New Knott’s attraction see-worthy

Change is important at all theme parks, especially those in Southern California where the competition is so heavy. Knott’s Berry Farm sits in the shadow of Disneyland and California Adventure, while Universal Studios Hollywood and Six Flags Magic Mountain are just up the road. A new attraction — or a revamped old one — gives visitors another reason to go back to the park.

Arthur Levine, a theme parks expert at about.com says that theme park officials must straddle the line between the old and the new when making any changes.

“People love going to parks — especially one as old as Knott’s — to experience the things they did as a child. They expect to see certain things,” Levine says. “Nostalgia is very important but at the same time, the parks must keep re-inventing themselves with the latest technology. It’s a curious blend of the old and new.”

The crowds the new attraction is drawing are rather unique for theme parks. Levine explains that there are generally two types of theme parks: major destination parks and seasonal ones. Knott’s isn’t a destination park but is more than a seasonal, too. It’s open all year long.

He sees “Voyage to the Reef” as Knott’s Berry Farm stepping up and taking the park to another level.

“Knott’s has carved out this unique space,” Levine says.

Read the rest at FresnoBee

Creating "Blockbuster Beagle" Snoopy On Ice Show At Knott's Berry Farm

The Ghost Town Miners - Knott's Berry Farm Song!

Classic Candy Store in Boardwalk is now open

Classic Candy Store in Boardwalk is now open! Look very nice inside and lots of Knott's Candy!!!! #newatknotts #knotts #knottssummer #knottsberryfarm #boardwalk #themepark #amusementpark #buenapark #cedarfair

Posted by Knott's Network on Sunday, June 21, 2015

Food's actually getting good at these theme parks

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Knott's Berry Farm in California has one of the most creative and ambitious food programs among parks. It started as a working berry farm and roadside stand in the 1920s (and is recognized for developing the hybrid boysenberry), expanded to include a restaurant, and eventually morphed into a theme park. Mrs. Knott's Chicken Dinner Restaurant, located next to the park, remains as popular today as the park itself.

"Food has such a great history and heritage here," says John Chiu, Knott's director of food and beverage. "We want to create great memories, and food should be a part of them." Among the memorable items that Chiu and his team serve are white chocolate mashed potatoes, honey and garlic glazed salmon served in lemongrass rice, and a rib eye steak sandwich served on grilled cheese bread with arugula, green tomatoes, and other fixings.

Read the rest at USAToday

The Peanuts Movie | Official Trailer [HD] | FOX Family

Justice League: Battle for Metropolis ride POV at Six Flags Over Texas

Knott's News: I just want to congratulate Six Flags on what a spectacular job they did with this new Justice League dark ride. The original version Sally made for Warner Bros. Movie World was mediocre at best but when I heard of the talent they had involved with this one I knew I'd be amazing. Now having finally ridden it myself I can say for a fact that it is. It's everything I wish Voyage to the Iron Reef was and I once again have to congratulate everyone involved. Now for the hard part, maintaining it.

Note: Ignore the crappy GoPro audio in the video. It seems as though it only picked up the on-board audio, which is why you only hear an engine revving.

New seats at the lower level of The Charlie M Schulz Theatre!

New seats at the lower level of The Charlie M Schulz Theatre!
Posted by Knott's Network on Sunday, June 14, 2015

Reflect and Premier Mounts Monetize Waiting Spaces for Cedar Fair Amusement and Water Park Operations Company

Premier Mounts, an internationally recognized leader in the design and manufacture of innovative A/V mounting solutions, recently partnered with Reflect Systems, a national, full-service provider of out-of-home digital media solutions, to help Cedar Fair Amusement and Water Park Operations Company to make profitable use of its ride queue spaces in 11 of their nationwide parks. A preliminary consultation with Reflect revealed that Cedar Fair could monetize its queue areas by displaying a stream of advertising and park-related promotions to guests waiting for rides. In addition to generating revenue, a pervasive digital signage program would entertain guests during wait times and enable park managers to promote under-served venues in real time.

Cedar Fair's ride queue areas presented a number of display mounting challenges. Virtually all of the 300+ displays would be hung on 3.5" or 4" cylindrical steel poles. Viewing angles varied by site. Unlike the relatively controlled environment of a retail store, airport, or office building, amusement parks present a range of unusual vantage points, closer proximity to the displays themselves, and differing heights of the viewers. In some cases, there would be two displays back-to-back on a pole. Elsewhere, there would be one display per pole. The displays were all outdoors, which meant that the mounts would have wind load resistance, and also be corrosion-resistant with an outdoor rated, UV-resistant protective finish for outdoor durability.

