National Park Road Trip: Knott's Berry Farm (Part 12)

It is hard to believe that after a year of planning, and some last minute changes, we were coming up on the end of our family’s epic 2-week cross-country road trip. Part of the appeal to head further west than we initially anticipated beyond the Grand Teton National Park was to visit Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm, two of our family’s absolute favorite theme parks!

After a full day at Disneyland, we used our Cedar Fair Platinum passes to get us free admission and parking at Knott’s Berry Farm. On every other trip, we flew to California, giving us limited luggage space to return home with a bountiful amount of Knott’s food products.

The Knott’s Berry Farm Marketplace, located outside of the gates of the park, offer some of the most spectacular food items that are great for us cooks! Since introducing the Berry Market line of products, all of the sauces, jellies, etc. feature premium ingredients with none of the filler colors or HFCS that is found in many other brands. Also, since Knott’s is the home of the boysenberry, they offer a spectacular array of sauces, including boysenberry punch concentrate. Driving all the way to California meant we could try and fit as much as we possible could into our van for the journey home. Jackpot!

We had hoped to grab an early breakfast at Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Restaurant, but despite saying they opened early, the doors were locked, so we headed next door to grab some DoughKnotts, fancy doughnuts, at the nearby shop. We highly recommend the boysenberry DoughKnott, which is topped with a smashed piece of boysenberry pie! Heaven!

We had not been back to Knott’s Berry Farm since the introduction of HangTime to the boardwalk area of the park, so we headed there first thing. Following we also got our first ride in ever on Xcelerator, which is similar to our Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point back home.

A large portion of our morning was spent in the area surrounding Timber Mountain Log Ride, since it was down. Little did we know it was the first day of testing our new seats on the logs, so we were excited to be among the first to try them out and this fantastic attraction!

We also got to try our first meal at the Boardwalk BBQ using our dining plan. WOW, what an upgrade! The food was all fantastic, with great portion size and terrific variety of entrees and sides. With a lot of the Cedar Fair parks receiving BBQ style restaurants in the past couple of years, The Boardwalk BBQ might rank up there as our favorite!

We also spent a portion of our day enjoying Ghost Town Alive!, the interactive experience where you become part of the storylines. Our family is big fans of the character driven experience, and our boys fit right in trying to decipher the clues. It was also very interesting seeing props and aspects that are very similar or the same as those at Cedar Point’s Forbidden Frontier on Adventure Island.

Another first for our family was getting to check out the brand new Calico River Rapids. Knott’s Berry Farm overhauled the former Bigfoot Rapids with a new theme and loads of new animatronics that help it tie into the western town of Calico theme. Very cool changes to Calico River Rapids, and it is something we would love to see implemented on tube rapid rides at other Cedar Fair parks. Cedar Point is the perfect example where the overlay would fit in well on the Frontier Trail!

The only areas we did not get to see on this trip to Knott’s Berry Farm were Camp Snoopy and Fiesta Village. I am always shocked how much we did not get to see in our visits to the Farm, as there is so much to see an explore. One of these visits we are going to have to force ourselves to enjoy a couple full days at the park to really take it all in, as I always get home and say, darn, I did not see ________.

Knott’s Hotel Camp Snoopy Room

At some point in the day, I had to sneak out of the park and switch over our belonging to the Camp Snoopy room so we could surprise the boys later in the day.

We had opted to change over the last night of our stay into the Camp Snoopy rooms, which are specially decorated and include plush Snoopy for the kids. Of course the best part about staying in a Camp Snoopy room at the Knott’s Hotel is that Snoopy personally comes to tuck you into bed each night between 8-8:30 pm. Imagine your kids surprise when there is a knock at the door, and the big dog himself is there at the door. After some quick pictures, he tucks each of the kids into bed and gives them a dog kiss goodnight. It is worth every penny!

Well that about almost wraps up all the FUN packed into two full weeks, and in the morning we start chugging along with four days straight driving back to Ohio. There is a long road ahead!

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National Park Road Trip: Knott’s Berry Farm (Part 12)

Knott’s Hotel Camp Snoopy Room

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