Knott's Celebrates Christmas with its 'Merry Farm' Makeover

By Jacob Sundstrom: When wandering through an amusement park, it’s very easy to forget about the word “park” altogether. The landscape is dominated by roller coasters, rides and various other contraptions that you can wait in line for. What Knott’s Berry Farm has done (to great effect) is to put the park back in amusement park during its Knott’s Merry Farm event.

While at the park a couple of weekends ago, I went on one ride — despite spending over five hours at the park. The rest of my time was spent walking around the themed areas, exploring Santa’s Christmas Cabin and eating literally every bit of holiday fare I could get my hands on. This is, of course, coming from the perspective of someone who has been on Silver Bullet enough times to last a lifetime and will be just fine if he never hits the Calico Mine Ride again. Knott’s Merry Farm made the park, if only for a day, feel like new.

It’s no secret that this is the intention of a holiday event. The parks want to bring in visitors that feel like they’ve seen it all, that there’s no need to visit the park again. Between egg nog, holiday beer and chocolate cake; I assure you, there’s plenty to see and to do during the Knott’s holiday event.

I know I’ve said “holiday” several times, but if we’re being honest, it’s pretty much just Christmas. There’s no “Happy Hanukkah Snoopy” ice show and Kwanzaa doesn’t have its own pavilion; glossing over these other holidays while pretending the event is anything other than Christmas-themed is, well, not great. That being said, if Santa Claus and Baby Jesus are your idea of a good winter holiday, Knott’s has you covered.

There are 10 shows, including a revamped ice show themed to everyone’s favorite beagle, and of course, there’s Santa’s Christmas Cabin. Inside of the cabin (near the Pony Express and Haunt Museums at the edge of Ghost Town) guests can purchase holiday beer, holiday nuts, eggnog and desserts. Even as someone who doesn’t get too excited about desserts, the cabin was a lot of fun.

Beyond the shows and the food, Knott’s successfully built an atmosphere that has been sorely lacking at the theme park. Seeing what the park can achieve with an event like this gives me hope that they will continue to create and enhance the park’s atmosphere going forward.

This article originally appeared at http://ift.tt/1vgo65m. All rights reserved. If you are not reading this on a personal RSS reader (such as Feedburner) or on http://ift.tt/N0yOgi, you are reading a scraper website that has illegally copied and stolen http://ift.tt/N0yOgi's content. Please visit http://ift.tt/1vgo65m for the original version, along with all its comments.

from Theme Park Insider http://ift.tt/1HXvJYs