New Knott’s Ride and Return of Ghost Town Alive

Earlier this year Knott’s Berry Farm announced a water park expansion for 2017. Now they’ve announced they’re also adding a new flat ride, expanding their popular Boysenberry Festival, and on top of that bringing back and expanding the awesome (and completely unique) Ghost Town Alive!

Sol Spin

The first major announcement is that the space in that was once home to Windseeker is getting filled. Sol Spin is a new flat ride coming to Fiesta Village next Spring that will rotate guests in all directions. The ride consists of 6 arms that will rotate up to over six stories high. The picture below gives a better sense of what the new ride will be like than I can probably describe in words. It looks like a Mondial Top Scan, a pretty rare ride in North America. There is one at Canada’s Wonderland, another Cedar Fair park, and one at Lagoon Amusement Park in Utah, but that’s it. So this should be a fun, unique addition to Knott’s’ solid ride lineup.

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Sol Spin is coming to Knott’s in Spring 2017 to bolster the flat lineup at the park.

Ghost Town Alive Returns!

The second major part of the Knott’s announcement is that Ghost Town Alive will be returning in 2017, and it will be getting bigger. This was hinted at by Knott’s in a twitter exchange with us when Ghost Town Alive ended for the summer, but it’s great to see it officially announced and to hear it’s expanding. Ghost Town Alive is a unique interactive experience that happens throughout the day in the Knott’s Ghost Town of Calico, and it’s something I’ve never seen at any other park. This might be the part of the announcement I’m most excited about, as when I was at Knott’s over the summer I was only briefly able to check it out.

Ghost Town Alive returns!

Ghost Town Alive returns!

The LA Times had a great review of it last June, but the short description is that there is a web of stories playing out throughout the day in Calico that guests can be a part of, or just observe. The stories connect to each other in the end, but depending on who you talk to and when, you’ll learn about different things going on and different sides of the story. I think my favorite part, even though I was only able to quickly walkthrough it, was that the citizens of Ghost Town (and there were a lot of them) went about there business, whether you interacted with them or not. It was fun to see people in costume going back and forth through town, happy to stop and talk if you wanted, or ask you for help sometimes, but they’d also be just as likely to simply tip their hat and keep going to carry on their story. This video from Theme Park Connect also helps give a sense of how it added to the atmosphere.

Ghost Town Alive ended each day with a hoe down. The number of people in costume in this picture gives some sense of the cast size, easily dozens of "Calico citizens". Great to hear it's coming back and expanding.

Ghost Town Alive ended each day with a hoe down. The number of people in costume in this picture gives some sense of the cast size, easily dozens of “Calico citizens”. Great to hear it’s coming back and expanding.

The announcement said there will be new characters and an even larger cast than before, and that “new story lines and plot twists will be revealed throughout the season insuring guests will never experience the same adventure twice.” I love that Knott’s is continuing this awesome unique experience, and building on it to make it something you could guests can visit over and over without seeing the same stories. They didn’t give an exact start date, but I expect it’ll be a summer event again.

Boysenberries and BBQ

Finally, Knott’s capped their announcement with two big food related items. The now-annual and popular Boysenberry festival at the park is being expanded to a whopping 23 days. The festival celebrates the history of Knott’s Berry Farm as a, well, berry farm, and will be filled with special boysenberry dishes and live entertainment.

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Along with the Boysenberry festival, a new Boardwalk BBQ restaurant is being added near XCelerator, replacing the existing one. The restaurant will serve a range of BBQ, as well as a selection of local craft beer. The new restaurant will also have a stage for live music. Construction is supposed to begin this year, so hopefully that means being ready by next Spring/Summer.

For more info the official announcement can be found here. Between the Soak City announcement already made and all of this, it looks like 2017 should be another good year for Knott’s Berry Farm. We’ll definitely have more coverage as we get into next season, so make sure to follow Coaster101 on Twitter and Facebook for all the latest, and let us know in the comments below what your thoughts are on the new announcements!

 

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