Knott’s Plans to Get Wet

Knott’s Berry Farm plans to spend $25.5 million on a water park that will open in summer 2000, part of an attempt to reinvent itself as a full resort as it confronts competitors like the new Legoland park in Carlsbad and Walt Disney Co.’s expanding juggernaut a few miles away.

The 13-acre park, called Soak City USA, will require a separate ticket for admission and feature 21 rides and attractions, including water slides, a “lazy river” ride and a wave pool, according to details released Thursday by Knott’s. It will be built on what is now a parking lot south of the replica Independence Hall at Knott’s and will operate from late May to September.

In seeking permits from Buena Park officials in coming months, Knott’s also will present plans for a second phase, with four acres of additional water rides, to open in summer 2001 if demand is great enough. A third phase is in long-range development.

The Soak City name is lifted from a water park next to Ohio’s Cedar Point, the flagship amusement park of Knott’s parent company, Cedar Fair LLP.

But the theme is pure Southern California--Surf City, early ‘60s vintage--with slides named San Onofre Falls, Laguna Storm Watch Tower and Malibu Pipeline Plunge; a Gremmie Lagoon for kids; and a Big Kahuna section of food and drink carts.

Knott’s, which has courted teenagers and young adults by adding two major thrill rides since being acquired by Cedar Fair in late 1997, has designed the water park to appeal to families. But there are no immediate plans to include swim-up bars for adults, as Cedar Fair has built at its water parks in Sandusky, Ohio, and Kansas City, Mo.

“That’s a final touch,” Knott’s General Manager Jack Falfas said. “You don’t put that in until everything else for the families is in place.”

The project is part of a worldwide flood of water parks, said David Orr, vice president of Amusement Leisure Equipment Ltd., a Calgary, Canada, manufacturer and consultant. In the United States, the current wave includes many additions inside or next to existing theme parks like Knott’s, Orr said. “The big operators are seeing it’s a great business,” he added.

Well-established theme parks find that adding a water park is a relatively inexpensive way to draw new visitors.

Soak City USA, costing barely more than Knott’s towering new GhostRider roller coaster and about one-fourth as much as Disneyland’s Indiana Jones Adventure, is projected to draw 400,000 people during its inaugural 130-day season next year. Knott’s has attracted about 3.4 million guests in each of the last two years.

Prices weren’t disclosed, but water parks typically are cheaper to get into than full-fledged theme parks. At Cedar Fair’s headquarters in Sandusky, Ohio, the one-day adult admission to Cedar Point is $32.95 while Soak City costs $19.95. The walk-up adult price for Knott’s is $36, although discount tickets are widely available.

In part because people in swimsuits dislike carrying money, per-capita spending at water parks is only about half as much as at theme parks, Cedar Fair finance chief Brian Witherow said. The company has considered issuing “smart cards” to make it easier to spend money but currently has no plans to do so, he said.

In areas like Southern California with large tourist and resident populations, water parks with separate admissions create options including low-priced one-day passes, deluxe combination annual passes and multiday packages for visitors from out of the immediate area, said Jim Benedick, a leisure consultant with the Tustin firm Management Resources.

To further increase its options at Knott’s, Cedar Fair has purchased and is renovating the 320-room Buena Park Hotel as a Radisson resort. Planned improvements include a health club, tennis courts, children’s pool and a casual Italian restaurant from the Cucina! Cucina! chain in Bellevue, Wash. The main pool will be moved from a shady courtyard to a sunny spot at the property’s northwest corner.

“We hope you’ll go to the amusement park, spend the night in the hotel and go to the water park the next day. Or vice versa,” Witherow said. “We want to create that resort atmosphere, similar to what Disney does but on a smaller scale.”

Knott’s also is considering adding a water-chute thrill ride inside the original theme park to help it compete with Disney’s second Anaheim park, California Adventure, which opens in 2001.

The new water park also will compete with Southern California’s big three water parks: Raging Waters in San Dimas, one of the nation’s largest; Wild Rivers in Irvine; and Hurricane Harbor in Valencia, a second gate for Six Flags Magic Mountain.

“It’ll be interesting to see if the market is already saturated,” said Orr, whose company has supplied rides to parks worldwide, including Raging Waters and Wild Rivers. He predicts Knott’s will do well because it’s centrally located in a densely populated region, has high name recognition, and already attracts the families who are key water park customers.

Before starting construction, Knott’s must win approval from Buena Park. City Manager Greg Beaubien said it is too early to assess the impact of the new park.

One concern is replacing parking spaces lost to the water park, a task Falfas said can be achieved by reconfiguring other lots. To help provide spaces for additional visitors, he also is shopping for nearby property--”as long as the price is right.”

Falfas said the water park will have sound-absorbing walls to buffer neighbors. To help offset the visual clash between the park’s bright colors and the sober Colonial look of Independence Hall, the outside wall along Grand Avenue will be decorated with brickwork.

The new park continues decades of development in the area, once just a wide spot in a road through orange groves where beach-goers stopped for Walter and Cordelia Knott’s chicken dinners and boysenberry jam. Under a year and a half of Cedar Fair ownership, Knott’s has added the hard-to-miss Supreme Scream, a 300-foot free-fall ride that is Orange County’s tallest structure, and the huge GhostRider wooden roller coaster crossing Grand Avenue.

“When I moved here, there was maybe one or two cars a day, nothing but groves,” said Francisco Estrada, whose home of 44 years sits opposite Independence Hall on Stanton Avenue. “Now I get 100 or more.”

But he welcomed the excitement and tax revenue the new park will bring to Buena Park, and he shrugged off the prospect of even more traffic. “I’m used to it,” Estrada said. “It doesn’t bother me.”

Times correspondent James Meier contributed to this report.

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New at Knott’s

Knott’s Berry Farm’s answer to increased Southern California amusement competition will be a new water park, Soak City U.S.A. The facility will include a range of attractions from high-speed slides to a more sedate “relaxing river.” Food and retail services will round out the package.

Soak City U.S.A.

Size: 13 acres

Cost: $25.5 million

Opens: Summer 2000

Season: May-September

Admission: Not yet determined

Source: Knott’s Berry Farm

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Attractions

Independence Hall (not part of in park)

Entrance

Ticket Booth

Lighthouse

Lazy River

Tot pool with mini river

Sand beach

Wave pool

Cabanas

62’ high-speed slides

48’ tube slides

6-lane slide

“Pier” eating area

42’ Tube slide

Family funhouse