If you’ve ever hung out with me for longer than five minutes, I’ve probably mentioned that I have kids — two wonderful (if not tiring) boys. If you’ve not run off screaming by that point, you’ve heard my praise for the wonder that is Knott’s Berry Farm’s Ghost Town Alive! summer event, and how much I enjoy sharing the western themed immersive experience with my sons.
We’ve spent the better part of the last two summers solving puzzles, delivering messages, joining posses, breaking into bank vaults, listening to gossip, playing cards in the sheriff’s office, searching for gold, chasing bank robbers, and talking with a litany of the wild western denizens of the town of Calico.
Ghost Town Alive! in a nutshell, is Westworld for little kids.
Ghost Town Alive! started in the summer of 2016 as part of Knott’s Berry Farm’s 75th anniversary celebration — a kind of return to the park’s origins. For the uninitiated, in 1941 entrepreneur and boysenberry creator Walter Knott and his wife were running an overwhelmingly successful restaurant in Buena Park, CA. Wanting to entertain the ever growing crowds while they waited, Knott built an old west town, hired some local actors to play gunslingers and townsfolk and the heart of what later would become Knott’s Berry Farm was born.
Opening up buildings long since closed and populated with mannequins, Knott’s has filled them, once again, with living, breathing actors — stern lawmen, sweet school teachers, slap-happy gold miners and black hat bank robbers. There are shoot outs, romances, literal stump speeches and mysteries to be solved; there are surprises, reveals and a good old fashioned hoedown.
From the moment you step onto the streets of Calico, Knott’s old west town, you find yourself plunged into a living, breathing melodrama.
Calico is celebrating it’s annual Founders Day Celebration, and the friendly little town is busy making preparations for its yearly hoedown. Rumors abound that the scheming and notorious Mayfield Family is once again up to no good and questions abound as to just who founded the town. While in previous years, it was in question who actually owned the town, or who was going to be voted Mayor, this year, all is calm — or is it? The largest gold nugget in the history of Calico sits in the bank vault, and everyone seems to want a piece of it.
Meanwhile, mysterious markings have appeared all over the town, beckoning the curious to explore deeper…
While Ghost Town Alive!’s main story is open, and allows you to follow and interact with a character or group of characters as the day goes on, one place where Ghost Town Alive! shines for me (and my kids) is how much there is to do in Calico that has nothing to do with the key story events. Every corner of town is seemingly filled with a chore, a character, or an errand to run.
There have been lines of kids waiting to do laundry the old fashioned way — with a washboard and a clothesline.
My sons and their friends (they range from 4 to 9), have spent hours (literal hours) taking notes and packages from one end of town to the other, chatting with the newspaper reporters (my oldest son is fond of Izzy Malloy) and searching for the combination to the bank vault. We’ve gotten mustaches (everyone — girl or boy — has the right to a mustache in Calico), offered advice to courting couples, been sworn in as citizens, opened up bank accounts, gotten locked up in jail and we still find new things to do.
Some of our bigger deeds have been recorded in the Calico Gazette. (That’s right, you can get your name in the paper that gets published a couple of times a day.)
The hybrid combination of on-the-rails melodrama and sandbox immersive experience isn’t new, or unique to Knott’s. Nor is the illusion complete, as the reality of the park is pervasive and bleeds into atmosphere everywhere. However, the strength of the actors and their commitment to their roles make it easy to get lost in the world of Ghost Town Alive! Further, their ability to improvise well with child and adult alike, their patience, and their willingness to make large moments out of intimate interactions creates a payoff just as big as any roller coaster or thrillride.
In Calico, the young, and the young at heart can find an innocent, idealized version of the Old West; if you’re particularly lucky, you can get lost there for a day.
Knott Berry Farm’s Ghost Town Alive! runs daily through September 3 at Knott’s Berry Farm, 8039 Beach Blvd, Buena Park, CA, and is included with the price of admission.
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