![]() The 'Ghost also takes advantage of its speed to deliver maximum negative g's with hops and hills around every bend. Guests to Knotts' themed Ghost Town section enter GhostRider's queue line and venture through a deserted mining tunnel. At the station, one of three golden, copper and silver trains is boarded and dispatched from the station. ![]() ![]() The ride picks up exceptional pre-lift-hill speed with an S-curve into a U-turn and then engages on the lift-chain to begin a first 118-foot climb to the sky. Over the top of the lift, the ride begins with a tunneled first drop of over 50 degrees. At the bottom, the coaster curves around to the left underneath the structure of an upcoming helix and quickly ascends over a speedy hill. Climbing back up, the layout veers 180 degrees and through an S-curve before plunging back down. Next, a 90-degree banked curve sends the train around to parallel the lift at breakneck speed. Passengers climb into a third turnaround maneuver around the lift-hill curving 90 degrees left and to the 270 right. The track hops up with another Camelback hill and curves to the left to retrace the L-shaped layout with a fourth U-curving turnaround and another hop. GhostRider speeds ahead over another hump and then enters the downward helix before a final hop sends the train into the brakes and curve back into the station. GhostRider has become a worldwide coaster favorite in its 12 years of operation and with any luck will continue to rank highly for years to come.1934 was a big year for Walter Knott – even if it didn’t seem like it at the time. That was the year he introduced the Boysenberry to the world. But the Depression was still dragging on, so that same summer Cordelia Knott added chicken dinners to the menu of her little tea room, just to help make ends meet. It proved to be a winning combination, and as the crowds grew, the Knotts began beautifying the area and adding little displays out back. Knott’s Berry Place was becoming a roadside attraction. By 1940, there was a lake, a rock garden, an old stage coach, and even a rumbling volcano.īut Walter Knott wanted more. He wanted to celebrate the story of the pioneers crossing the desert by covered wagon, just as his own family had done back in 1868. He decided to build a “cyclorama” – a curved painting with set pieces in front of it that would use sound and lighting effects to tell the tale. And to house the show, he would build a replica of an old time Western building. But why just one building? Why not a whole Western town? And so Ghost Town Village was born. In 1940 – probably just after berry season – Knott set his construction crew to work building a ghost town out of buildings and materials salvaged from all over the western United States. “We are continually seeking materials with which to reconstruct the ghost town here at Knott’s Berry Place. By securing a building here, part of another there, an old bar in one place or something else somewhere else we add to the picture we are attempting to portray – a composite picture of the ghost towns of the west as they appeared in ‘49 and the early ‘50s.
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