Author: Chris Glass

This weekend kicked off the Christmas season at Knott’s Berry Farm, hereafter referring to themselves as Knott’s Merry Farm for the duration of the seasonal event. Much like how Knott’s transforms all over for Knott’s Scary Farm and Knott’s Spooky Farm, right before Thanksgiving, Christmas hits Knott’s, and it hits it hard. There’s a ton of ground to cover for all the things going on in the park. The buildings are all decorated. Existing shows gets a Christmas theme. New Christmas shows are scheduled all over the park. Exclusive seasonal merchandise and food are all over. Even the characters around…

As is now an annual tradition, last night Jeff Tucker took to the stage in the Charles M. Schulz theater at Knott’s Berry Farm, and revealed everything for Knott’s Scary Farm in 2017 to a packed theater and a live-streamed audience. This time, however, it was more of a spectacle than ever before with a great assortment of performances, behind the scenes videos, custom facades to introduce the new mazes, and an amazing lighting system. While there was a short presence at Midsummer Scream to discuss some ticket options (Fright Lane, to skip the maze lines, traditionally bundled with the…

It’s hard to imagine growing up in the 90s as a kid without SNICK (Saturday Night Nickelodeon) to look forward to every weekend. And the big weenie of that was the final show at the end of the 2 hour block, at 9:30PM, Are You Afraid of the Dark, the horror anthology show for kids. It would be easy for me to personally gush about how much I loved this show and would countlessly rewatch all the episodes over and over. So I’ll spare you that embarrassing outpouring of love. This specific panel was a long time in the making,…

Suicide Squad is back. Formalities aside, the key thing to takeaway from the Fright Fest panel at Midsummer Scream is that the hit scare zone, featuring the titular characters of the blockbuster DC film of 2016 are returning this year, so you can see Harley, Killer Croc, The Joker and Katana roaming the park. On top of that, the event has been extended to 21 days and a new ‘Hidden Haunts VIP Tour’ has been introduced. While including the normal walkthroughs of mazes as part of the tour, the driving factor of this tour is going into the off-limits area…

After the initial panel of the Tower of Terror ran late, and a tad long (With zero complaints about the latter), questions were emerging about the Knott’s panel, given the anticipation for it. Ultimately those were not a concern. Following the opening video of monsters slowly taking over Calico, the ever-reliable Jeff Tucker made his way to the stage to welcome the audience to Knott’s Scary Farm. Right off the bat, he detailed how the Fright Lane and Fast Lane tickets were being merged into a single pass. In years past, Fright Lane, accompanied by the skeleton key, was sold…

Midsummer Scream, now in its second year, kicked off this weekend and had more than enough distractions to keep everyone busy, and barely walking the busy show floor. The major draw for some were the panels and they covered a wide variety of topics. Kicking off the show, was a highly anticipated talk with some of the creators of The Twilight Zone: Tower of Terror. This was the first main show inside giant auditorium. As the show ran a tad late, everyone was waiting for it to begin. After the founding team of Midsummer Scream introduced themselves in a fantastic…

Unless your fingers are firmly planted inside your ears, you’ve heard that Halloween Horror Nights is coming back this year. And on Sunday, John Murdy and Chris Williams returned to the stage at Midsummer Scream to detail what’s coming for this year’s event. Compared to all the other panels at the show, Murdy and Williams came with an extremely thorough presentation. Around 100 slides were displayed throughout the panel, showing sketches, behind the scenes photos, and Twitter Q&A segments. This time instead of placing Q&A at the very end to fill time, Murdy had asked online for questions, and instead…

Rounding out “The Big 3” of the southern California haunts is Dark Harbor. The good ship has been a big point of discussion this year as financial woes have hit hard right as an inventory of the repairs the ship needs came to a healthy sized receipt. Dark Harbor being one of, if not the biggest, annual draw for the Long Beach icon, one would expect to see some drastic unpleasant changes. Ultimately, that doesn’t seem to be the case currently. Midsummer Scream played host to their reveal event this year. The panel was (very) loosely moderated by The Ringmaster…

For the last few years, Knott’s has been amping up their seasonal events. We’ve seen the Knott’s Berry Bloom explode into the insanely fun Boysenberry Festival. Christmas is when it becomes Knott’s Merry Farm. Halloween time needs no introduction as Knott’s Scary Farm. Now for the Summer, there is Ghost Town Alive. Building off the success of the inaugural season last year, it returns in 2017 with a new story-line that guests help shape throughout the day. With Ghost Town Alive – at it’s core, it’s role-playing. You take on the role as a newcomer to the city of Calico,…

Diving again into Orange County, we found ourselves at Knott’s Soak City this Saturday for the re-opening of the park for 2017 season. For the last few years, Knott’s has seemingly chosen on one aspect of their parks to seriously overhaul in time for Summer, and this is year it was Soak City’s turn. Eagle-eyed visitors to Knott’s may have noticed how a small area of the parking lot had been closed off earlier this year. That small corner and some other areas, were used to expand Soak City by 2 acres to the now 15-acre size making room for…