Summertime is in full swing down at Knott’s Berry Farm, and with it comes a brand-new nighttime event called Knott’s Summer Nights that is sure to please everyone. Similar to their ever popular Boysenberry Festival, Knott’s Summer Nights includes tons of brand-new entertainment and food stations for you to enjoy. It’s a great idea to keep the crowds in the park during the evening hours, especially after a long day of Ghost Town Alive.
Speaking of flavor, there is plenty of it, with NINE stations for you to pick up and pick out some summertime eats. While the menu is not nearly as varied as the Boysenberry Festival, there is still a good amount of things to choose from. Three of the stations specialize in more hearty “meals” for you to taste, such as the Seasonal Sausage on a Bun and various skewers.
The sausage is always delicious, and you can’t go wrong with it. The two chili-based dishes (chili in a cornbread bowl and chili corn chip pie) were huge, and sure to satisfy any appetite. The skewer station has three different options: chicken & veggie, plain veggie, and shrimp and sausage. And of course, each was more delicious than the last. If you want something a little lighter, another station also has a corn cup, salad bowl, or fish tacos.
When it’s time for dessert, you have plenty to choose from, with a boysenberry ice cream cookie-wich, fudge dipped apple, churro loops, and more. All of the dessert we sampled was great for the most part (but the peach crumble did taste a little…off).
You’ll want to wash all that down with something to drink, and Summer Nights has three stations for you to do so: two with assorted craft beers and wines, and one with flavored lemonade. You can never go wrong with a boysenberry beer, but the highlight for us was the flavored lemonades. They squeezed these right in front of us, and my strawberry one was delicious!
You can purchase these all individually OR, much like the Boysenberry Festival, you can purchase the Knott’s Summer Nights Tasting card, which provides you with eight samples for only $35. You can’t go wrong with that. That said, the portion sizes seem a little less on some of the offerings compared to the Boysenberry Festival, but hey, at $35 for a bunch of food, your family can eat quite nicely.
There was plenty of entertainment to go around, with plenty of bands and DJs taking the stage all night long. The band Hiatus plays cover songs three times a night at the Calico Mine Stage. It’s a great atmosphere, with tables set up all around it and firepits set up to sit at when it gets colder. The Calico Mine Stage also offers a lot of “games” to play for free, which is always a nice touch.
Doug Legacy & The Zydeco Cajun Band also play, twice a night, in Calico Park across the way, offering a different type of music for guests, while DJ Anthony Rosales spins twice a night also, from atop the Surf Shop.
If we had one critique of Knott’s Summer Nights is that everything revolving around the festival is kept to one small area, between Calico Park and the Charleston Circle Fountain. While on one hand it is convenient to have it all in one centralized location, it does create a bit of a bottleneck, as all the activity is in a small area.
That said, it’s still a fun-filled evening, and you can spend some time checking out the festival before heading off into the rest of the park for everything else.You can check out the newly reburbished Calico River Rapids or just take a stroll through Ghost Town at night. Knott’s has plenty to offer to make it a full day park this summer, and it’s definitely will worth a trip to check it all out.
Knott’s Summer Nights runs through the rest of the summer. Food Stands open at 6PM while the rest of the entertainment begins 7PM. For more information, go to www.knotts.com
