Knott's Berry Farm

From a thrill ride standpoint, Knott's Berry farm sucks and it just does not make any sense that the same company owns Cedar Point. Cedar Point is like the Mecca and Medina of roller coasters and thrill rides. There are some problems with Knott's that cannot be overcome. The small size is perhaps the greatest liability, and if they really wanted to be contenders, Knott's would have to be six or seven times larger. I wonder if they keep statistics on people who shit in their pants on rides here. I am sure that it happens less than at Cedar Point. But after all is said and done, Knott's feels cheap and run down. It reminded me of the Pike but instead of filthy dirtbags running the place, it is staffed by friendly pimply-faced adolescents who seem ill suited to operate such high, fast, swinging machinery and even less suited to administer first aid if the shit ever hit the fan. I saw an aspiring actress in a Linus costume walking around and interacting with the guests get beaten down by a drunken hick. I guess he must have thought that there was a dude in there or something. My friend played Briar Bear at Disneyland in the early 1980's and said that adults and children alike were always walking up to him and kicking him in the nuts. He soon got tired of that, whacked the person, and was immediately fired for Un-Disneylike behavior. He told me that there was an entire network of tunnels underneath Disneyland designed to shuttle garbage out of the park away from the eyes of guests. I hate Disneyland. I would only return at gunpoint. The Accelerator is a high speed roller coaster that is supposed to go from 0-90 in a few short seconds and go up and down a vertical section of track in no time flat. The cable underneath the ride snapped and ripped through the fiberglass front of the passenger car and came dangerously close to severing on of the guy's feet in the front row before aborting and closing for the evening. Take a look at the picture I posted and look at what a close call that was.

The suspended roller coaster Silver Bullet was a fun ride similar to the Ninja coaster at Six Flags but without the advantage of being built into a hill. The ride was smooth but had some pickup. I liked it better in the evening than in the afternoon sun. Ghostrider is a nice looking coaster and has a great first drop, but is jerky as all hell. It is one of those rides that has a few surprises, but due to the feeling that you are in a slam pit, makes you reluctant to ride more than once.

Boomerang, although it has been pieced together from a couple of older coasters including the Corkscrew has some things going for it, but in comparison to Six Flags, it is total amateur hour.

The animatronic men in the log ride looked like exact replicas of the meth heads hanging out in front of those filthy motels lining Beach Blvd. cooking their stuff up in the bathroom using either the "Nazi" method or the "Shake and Bake" process. If one of those guys were programmed to open the blinds up in room 203 repeatedly to see if the coast is clear, your eye could not tell him from a real man. The best ride in the park was this swinging contraption that hurls riders over a water fountain and spins the fuck out of them. I felt safe knowing that the ride was manufactured in Germany in a factory without one-armed men and guest workers.

Buena Park and neighboring Stanton may very well be the anus of Southern California and have little going for them except funnel cake, meth, Thai Nakorn, and the freeway out. This area is just filthy. There is a motel called Chester's Motel on Beach Blvd. across the street from a strip club and and a Taco Bell. Mrs. Knott has been poisoning people with her shitty chicken dinner for a whole century but now its gonna cost you a hundred bucks. You can also roll the dice at Pink's where you have a greater than one in six chance of getting food poisoning and soiled drawers on the log ride. Finally, as if that is not enough, there is a Cinnabon.