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Knott’s Bear-y Tales

Image: jericl cat, Flickr

“Welcome one and welcome all, folks,
To a family fair for all folks,

Riding on Knott’s Bear-y Tale ride!
We’ll go back to the Roaring ’20s,
And you’ll come back a’roarin’ plenty

When you see what the bruins are brewin’ inside!

Welcome one and all! Y’all come have a ball!
Things are very fine riding on the ole’ Knott’s Bear-y line!”

In that canon of infectuous theme park melodies, Bear-y Tale’s “Welcome One and All” rivals even the Sherman Brothers’ Disney Parks tunes! Composed by Robert F. Brunner and Bruce Belland (unsurprisingly, Disney alums), the joyful hoedown follows riders through their Bear-y Tale from entrance to exit. 

Image: Knott's

Ding ding! As guests reach the loading platform for Knott’s Bear-y Tales, they stand before a time-honored tradition dating to Disneyland’s classic Fantasyland dark rides: a beautiful mural stretching the length of the station. Painted by Suzie McLean, repeat riders may notice that the mural tells the story of guests’ coming journey to the County Fair, from the Boysenberry Bakery to the Frog Forest; Gypsy Camp to the Weird Woods. A continuously loading line of streetcars is ready to whisk us into a storybook past!

As the melodic fiddle tune of the ride’s theme turns to whistling and humming, our streetcar passes through a poster for the County Fair and begins a surprising uphill climb! Up over a hill, we’ve found ourselves in a cave shining with metallic copper machinery. The cavern factory of the Bear-y fam’ly business is bought to life with musical clanking and creaking, tooting steam whistles, whirring gears, and spinning Crumpian pendulums with beads clattering on spindles.

Image: Knott's

It’s a joyful playground of sights and sounds, where chickens lay fresh eggs that tumble down ramps; Boysen and Girlsen Bear-y ride spinning gears in their factory playground; all manner of Bear-y cousins grind freshly harvested boysenberries into fresh jam, roll out dough, place finished pies onto an oven-bound conveyer belt, and load up a wagon filled with potentially-prize-winning delights bound for the County Fair. (Just look out for Crafty Coyote, who’s come to snatch a pie right off the cooling rack.)

But with the pies loaded and ready for the fair, it’s time to begin the journey. Our first stop? Frog Forest. The trolleys exit from the cave and into the delightfully musical forest where weeping tree branches and giant mushrooms surround riders.

Image: Knott's

Crickets chirp all around as playful frogs ribbit among the cattails, going about their chores. Better yet, frogs practice their contribution to the fair – a long jump competition – in a puppeted vignette. A final scene within the Frog Forest sees a gargantuan lady frog don her straw hat, ready to join the journey to the fair.

The trolleys lumber across an old covered bridge, leaving the chirping and humming of the Frog Forest behind. Instead, the sounds of tamborines and cimbalom dulcimers signal the arrival in a nomadic Gypsy Camp. Now deep in the forest en route to the Fair, all incandescent light has faded, replaced entirely with the glowing, otherworldly blacklight traditionally found in many Disney dark rides.

Image: Knott's

And there’s not a better place to put it to use than the Gypsy Camp, filled with ultraviolent vardo wagons, striped tents, fluttering flags, fine glowing porcelain, and comical signs for various fortune tellers.Even the trees are now aglow in moonlit hues, creating in the Gypsy Camp an otherworldly sense of place. Card readings with ThedaBear, floating instruments and seances with Zazz Owl, meeting with the mystic Sarah who “Sees All, Knows Nothing,” and Palm Reading by Wanda…

Here in the Gypsy Camp, Knott’s Bear-y Tales reveals itself as the work of a master Imagineer, with memorable characters, perfect staging, and exceptionally well set-up scenes.

Image: Victor C, Wikimedia Commons (license)

Still the trolleys trek onward, leaving the camp behind and following arrows and marquees toward the Fair. There’s just one problem. Ahead, signs warn: “DANGER!” “DO NOT ENTER!” “WRONG WAY!” “TURN BACK!” and above them all, a sign painted like a storm cloud with lightning bolts tearing out in each direction, reading, “THUNDER CAVE”! It’s too late, of course, as the trolleys carefully advance in.