Read the rest at MarketWatch

Knott's News: These people made the FunTVs, incase you didn't pick up on that.

Classic Candy opening soon

Classic Candy Opening Soon! #knotts #boardwalk #knottsberryfarm #amusementpark #themepark #buenapark #cedarfair

Posted by Knott's Network on Sunday, June 7, 2015

The Fire truck has left the farm

The Fire truck has left the farm, I heard long ago it was going to a museum. #boardwalk #knotts #knottsberryfarm #themepark #amusementpark #buenapark #cedarfair
Posted by Knott's Network on Sunday, June 7, 2015

Knott's News: Theming? We don't need no stinking theming!

MASTERCHEF | Amusement Park Challenge | FOX BROADCASTING

'MasterChef' heads to Knott's

Knott’s Berry Farm makes a special guest appearance this week on “MasterChef,” Fox’s cooking competition for amateur chefs.

The 20 remaining contestants head to Buena Park for their first team challenge, where they will serve hamburgers and fish and chips to the crowds. The episode was filmed back in January, and amateur video of it is posted on YouTube, where you can see which team won. (And you wonder why reality shows don’t do more public events.)

“MasterChef” airs at 8 p.m. Wednesday. And can we say how much we already prefer new judge Christina Tosi to Joe Bastianich?

Read the rest on OCRegister

Kelli Berglund, Sweet Suspense, and Blake Michael Celebrated the Opening of Voyage to the Iron Reef at Knott's Berry Farm!

This is BIG! Whenever Knott’s Berry Farm unveils a new ride, it’s more than just a grand opening. It’s an epic event! And this week, the opening of Voyage to the Iron Reef 4D really brought out the stars!

Kelli Berglund and her boyfriend Sterling Beaumon, Blake Michael, Sweet Suspense, Nolan Gould, and Gavin MacIntosh are just a few of the stars that made it for the premiere of Voyage to the Iron Reef 4D.

Read the rest at fanlala

Prepare for battle and dive in at Knott’s Berry Farm

Some years ago, without forsaking its Old West-ghost town feel, Knott’s Berry farm began frontloading a dozen or so thrill rides which then polarized its clientele: the younger set could head for the coasters while the older folks could still visit the quieter gold rush-era shops, museums, and other attractions.

“Voyage to the Iron Reef” is essentially an immersive-submersible video game, but it’s also pretty much age-friendly, meaning that grandmothers and grandkids can enjoy it together. In short, it bridges the extreme and the sedate.

[...]

Also, there’s not much atmosphere outside of the ride itself. The approach up the stairs and the waiting areas need additional decor: There’s more of this in the Nautilus storefront window than anywhere else. Knott’s should do a little more to put riders in the mood–waits can be two hours or so right now–and to build up the suspense. At this time the waiting areas are pretty barren. One more thing, why not attire the ride operators in outfits more conducive to the starpunk genre?

When the attraction opened, traffic flow was spotty, although I suspect this issue will be or has already been ironed out. “Toy Story Midway Mania” at Disneyland seats two riders per car instead of four, which makes it more fun and intimate. But of course the rides differ in that one is the height of levity while the other reaches for intense dramatic effect.

Perhaps “Voyage” shouldn’t be overly intellectualized, except that its creators have already invested us in a backstory of sorts. Putting that aside for the moment, it’s without doubt an enthralling experience. But with a few more touch-ups it can actually be even more memorable.

Read the rest at EasyReaderNews

Southern California's Newest Dark Ride Debuts With a Splash: A Look Beneath Its Surface

During an interview, Yale declined to discuss financials. "It's a good budget," he said.

Raffi Kaprelyan declined to disclose an exact number but confirmed that the ride cost around $15 million.

[...]

Problems with mechanics, capacity, and theme specificity may impede the ride's becoming a classic.

The basic storyline is that an army of steampunk sea creatures led by the "Kraken Queen" have taken over Knott's, eating roller coasters to sate their appetite for steel. The vehicles on "Voyage to the Iron Reef" are supposed to be submarines; passengers shoot and kill sea creatures in attempt to forestall the park's destruction.

Knott's plays up the originality of the ride's back-story and theme, as opposed to being franchised or off-the-shelf.

However, the back-story is superficial and opaque; the average rider is unlikely to grasp it without having read auxiliary information beforehand. More could have been done with façade or queue design to convey the back-story to riders before embarking. Once on the ride, there is little in the way of plot development. Creatures get larger from scene to scene until a final encounter with the Kraken Queen; but suspense seems to build up from start to finish merely because it's supposed to; it isn't tied in to a compelling narrative.

