National Park Road Trip: Worlds of Fun (Part 14)

August 8, 2019InACents Leave a comment

Here we are, the last leg of our trip home, well sort of as we stopped one day at Worlds of Fun to soak in one last day of FUN with our Platinum Cedar Fair season passes that get us free admission and parking.

Our family was last at Worlds of Fun for the 2018 Winterfest event, which was phenomenal to see the park decorated for Christmas!

This trip would be just days before the kick off of the inaugural Grand Carnivale celebration. We always like visiting Worlds of Fun because it is so unique compared to all the other Cedar Fair parks. It is also quite fitting that the original design and theme of the park was Around the World in 80 days, and seeing as we were coming off of our epic family road trip, it was the perfect setting to end the trip.

I can not stress enough how much we adore Worlds of Fun. Each of the different themed areas are beautiful from the landscaping to music of the countries origin. We are especially fond of the Orient and Scandinavia sections.

While we have visited Worlds of Fun several times, this was our first real opportunity to get to ride some of the attractions we had missed on previous visits. For this trip, we crossed off Timber Wolf, discovered a whole new area of Planet Snoopy tucked behind Cosmic Coaster we had never seen before, and got to ride Falcon’s Flight.

We were really sad to miss the railroad, as the engine is being overhauled. The Worlds of Fun train happens to be one of our favorites, because at least the last time we rode it, they have real actors out on the course.

Worlds of Fun is another one of those smaller amusement parks we always wish we could spend an extra day exploring. Typically when we are out in that area of the country, we try and fit the park in within one day, which there is a lot to see and do when you have not been there for a while.

The next day we were off on the last leg home. Nothing to stop and see, just hauling to get home at last.

Nearly 6,200 driven miles, 17 States later, that was an epic summer of parks (6 National, 1 State and 5 amusement/theme parks)!

National Park Road Trip: Journey East (Part 13)

August 8, 2019InACents Leave a comment

A year of planning and a last minute change to California, meant we had a long, long drive back to Ohio, with not much to look forward towards. Our family’s epic summer road trip took us to several National Parks, amusement and theme parks, and a whole lot of fun.

Planning for spending two weeks in a car comes with its own set of nervousness. How would the kids act in tight quarters for days on end? Would there be epic family meltdowns to go with the spectacular views? How much was this going to cost us?

We planned and saved money as much as we could along the trip, and on occasion, we splurged. Our initial trip was having us heading back home from the Grand Tetons and seeing what we could find along the way. However, when we made a last minute change to head to Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm, it meant a monumental task of having to get back across country.

The good news is that having to drive back through some pretty boring parts of the country also meant we were going to get to check off another bucket list National Park we always wanted to see, the Grand Canyon.

Grand Canyon National Park

Ever since we started planning our family National Park trip, it was my motivation to try and see as many parks as feasible, and the Grand Canyon was high on the list. However, initial thoughts would put us way out of the realm of feasibility to diverge all the way down to the south rim and then have to make our way home.

That was until we went to California. Looking at the route back from Los Angeles to Cleveland along interstate 40 put us within striking distance of seeing the giant gorge. So we spent the 4th of July seeing the Grand Canyon.

The scope of the Grand Canyon is astounding and just as beautiful as you see in pictures.

We downloaded into our Gypsy app the Grand Canyon tour to be sure and hear which stops were worth seeing.

Along the way we saw some impressive vistas, gorgeous sunsets on some very windy overlooks, and even saw the Dessert View Watchtower.

Now granted we were only in the Grand Canyon area about 3 hours before having to find a place to stay for the night, but my overall impression was it was cool to see, but not sure I would need to go back. I felt we saw what the Grand Canyon encompassed within a very short time frame.

Perhaps it would be cool to do some tours that go down into the canyon, and even see some of the surrounding sites, but I felt we got a good taste of the Grand Canyon without having to fully experience the Grand Canyon.

What would follow was lots and lots of driving and seeing absolutely nothing for hours and hours. It is quite astonishing how so much of this country is just open space with nothing, including gas stations, for extended periods of time. After our lesson earlier in the trip of almost running out of gas, we made sure to always maintain at least half a tank of gas at all times.

It was also quite interesting when we were driving in Kansas at the mammoth scale of wind farms as far as the eye could see in every direction. It is awesome to see us embracing renewable energy on such a grand scale. The fields could still be used by farmers and the energy created by the wind fills a massive amount of our renewable energy.

The only saving grace coming up is our path would take us to one more amusement park, Worlds of Fun, before arriving back home. Here we come America!

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

August 8, 2019InACents Leave a comment

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: Worlds of Fun (Part 14)

National Park Road Trip: Journey East (Part 13)

Grand Canyon National Park

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

Knott’s Hotel Camp Snoopy Room