just got back from knott's berry farm AKA knott's scary farm, as it's called this time of the year. they shut down the amusement park, decorate the whole place for halloween, then open it up 7pm-2am for a gigantic halloween celebration. it's amazing, cool, fun! so good that other amusement parks now mimic it. but knott's is the original and probably the best. i can't say for certain because i haven't checked out the competition in recent years.

the attendees: twiddle thumbs, nopalita, dani, and me. i grew up close to knott's and always loved it the most out of all the amusement parks. luckily my mom lives only a 10 minute drive away by street. we were able to get there quickly and park/enter from the back entrance, which isn't over-crowded like the main entrance. mostly we walked around mazes instead of getting on the rides. the only rides i got on were rip tide and xcelerator. xcelerator is awesome! i tried to take pictures of me while i was on the ride during the maximum peak and low. it is one of those rides that takes a picture of you and you can buy it, but i wanted to have a cool action shot in the thick of it. after getting off the ride, i looked at the photo the ride took and my entire face was hidden by a shadow cast by the people in front of me! argh!!! "it's ok, at least i took my own photos," or so i thought. i checked my camera and the pictures were all black with white light striking across. what the fuck!?!?!? i guess the wind force made my hand shake and the camera took a picture of the sky and not me. shit! i'm going to have to practice taking roller coaster shots.

perfect night for knott's scary farm

the mazes we experienced where: malice in wunderland (theme is alice in wonderland), carnival of carnivorous clowns from outer space (theme is clowns and childhood), temple of sacrifice (theme is aztec, you have to go through it to ride jaguar but you do not have to ride jaguar), lore of the vampire (theme is vampires), the asylum (theme is sanatorium). my friends thought malice was cool but i was never into alice in wonderland. it seems like i'm the only person not into it! too lsd for me. what was cool was that malice was 1 of 3 mazes available in 3-D. that's right, 3-D. you can go through the maze with plain vision or you can buy 3-D glasses for $1. parts of the maze are painted with neon paint that just pops right out with the 3-D glasses. that was pretty interesting. i should try to figure out how to paint that way because it could be great for parties. what sucked was that the glasses cloud your vision a bit. however, this turned up the scare factor because you had to walk slower. clowns maze was another 3-D maze and it was just so-so. there was a lot of potential to make that maze scary and i don't think they utilized all the opportunities. perhaps it was very scary but we walked through it pretty late so maybe a lot of the workers had already left the maze or just weren't into it anymore. the aztec one was the scariest one because of the mental anticipation. there were many opportunities for the workers to grab your feet or surprise you from the side or emerging out of the fog, but they never did. the vampire one was a gothic nightclub. seriously. not scary but very cool. great costumes, decorations, music. the walls had band names written on them like skinny puppy, kmfdm, the cure, etc. in one section of it, they were playing what i think was switchblade symphony. but the best part was the section that was playing siouxsie's "face to face". at that point i wanted to stop the line and just turn the place into a nightclub and start dancing. but you have to move on. the asylum was so mentally scary for twiddle thumbs that she didn't even want to walk in. i told her that she wanted to be a psychologist so what's the problem? heheheee. the asylum was actually very cool. it wins for best decor. asylums are scary to begin with so perhaps that was an unfair advantage. i didn't flinch or get spooked at all the whole night! instead i had my clothes stretched out a few sizes by twiddle thumbs and nopalita walked behind me and grabbing on to me. at one point i couldn't even walk forward because they were pulling so hard. i laughed my ass off every time dani got spooked. the best was when we had already finished asylum and were walking away. a teenage worker in plain clothes scared the hell out of dani by tapping him on the chest or shoulder. when he turned to see who it was, he laughed his ass off too, saying "you got me!"

the shows we attended: dr. cleaver's psycho circus (lame!), the hanging 2004 "it takes a village...idiot!" (so-so). we arrived too late to get a good view of the hanging. actually, me and dani because we were rode xcelerator and had waited about 90 minutes to get on the ride. we could see twiddle thumbs and nopalita front and center. eventually they saw us on the front/left side of the stage. i would give the hanging a higher rating if i had a better view! i didn't get to see all the things that were going on.