In 1987, the second-story space once home to Knott’s Bear-y Tales was transformed into the Kingdom of the Dinosaurs (coincidentally, produced with the assistance of another of Disneyland’s original cast of Imagineers, Bob Gurr).

It’s easy to fault the park’s then-management for the seemingly short-sighted decision to remove a ride now remembered as a classic, but the new attraction just so happened to catch the “dinosaur” train just before the meteoric rise of prehistory in pop culture thanks to 1988’s The Land Before Time and 1990’s Jurassic Park, arming Knott’s with a marketable attraction tuned to audiences 1980s and ’90s. (During the ride’s first year, attendance at the park was said to have nearly doubled.)

Plus, it must be said that Kingdom of the Dinosaurs was truly a legendary dark ride in its own right. Seated aboard the same trolleys (now reclad like 1920s time machines), guests would travel through the streets of a roaring Los Angeles before entering the wacky Professor Wells’ workshop and entering a time tunnel (its ticking emblazoned into the minds of a generation of Southern Californians). They’d emerge in a prehistoric world, traveling through an Ice Age, the Triassic period, and the Cretaceous, encountering two dozen animated figures in a slow-moving, informative, and immersive ride.

Suffice it to say that for ’90s kids, Kingdom of the Dinosaurs was an icon, separate entirely from their parents’ longing for the cartoon Bear-y Tales of yore. And as far as transformations of a second story of a theme park arcade go, the 1987 ride was unbeatable.

Kingdom of the Dinosaurs lasted longer than Bear-y Tales had, but not by much. In a bit of irony, the popularity of dinosaurs probably helped contribute to the ride’s end. After a firm decade as head of the prehistoric pack, Kingdom of the Dinosaurs gained a new competitor just a short drive away in 1996 when the Lost Legend: JURASSIC PARK: The Ride opened at Universal Studios Hollywood, making Knott’s ride look like a relic of the past.

But the indisputable end of Kingdom of the Dinosaurs can likely be attributed to a certain lack of interest by its owners… and we don‘t mean the Knott family…

Cedar Fair’s Berry Farm

In 1997, Knott's Berry Farm was sold to Cedar Fair – owners of Ohio’s Cedar Point – for a reported $150 million. The company’s spokesperson told the LA Times, “[Knott’s Berry Farm] is in great shape physically, and it’s a great draw. It’s different from our other parks in that there are not as many thrill rides.”

Consider it foreshadowing. In the years that followed the 1997 change-of-hands, Cedar Fair added the GhostRider wooden coaster (1998), Supreme Scream drop tower (1999), the record-breaking Perilous Plunge splashdown boat ride (2000), Xcelerator launch coaster (2002), and Silver Bullet inverted coaster (2004).

One thing Cedar Fair was pretty infamously disinterested in: dark rides. The 17 year-old Kingdom of the Dinosaurs closed forever in 2004. Given the ride’s lack of upkeep, its ’80s technology, and the relative decline of dino-mania, it may have been for the best. The second floor of the arcade was vacant for the first time in thirty years, and given Cedar Fair’s style, it looked likely to stay that way…

However, in 2011, Cedar Fair's longtime President and CEO stepped away from the company, making way for a new leader: former Disneyland President Matt Ouimet. Pretty immediately, Ouimet set out to reverse Cedar Fair’s overreliance on bare steel coasters. Especially thanks to his time at Disneyland, the fresh leader was determined to return some nostalgia to Knott's, too. “This park has a lot of potential,” he told the Orange County Register on his tenth day on the job in 2011. “This is one of those parks that’s a jewel. […] These parks – and Disney’s the same way – have to be part timeless and part timely. You’ve got to respect the legacy.”

In 2013, Knott’s Timber Mountain Log Ride closed for an extensive five-month refurbishment, reopening with all new scenes and over 60 animatronic figures designed and built by San Bernardino’s renowned Garner Holt Productions. For 2014, Knott’s equally historic Calico Mine Ride got the same treatment, with 120 new human and animal characters. 

The same year, the company's Canada's Wonderland park announced that it would partner with Montreal-based Triotech to develop an interactive, fully-screen-based dark ride called Wonder Mountain's Guardian in 2014 – what fans expected would be a prototype for a wider rollout of digital dark rides across the chain. At the same time, Cedar Fair trademarked to term "Amusement Dark" – what many fans suspected would be a portfolio-wide initiative to similarly refresh and expand Cedar Fair's dark ride attraction lineup

Ouimet spoke with entertainment writer Jim Hill that summer, stating “It’s not exactly a closely guarded secret that – when it comes to Knott’s – we’re trying to figure out what to do with the area where Kingdom of the Dinosaurs & Knott’s Bear-y Tales used to be located. Assuming that the Wonder Mountain’s Guardian ride works out, there will probably be some lessons that we learned up in Canada that we can apply down here in Buena Park.”

Like clockwork, Cedar Fair announced that the park’s three-year dark ride spit-shine would turn Knott’s duo of dark rides back into a trio… At last, the old Bear-y Tale space that had sat vacant since the Kingdom of the Dinosaurs went extinct in 2004 would be reactivated. Extending their partnership with Triotech Knott’s would host a third dark ride once more…

Voyage to the Iron Reef (2015)

With a reported budget of $10 million, Voyage to the Iron Reef would take shape on the second story of the arcade – now part of the park’s Boardwalk area in 2015. Knott’s Berry Farm general manager Raffi Kaprelyan said to the LA Times, “We can’t compete with Disney and Universal on budget, but we can compete on entertainment value.”

At least on paper, the ride cleverly connected to Knott’s itself, with a setup that explained that steampunk, mechanical ocean animals had arisen from the depths and were devouring the rides of the Boardwalk area.

Concept art even suggested that riders would see sunken, rusted versions of former Knott’s attractions – including a Bear-y Tales trolley – now feeding steam-powered sea creatures.

Seated in four-person rotating submarine pods armed with “freeze guns,” guests would take to the murky blue depths, traveling through six distinct scenes with 10 interactive screens – most separated by simple but effective practical sets or props. Check out a ride-through, point-of-view video of Knott’s Voyage to the Iron Reef below; having a sense of its flow and layout will come in handy in our continued tale of Bear-y Tale’s legacy…

Even suffering from the drawbacks you’d expect from a dark ride with 10% the pricetag of a Disney installation (like awkward transitions, “video game” level animation, and a distinctly irritating and invariable looping musical hum), the ride recieved pretty lukewarm reception. It wasn’t a great ride, especially for Knott’s, and especially after its historic, animatronic-filled attractions that had been so beautifully spotlighted in the two years prior.

Sure, Voyage to the Iron Reef may not have been a masterpiece packed with joy, warmth, artistry, and heart, but it was – in a manner of speaking – “enough”; a “cool” ride that reactivated a long-vacant corner of the park with a billboard-friendly aesthetic. And being “enough” would just have to be “enough,” right? After all, it’s not like Iron Reef would be sinking anytime soon, much less that the Knottsenbear-y family would even make a return if it did…

… Right?