Knott’s Berry Farm Badgered Into Shutting Down It’s Crazy

Knott’s Berry Farm used to be a Berry Farm. Don’t ask me how I know that. A few light rides were enough to drive ticket sales many decades ago. Now they have fiery fast roller coasters and gang banging to go with the fruit preserves. Every October the theme park becomes Knott’s Scary Farm. They put out some fairly intricate fright attractions. This isn’t your Cub Scout pack putting out slippery noodles in a bowl and telling everybody it’s brains. This is an Oculus virtual reality powered ‘FearVR: 5150’ that puts you in the middle of an originally shot horror movie scene. An immersive scary fucking experience that starts with you being strapped into an old crusty wheelchair and pushed down the halls of a mental institution. If that’s your thing. 

The VR headset puts you in the middle of the action inside the hospital. One patient seems agitated and attempts to get up from a bed. Security officers try to subdue him. A nurse gives you a shot (which you will feel), knocking you out. When you wake up in the next scene, all hell has broken loose. Look left, right and down, bloody bodies lie on the floor. You hear people whimpering in pain and see zombies coming right at you.

First, do not take the brown acid. This sounds like the kind of intense that will certainly drive young boys to become serial killers, but too cool to shut down. Only it has been. 

Mental health advocates started emailing Knott’s complaining about the stigma of mental illness in this country and how this attraction only further such misplaced fears and understanding. You know, psychiatric patients only rarely become zombies and start eating people. Except in Miami where it seems to be fairly regular. Knott’s responded by removing the “5150” portion of the attraction name, with 5150 being the legal code for a psychiatric hold against a person’s will. Also a shitty Van Halen album after David Lee Roth fought his way out of the band. But they kept the attraction going.

Enter Pastor Rick Warren and is wife Kay of the nearby mega Saddleback Church and author of the Purpose Driven Life. You haven’t read it despite somebody you don’t like insisting you do. He’s a big time holy roller in Knott’s Berry Farm country and elsewhere. The Warren’s son suffered from mental illness and killed himself three years ago, a note mentioned in their public letter to Knott’s politely insisting they shut the attraction down. Knott’s folded, with a tightly worded defense that they never intended to portray mental illness in an entertaining or frightening light. They left off the part, “though it totally is.” 

The Warren’s noted that Knott’s wouldn’t base a scary attraction around the horrors of cancer or heart attacks. Which is true. The Myocardial Infarction Log Ride at California Adventure was a big fail. But it’s also true that mental illness is the root cause of almost all that is terrifying and chilling among our species. Mentally stable people don’t cut up eleven coeds and store them in the freezer. Even your basic alley lurking rapists and touchy-feely child swimming instructors are obviously mentally disturbed people. If you eliminated crazy, the most disturbing thing left in this country would be whoever is becoming our next President. That might actually beat out pedo-rape even currently.

It sucks when you or your family are victims of random disease or violence or shitty experiences. Maybe you do try to educate the public from that personal standing. Shutting down amusement park rides seems like a bad way of doing that. It’s human nature to defy censorship.