried along a rolling bagel-toaster-like conveyor belt and bounced along swirling "rapids."
Splash Mountain is like a musical safari, on water, on LSD. There is a narrative, presumably to explain the bears, donkeys, buzzing bees, gigantic mushrooms, oversized carrots, storks, pelicans, dancing cats, dancing birds and the hootenanny of other animals that serenade you as your log floats by in the underground caverns, but who knows what it is? It is sublime, though, in a way that makes perfect sense if you are autistic.
The Log Ride, however, is old school. There you are, rolling along in a bathtub tricked out like a log, water sloshing over the side, endeavoring as directed to "keep your arms and legs inside the log at all times." Then, suddenly, whoa! Ducks! Wolves! Disembodied eyes! Creepy loggers! Mocked by grown-ups, feared by small children, Log Ride's charms are nonetheless considerable, akin to being stuck inside a historical diorama. Won't you give it another chance?—Gendy Alimurung
LA Weekly Best Of
Los Angeles, CABest L.A. Roller Coaster: Wooden
There is heated debate among roller-coaster riders over which is better: wooden tracks or steel tracks. Steel people cite smoothness and power. Wood people cite superiority of noise, the "classic" clattering sound wheels make on wood struts. Back in the '80s, Magic Mountain's wooden behemoth Colossus was the giant to conquer. It was the tallest, the fastest and the only coaster in the world with drops of more than 10 stories. If you could ride and survive Colossus without puking, you had bragging rights across the junior high playground. Those days are gone. On a staggeringly hot day at the park, while we waited for our turn to board the Colossus trains, an attendant could be seen forlornly duct-taping something on one of the cars before the ride was taken offline entirely for the next hour.
Enter Knott's Berry Farm's Ghost Rider. It is the longest wooden roller coaster on the West Coast, and you will run out of scream before the ride runs out of track, leaving you an insensate, drooling mess on the seat. The psychological term for this is "learned helplessness." The airspace over the initial drop, I'm told, was covered with a metal roof when neighborhood residents complained about the screaming. It's a noisy, rough, exhausting, bone-jarring ride, and the deafening sound of the wheels over the tracks is the deathly rattle of a thousand angry, dancing skeletons.—Gendy Alimurung
LA Weekly Best Of
Los Angeles, CABest L.A. Roller Coaster: Recalling the Old Days
Remember when just the name Montezooma's Revenge was enough to raise your hackles? You were 8, maybe, and had to look up what it meant. And when you learned that it was a cool name for traveler's diarrhea, and were struck by the perfectness of naming a scary ride after an unpleasant bodily function, you knew that even though you were petrified beyond belief, it was time to prove your manliness. Dysentery or no dysentery, you had to ride this ride.
Like the infamous infectious Third World disease, this roller coaster doesn't last long. There is no fire-and-brimstone-wielding Aztec god (he's been moonlighting on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland), no cursed Spanish Conquistadores, just a straight shot out of the platform, a loop-de-loop, a backward spike and back.
So what if the skateboarders down at Venice Beach do more extreme tricks? This one is all about historical appeal. Such is the power of memory and brand marketing that a roller coaster named for a gastrointestinal disorder has sentimental value.—Gendy Alimurung
LA Weekly Best Of
Los Angeles, CABest L.A. Roller Coaster: Approximation of Stomach Poisoning
Imagine it as the roller-coaster version of Disneyland's whirling tea-cups ride. Germans designed this ride. It is their vision of what a desert sidewinder snake would do, influenced by a touch of waltzing. Targeted for older kids (and wussy adults), each of the spinning four-seater cars rotates uncontrollably, like a quartet of dizzy ladybugs, so you can't try to game the ride and pick out a nonspinning one beforehand. Guys, they all spin. You'll walk out with deranged visions of Camp Snoopy, which stretches out beneath. Many of the rides at both Knott's and Magic Mountain come equipped with video cameras that capture people's expressions. My suggestion to the ride makers: How about some cameras outside the ride to capture everybody clutching their stomachs and dropping to their knees?—Gendy Alimurung
LA Weekly Best Of
Los Angeles, CABest L.A. Roller Coaster: Scariest
In two seconds, this monster accelerates straight out of the gate to 82 mph via the workings of a powerful hydraulic catapult motor — and pure evil. "Like a monkey being sent into outer space," was how one guy described the sensation. Other rides are perhaps longer, slicker and more powerful, but sheer speed and angle of ascent and descent make this the Southland's single scariest ride. Xcelerator is themed as a car race, and a stoplight ticks down from red, yellow, to green at the starting line. But be warned: Your car takes off before the green light clicks on, a dastardly trick. Rumor has it that — due to rain, or heat, or passenger weight, or some supreme being's sick sense of humor — the ride sometimes stalls at the top of its infamous "cling for your life to your lap bar" vertical spike, which, viewed from the road driving up to Knott's Berry Farm, looks like a large hairpin standing on end. The entire ride, in fact, when gazed upon in the Farm's cartoon map, looks like the Ebola virus at extreme magnification. Coincidence? I think not.—Gendy Alimurung
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