The refurbished Knott’s Hotel recounts the love story between Walter and Cordelia Knott and serves as a love letter to the Knott’s Berry Farm theme park that grew from a 30-acre berry farm into a 160-acre playground filled with rides, shows and restaurants.
“That was our North Star – that relationship, that dynamic, that inventiveness,” Cedar Fair Experience Design Studio Senior Vice President Chuck Myers said.
Knott’s Berry Farm showed off the multimillion-dollar renovation of the Knott’s Hotel lobby, restaurant, bar, coffee shop, gift shop and guest rooms during a media preview on Thursday, Feb. 29.
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Cedar Fair’s XDS creative team focused the hotel’s new backstory on Walter and Cordelia Knott — who built a roadside berry stand in 1923 on Grand Avenue at the site of where the Buena Park theme park stands today.
“This is a love story,” Cedar Fair Experience Design Studio Director of Creative Development Ken Parks said. “That’s really key. If you look back at their history, you can see it’s reflected in who they really were as a couple. And that love story really is reflected in what we tried to do with the hotel.”
Walter — a practical farmer known for reusing materials — was often described as both a man of the earth and a bit of a showman.
Cordelia — a farmer’s wife from Pasadena — was known as refined and artful with an ability to elevate and regulate her husband’s creative pursuits.
“There’s a great quote that I love where Walter said, ‘We work well together. I apply the gas and she applies the brakes,’” Parks said during an interview at the hotel.
ALSO SEE: Knott’s Berry Farm adding 4 rides in Camp Snoopy makeover
During my visit to the hotel last week, workers were framing a new driveway under the porte cochere, installing a fireplace in the restaurant’s outdoor patio and adding the finishing…
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