This is the exact text that I emailed to Knott's Scary Farm's guest relations and also sent via snail mail. I'm filing this with usacomplaints.com because Knott's has not attempted to contact me despite my threat to file online complaints.
10/18/04
Dear Customer Relations Department:
I'd like to express a formal complaint regarding my trip with 8 people to visit Knott's Scary Farm for the first time on Saturday, 10/16/04. I have enjoyed Knott's Berry Farm in the past and was very excited to see what Knott's Scary Farm would be like. When I dedicated our group to this evening, I was okay with driving three hours from Santa Maria, CA to the park and getting a hotel room afterwards. Little did I know how much I would regret the experience.
Knowing that the park opened at 7pm, my gang left our area at 2pm in order to give us time to eat dinner prior to entering the park. We decided to eat dinner somewhere in Anaheim but when we got closer to the area, the traffic slowed to an average of 20 miles per hour on the freeway. To make a long story short, our three hour drive became a 6 hour drive in the end! In fact, on Knott's Avenue, it took 28 minutes to drive one block at one point! So, although we carefully planned our timeline to get us to the area at approximately 5:30pm, we did not get parked until 9pm. We were ravenous but had to then stand in a very surly, unsystematic crowd for 55 minutes as we waited to be frisked.
There were entirely too many people allowed into the park. There is an obvious lack of quality control regarding ticket sales. I can only assume that ticket sales got out of hand between the internet and physical ticket selling locations because I can't imagine that any Knott's would enthusiastically allow so many people into the park for safety and comfort reasons. I blame this on the horrible experience we had.
Once we entered the park, we had only 4 hours to enjoy our $41.50 per person tickets. The park was so overcrowded that it took us 45 minutes just to order corn dogs, chips and sodas for our dinner. After that, we stood in line for the Xcelerator ride, which was suppose to be 2 hour wait. That is an extremely long wait especially considering the troubles we had entering the park, leaving us only 4 hours to enjoy ourselves. It started raining as we stood in line but we didn't mind and even enjoyed the rain. Unfortunately, after spending about 30 minutes in line at the Xcelerator, the ride shut down until further notice! So, there goes 30 minutes wasted leaving us only about 2 hours remaining until park closure.
Next, we stood in line for the Malice in Wonderland 3-D haunted maze. It was a 1.25 hour wait not too terrible. We were able to accomplish the Army of the Underworld mine ride after the maze. At 1:30am we tried to get on the Supreme Scream ride but the ride attendant said it would be a 2 to 3 hour wait even though the park closed at 2am! Only one of the three machines was functional for some reason. At this time of the morning, there was nothing more we could accomplish that wouldn't take place after until park closure so we decided to leave.
A complete breakdown of my complaints:
1. Knott's Avenue requires traffic control during Knott's Scary Farm activities Parking Attendants not properly trained (safety was at risk)
2. Over-sale of tickets/Lack of Quality Control
Inadequate security personnel to accommodate mass crowd (especially at entry to park)
3. Not enough entries to park to lessen congestion (one person in our party lost bladder control due to the unexpected long wait)
4. Equipment problems were endless (unusual compared to my past visits to the park)
5. Lines for mazes were disordered, misdirected and blended with other lines 3-D glasses disintegrated from rain falling apart (waste of money)
I'm extremely disappointed that we paid $41.50 each for a little over 3 hours worth of disorganized, regrettable events. We feel tremendously ripped off. Six Flags Magic Mountain keeps their park open all day during their Fright Nights; only opening the haunted mazes/houses at night. This method really helps with crowd control since people can drift in all day long. At any rate, I'm not going to demand compensation, I'm only asking for it. I'm so displeased that I spent so much money on tickets/hotel fees and my valuable weekend hours building a negative memory. I request your prompt response or I intend to express my frustration via Blogs, starting with usacomplaints.com.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Regards
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