As thunder rumbles and lighting flashes, the rocky interior of the cave seems to close in. The streetcar leans forward, beginning a long descent through the cave as glowing, goofy, fuzzy spiders rappel from the cave walls. (Crump suggests that this long descent remain from an early iteration when Arrow Development would’ve manufactured the ride. In that version, this descent through the Thunder Cave would actually have been gravity-powered… a family-friendly roller coaster hill in the dark, with the lightning flashes meant to disorient guests and weaken their nightvision for the scene to come…)

Image: Knott's, via Bear-ytales blog

Now in the deepest, darkest part of the path to the Fair, we’ve slid into the Weird Woods. “Population: SCARY.” In fact, the Weird Woods is a forest of DayGlo creatures that are equal parts bizarre and hilarious. Duck-footed bats; chicken-snails; mosquito-birds; llama-donkeys; buzzard dragonflies. These colorful hybrids are characters in their own right, nodding, flapping, and flying past guests as the plucking score of “Welcome One and All” returns.

Dipping down into a bog, a magnificent sight appears ahead: a glittering marquee dotted with flashing lightbulbs. It reads: “ANNUAL COUNTY FAIR”! We’ve made it! After a spectacular journey, the ride’s finale brings us to the County Fair where wonders await. Snakeoil salesman “Doctor Fox” stands at his wagon, offering cures for what ails us – “Corns,” “Hang nails,” even “Nose hairs”!

Image: Knott’s, via Bear-ytales blog

Madam Wong – the panda bear fortune teller – bangs a gong as riders pass her tent. Theda Bear has made it from the Gypsy Camp, offering her metaphysical services. Nearby, Harry Rabbit and his son Jack perform puppet shows of a magical juggling act! Characters wave from the trees overhead, or float in suspended hot air balloons.

In a rousing, jazzy musical finale, guests pass by musicians, acrobats, and more all as blacklight gives way once more to incandescent lightbulbs. And there, of course, with the Blue Ribbon, is the Bear-y family, being photographed to remember their day at the Fair. As Crafty Coyote tries to reach from his “Pie Thief” paddy wagon to reach a boysenberry pie, Boysen, Girlsen, Flapper, and Elder Bear-y wave goodbye to guests. “Goodbye!” Ta-ta!”

As you know, we always like to end our Lost Legend entries with a ride-through video showing the attraction in action. Knott’s Bear-y Tales closed in 1986 – well before home photography could easily capture a dark ride. Videos of the experience that remain are from its final weeks or days of operation, when the attraction, its audio, and its animatronics had largely seen better days… but a video can still give a good sense of the ride’s spirit and characters! Feel free to watch a clearer, “lights-on” video of the ride at the end of its lifetime here, or the proper show-lighting via home video below:

End of the Ride

By the mid-1980s – after the deaths of her parents Cordelia (1974) and Walter (1981) – Marion Knott chose to step back from the daily operations of the park. A new general manager, Terry Van Gorder, believed that there were better uses for the Bear-y Tales space.

After the summer of 1986, Knott’s Bear-y Tales closed forever after barely a decade – a relatively short life for a ride remembered so fondly! (In an extremely strange twist, the ride was used that fall for Knott’s annual Halloween Haunt event. With most of its figures removed and those that remains turned off, the bare scenes were populated by Halloween props and hidden “Scareactors” who jumped out at guets as they slowly rolled by in 1920s trolleys. You can watch a lights-on video of the experience here.)

Image: Knott’s, via Bear-ytales blog

It’s easy to see why Knott’s Bear-y Tales was remembered for decades, still talked about in the kind of glowing terms often reserved only for Disney’s Lost Legends. It’s probably not a coincidence. Even though most riders wouldn’t have had a clue who Rolly Crump was, Bear-y Tales was so decisively his; a ride born from the mind of a gifted Disney Imagineer and wrapped in his beautifully vibrant stylization. So what happened next? Read on…

 
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