The ride would have benefited from designer Daniel Miller's expertise in quick and efficient storytelling in Haunt mazes like "Tooth Fairy." Miller played only a miniscule role in the ride creation, sitting in on meetings and doing a few concept drawings.

[...]

I played 12 times and was disappointed each time the ride ended. The game is addicting, making its low capacity all the more unfortunate. The stated capacity is 800 riders per hour. By all appearances, this is an overestimate. Research shows that actual capacity is probably about 50% of that.

For a while on opening day, malfunctions reduced the capacity of many cars from four to two. Ride attendants said that there were problems with weight--more than two people precluded cars from spinning correctly. This happened once when I rode; and the experience was severely diminished: the car didn't turn around at the appropriate time, so we faced away from the screens and were unable to shoot. Several mechanics worked on fixing problems; and the ride appeared to be fully functional towards the end of the day.

Still, lines were long and slow moving. In addition to press, season pass-holders previewed the ride on the 13th. Many were disappointed when the queue was prematurely closed 45 minutes before park closing.

Even with front-of-the line passes, media rarely waited less than 30 minutes throughout the day. This prefigures lengthy waits after the new ride opens to the public, especially on weekends and during the summer.

The loading area was not designed for maximum efficiency. Only two cars are loaded and unloaded at a time; others back up behind them. Another loading area would almost certainly be needed in order to achieve the stated capacity of 800. There should have been enough room for four cars to be loaded and unloaded at a time.

"Just like anything else, we'll fine tune things to get it to the perfect spot," Kaprelyan said.

Hopefully, changes will be made to improve capacity. Perhaps a reservation system similar to the one for "Infected" will be implemented to shorten lines.

Despite its flaws, "Voyage to the Iron Reef" is an enjoyable ride. The fact that I spent most of the day riding 12 times speaks for itself. It will be interesting to follow the evolution of this unique addition to Knott's armamentarium.

Read the rest at HuffingtonPost

What would I do to make Voyage to the Iron Reef even better?

As the title suggests, these are the changes I'd make to Voyage to the Iron Reef - outside of re-animating the entire attraction - to make it a better experience for park guests.

Knotts’ New Ride ‘Voyage to the Iron Reef’ Is ‘Transformers’ Meets ‘Toy Story Mania’

I’ve always considered myself somewhat of a theme park and amusement park connoisseur, but at heart I’m a Disneyland fanatic. I’ve been a Disneyland annual passholder for as long as I’ve lived in Southern California. I’ve also had a Universal Hollywood annual pass a couple times, and have frequented their fantastic Halloween Horror Nights. But for whatever reason, I’ve never been to Knott’s Berry Farm, outside of eating at Mrs. Knott’s Fried Chicken Restaurant which sits right outside the park. Why? I’m not sure. Maybe its that friends have never seemed interested, and going to theme parks is for me a group experience. It might actually be that I’m a Disney snob and always looked at the park as some kind of small kiddie park. But it is also probably because I’ve never seen photos of a ride that got me interested enough to go there, until last week.

Knott’s Berry Farm’s newest attraction Voyage to the Iron Reef launched last week and the photos of the ride caught my attention. It didn’t look like another repurposed amusement attraction — it looked like a modern technologically-enhanced interactive dark ride akin to what we see from Disney and Universal. So I took a trip to Buena Park, California to encounter the Iron Reef myself. Read my Voyage to the Iron Reef review after the jump.

Read the rest at slashfilm

Knott's News: I'm excited by the amount of good press this attraction is receiving  Yes, I'm disappointed with Iron Reef but it's success can only lead to bigger and better things in the future. Remembering that it's media base makes changing it up in the future - possibly a Kingdom of the Dinosaurs themed romp - a breeze also helps to alleviate my disappointment. 

Since it seems to be attracting an audience that usually overlooks Knott's - one that may stick with them after seeing the value they're getting - maybe we'll finally push past that 4 million visitors barrier. Congrats to Knott's on what seems to be another successful addition the park!

Reminder: This is what modern video games look like (for those who honestly don't know)!

There is a lot of misinformation going around by the Cedar Fair marketing team and TrioTech that interactive realtime rendering just can't compete with the pre-rendered stuff at Disney / Universal. Yes, while it could never look as good as something that spends days on a render farm, the new realtime rendering techniques of today's game engines can easily mimic the style of pre-rendered animation.

Let me show you:

Beneath the Boardwalk: Creating Voyage to the Iron Reef Knott's Berry Farm