Knott’s Making a Play for Fast Crowd

Standing in front of the Gold Trail Hotel, a remnant of an Arizona ghost town that formed the cornerstone of Knott’s Berry Farm’s heritage, the new owners promised Wednesday to tweak, not tear apart, the nation’s oldest theme park.

In their first interview since the park was acquired last month, ending an era of Knott’s family ownership, Richard Kinzel and Jack Falfas said they plan to open a new thrill ride by the Fourth of July. Details will be announced in a couple of months.

In addition, a $22-million wooden roller coaster is scheduled to open in 1999. And another attraction for the millennium will soon be on the drawing boards.

In fact, more “exciting rides” will be developed as part of a three-year plan that the new owners are now drawing up for the park, they said.

“We have to compete,” said Falfas, a 27-year amusement park veteran who was named Knott’s vice president and general manager.

Even though the park is profitable and well-maintained, Falfas said, Knott’s only tingles while other cash-rich parks shiver with excitement.

“We want to add more excitement, but still maintain the culture and heritage of the park,” added Kinzel, president and chief executive officer of Cedar Fair L.P., the Ohio-based amusement park operator that acquired Knott’s. The publicly traded partnership owns four other parks, mostly in the Midwest. Knott’s is the company’s first year-round theme park.

“We will not change for the sake of change,” Kinzel said. “The bottom line is the park makes money and we don’t want to jeopardize a good thing. All we’re trying to do is improve upon it.”

Kinzel also said he realizes that Knott’s can’t compete with Disneyland, Universal Studios or other theme parks owned by huge corporations. “We don’t have the financial resources they have,” he said.

“We will be conservative in our expansion plans because we don’t have deep enough pockets to make mistakes,” he added.

The Knott’s jewels that will remain include Camp Snoopy, a children’s playground featuring characters from the comic strip “Charlie Brown.” Knott’s expects to complete a deal this week that will retain the popular attraction for 15 years.

Independence Hall will close in April, but reopens in September after being refurbished.

And of course, Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant stays. That’s the business that spawned the theme park, proving so popular that the Knott’s family added amusements to entertain hungry customers as they waited for dinner.

This week, Knott’s also acquired a 6-acre parcel of land adjacent to the park for future expansion, boosting its total to 160 acres.

But Kinzel said there’s still room for growth inside the park--in cavities of space between rides, or by replacing older attractions altogether.

“Another ride could go in there easy,” Kinzel said, pointing to a ride called the XK1, where people sit in a circle of shuttles that spins around a pole-like base. “That’s an old ride, with lots of maintenance problems.”

Analysts said the changes could help position Knott’s to take advantage of rival Disneyland’s new $1.4-billion park, California Adventure, which is expected to draw hordes of tourists to the Southland when it opens in 2001.

“They have to get themselves in position to benefit from that surge,” said Ray Braun of Economics Research Associates, a Los Angeles amusement park consulting firm.

Last year, Knott’s hosted an estimated 3.6 million visitors, an increase of 3%, making the park the 12th busiest among all theme and amusement parks in North America, according to Amusement Business, an industry trade journal. Kinzel hopes attendance at the family oriented theme park can increase by 2% to 3% a year until it consistently tops 4 million.

“We know the market is here for that,” he said.

Three years ago, Cedar Fair bought Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun in Kansas City. Like Knott’s, it was an older, well-maintained attraction that wanted to retain its character, yet modernize with thrill rides.

Since then, the owners have added two new thrill rides, a children’s themed area, and a laser-light and sound show. A new roller coaster is due to open later this year.

Attendance jumped 10% to 1.1 million after the changes, and the park now ranks 47th among theme parks on the continent, Amusement Business said.

For parks like Knott’s, the challenge is to increase the excitement of the park, but “not to change so dramatically that people who have gone there for years no longer recognize it,” said Steven Hill, an analyst at Morgan Fuller Capital Group in San Francisco.

James Benedick of Management Resources, a Tustin-based entertainment consulting firm, said he liked Knott’s strategy of adding thrill rides, since the main competitor in that arena, Magic Mountain, is north of Los Angeles.

“Everybody loves Knott’s, but unless you have a new motivation, maybe you don’t go,” he said. “Maybe this is that extra motivation.

“And if they keep adding thrill rides, getting an interesting mix, I think they can do fairly well.”