Knott's Scary Farm 2022: Entertainment
Knott’s Scary Farm, Buena Park, CA
Happy Saturday, boils and ghouls! We’ve made it through reviews of last weekend’s haunts visited, which is great, because we have seven more from this weekend that will be on the docket. But in between we’re going to take a trip back to Knott’s Scary Farm for one of our three more detailed articles / expanded photo galleries following the general review we posted on Tuesday. Normally, we start with a report on the season’s mazes, but this time, we’r switching things up a bit by starting Scary Farm’s shows for the season.
Last year, Scary Farm noticeably upped the ante by providing five separate scheduled shows, harkening back to the Halloween Haunt of a decade+ ago when Knott’s nighttime Halloween entertainment line-up was that robust. This year, the number of shows is back down to three—a more average number for recent years. Fortunately, all three shows are excellent offerings, making the overall quality of this year’s Scary Farm entertainment one of the highest in years. Returning this year are Puppet Up! Uncensored and Conjurers, as well as a completely revamped version of the Carnaval du Grotesque that is the same in name only. The latter is a spectacular highlight for the event and a can’t-miss. So with that introduction out of the way, lets just dive right into the shows!
Puppet Up! Uncensored
Back again for its third year, Puppet Up! Uncensored is the Jim Henson Company’s alternative programming featuring improv, Henson-style puppeteering, and a lot of hilarity and mayhem. Playing three times a night, at 8:30, 10:00, and 11:30, each show lasts forty minutes and consists of a series of improv games with audience participation in the form of idea prompting and suggestions mixed in with some classic Henson sketches brought back from the time vault.
This year’s sequence of games will be very familiar to those who have attended before, as many familiar games return, like “New Choice,” the James Bond-Style Theme Song, the audience guest puppeteering act, and something involving the hot dog puppets. There’s also a different version of the Usher Brothers Quartet green screen looped song and dance number, at least one new classic Henson sketch called “Cool Jazz” occupying the slot that played “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Your Face” or “Java,” and, of course, the fan-favorite closing number, “Windy.”
Puppet Up! Uncensored is a raucous show that is different every single time and benefits form a participatory audience. While some guests have complained that it’s not very Halloween-y, we think it’s a jewel of a show and definitely recommend that guests of comedy and Muppets check out this improv play at the Walter Knott Theater.
Conjurers: Dark Magic
This year’s Bird Cage Theatre magic show has a new heading, but it is the same idea as what played here last year. This year’s magician, Zabrecky (who we understand to be playing the whole run this year instead of making way for another magician later in the season like in prior years, though correct us if we’re wrong), does incorporate a little bit of Knott’s lore into his show by starting it out with a seance to try to reach Walter Knott himself.
Zabrecky is known for his dry, irreverent humor during his shows and his use of mentalism, which works very well under a Halloween event setting compared to standard sleight of hand and card or prop tricks (though he incorporates those into his act too). His odd, almost spiritual character—accented by a slightly sinister-looking eye patch—is perfect for a very humorous but also fun and quietly impressive magic show that sees a good amount of guest participation and tone of melodramatic accent points that also seem to allude to the Bird Cage’s history as a theater for melodrama at Knott’s. Think of if Christopher Walken was a magic—minus the overt accent.
Conjurers: Dark Magic also has three showings per evening, at 8:15, 9:30, and 11:15.
Carnaval du Grotesque
Last but definitely not least, we have Carnaval du Grotesque, Knott’s headlining circus stunt extravaganza that dazzles this year with its smooth-flowing dance crew and four stupendous acrobatic side show acts. This year’s show is a significant improvement over last year’s version, which alternated performances by the cover band of the evening with a “freak show” type performance that just didn’t seem to draw the same crowds or have the same energy that a headlining show should have. Understandably, last year, coming out of the pandemic uncertainty, Knott’s may not have been able to throw full resources, planning, and commitment into something that still could be shuttered by a major surge that could cause more closures. This year, though, with life in the United States transitioning to a “live with it” mode, Knott’s has been able to redouble its efforts and produce a truly mesmerizing show for guests looking for a break from mazes and scare zones to enjoy.
During the pre-show, Cecil the Sad Clown does sardonically hilarious crowdwork to warm the audience up. We missed him before the show, but his countenance and manner after being introduced for the closing and after the show were hysterical. The exaggeratedly sad disposition and apparent inability to do anything quite right was a perfect juxtaposition to the intensity of the rest of the show. Then, it’s time for the actual Carnaval.
The format of Carnaval du Grotesque is fairly straight forward. An energy-inducing opening number with the main cast and crew leads to introductions by the Carnaval emcees for the evening, Mister Thaddeus Nightshade and Miss Beatrix Belladonna, of their “cavalcade of nightmares,” the performers of the evening. There’s the “Bodies of the Crypt,” a dance crew that takes the first act; Hair Hang Lyra, an aerial spinner who hangs by her air high above the stage; Prometheus: Sorcerer of Fire and Burning Desire, a fire spinner and twirler; Zenith the Towering, a chair stacker and balancer; and the Fantastical Saturn, who thrills the audience with tricks and stunts on his spinning wheel of death. Regular fans of Knott’s might also recognize the two evening masters of scaremonies from their very different but still theatrical roles as Doc Carter and Miss Nell in Ghost Town Alive!
Then it’s time to get into the show, starting things off with the Bodies of the Crypt dance crew. I’m normally not a dance performance person, which is why we’ve never really checked out the Jabbawockeez show at Halloween Horror Nights (well, that and there’s always a time crunch, so that’s the odd attraction out), but these guys at the Carnaval du Grotesque were actually pretty impressive, weaving heavily synchronized and exceptionally well choreographed dance moves and incorporating fun lighting and athletic feats into their approximately five minute segment. Their chemistry and enthusiasm were infection, as the crowd seemed to be pretty hyped as they followed along.
Then it was time for Hair Hang Lyra and her taut aerial acrobatics. Suspending herself by only her hair, Lyra was lifted two stories above the Calico Mine Stage, where she engaged in a series of spins and contortions that dazzled the audience. With no safety harness in tow, Hair Hang Lyra’s act was very much a perilous feat of impressive athleticism as well as a beautiful airtime dance above Calico.
Things got a little heated and passionate with the next and most visually spectacular act, Prometheus, manipulator flames, who mixed three different fire dance segments into his portion of the show. Starting with a double-sided fire staff, Prometheus twirled the singeing staff around his body, tossed it in the air, and even did spinning jumps with it. Next, he switched to a fiery kunai, which he swirled and swung around and above in a sensational display of control and artistry. Finally, Promethus picked up two flaming batons and performed more capoeira-esque maneuvers, culminating in an absolutely jaw-dropping corkscrew kick that painted circles of red-hot plasma in the air for a brief moment before touching down.
Zenith the Towering toned things down with an act that was built more on concentration and tension rather than overt visuals. Methodically, he sticked what turned out to be five different chairs in a tower, some at angles, and balanced himself in various gravity-testing poses at each juncture. At his peak, Zenith gripped himself some two stories above the ground as well, similar to Lyra, but with the added danger that any wrong shift in balance or angle might send him tumbling to severe injury!
Finally, to cap off the festivities, the Fantastical Saturn boarded a wheel of death device located to the audience-right of the stage to perform some gasp-inducing tricks and tumbles. This device is a two-ended ferris wheel on steroids, with the artist placing himself on the circular side and running to spin the whole contraption against the counterweight on the opposite side. Saturn’s stunts grew more daring as his act progressed, first starting with regular sprints inside the wheel, then adding jumps, then climbing outside the wheel and jump roping as it spun, then donning a black hood to perform his act essentially blindfolded, and finally leaping and literally flying with the wheel of death for brief moments. Here too, the level of risk was incredibly high, as one slip or wrong step could cause major injury or even death. But that’s also part of what made this entire show so incredible to witness.
Altogether, this year’s Carnaval du Grotesque is a magnificent display of artistry, stuntwork, strength, and beauty, and it’s moved along smoothly and entertainingly by our two wise-cracking, humorously crass, devilishly charismatic hosts. I’d go as far as to say that this is one of the best Knott’s Scary Farm shows that the park has churned out in quite some time, and major kudos goes out to everyone involved—not only the performers and producers but also the technical crew and art department, which put together a marvelous stage full of great paintings and sets and fiery theatrical effects. Top to bottom, this show is a winner!
Located at the Calico Mine Stage, where The Hanging used to play before the Coronavirus pandemic wiped it out (just kidding, it was already going to be retired at the end of the 2019 season), Carnaval du Grotesque features shows at 8:00, 9:30, and 11:00 each Scary Farm evening.
Beyond the scheduled shows, the Forsaken Lake procession still occurs twice a night. We caught the 11:45pm showing during one of our trips last weekend, and there should also be a prior performance about two hours earlier. There is also the swing band at the Goreing 20’s scare zone that plays periodically on te outdoor balcony area at the Walter Knott Theater. We’re not sure if The Hollows still has its Wicker Man burning at midnight this year, but by last year, it had been greatly reduced into a minimal, non-live actor theatrical moment.
And that does it for today’s Knott’s Scary Farm entertainment break. We’ll return with more new haunts before moving onto Knott’s scare zones on our next round, and mazes last. You know, reverse order, just to keep things spicy. There are so many haunts and Halloween events out there already opening or opening within the next couple of weeks that it’s almost absurd. The 17th Door, Haunt O’Ween, Urban Death: Tour of Terror, the L.A. Haunted Hayride, Bones’ Gulch, Hauntington Beach Manor & Prism Haunt, SHAQTOBERFEST, Nights of the Jack, Reign of Terror, Fear Farm, Coffin Creek, Dark Harvest, Haunted Harvest, Murder House Productions’ Ghosted… the list just goes on and on. So get out there and get spooky! And we’ll be out there too!
Architect. Photographer. Disney nerd. Haunt enthusiast. Travel bugged. Concert fiend. Asian.
