SoCal theme parks offer social media worthy food and beverage options for Halloween

I went to Knotts Scary Farm for the first time ever a few weeks ago and was amused by the creative Halloween themed foods they offered. In fact, I skipped the Chicken Dinner Restaurant with the intention of trying these instead.

Later, upon closer reading, they didn't seem all that special after all, most appearing to just be "dye jobs" on already overpriced, crappy Cedar Fair food. I ended up swinging through In N Out on the way back to my hotel.

But I'd totally buy a bloodbag drink, damn the cost, if they offered a non-alcoholic version!

I thought Knott's had a better food relative to other CF parks. That's unfortunate. I don't understand why Cedar Fair can't seem to crack that nut. (I've recently discovered that Universal's counter service is almost universally bad as well.) I'm pretty spoiled with Disney as my closest parks, because even counter service is fundamentally decent compared to other chains. Heck, Holiday World generally gets it right, and they're a one-off.

Knotts does have some decent food. The CDR is pretty overrated, but I still get it sometimes because it's just what you do.

The Boysenberry Festival was really nice in 2018. They brought out some different foods to have the Boysenberry sauces on and we enjoyed it.

Here's a link to the Scary Farm food: https://www.knotts.com/play/scary-farm/scary-farm-food

In retrospect, some of these weren't on the Haunt map I had and I wish I had tried one or two. (That Witches Brew lemonade for one) But as for the others, red mac n cheese is still just mac n cheese on a CF burger, fried mac bites are still standard fare, and different combinations of pizza toppings are still just bad CF pizza.

I wish parks in general would offer better fast food options. I would actually prefer to eat in the park if I thought it was worth the money. For example, Cedar Point, my home park, has new full service restaurants, but that's not really what I'm after during a few hours' passholder type visit. Honestly, the food trucks offer the best options, when they're there.

You'd love Epcot's Food & Wine Festival. They essentially are dozens of specialty food trucks. This year, I'm particularly fond of the jerk chicken at the Caribbean stand, the liquid nitro chocolate-almond truffle with warm whiskey-caramel in The Chocolate Studio, the cider flight in Appleseed Orchard, the Pão de Queijo (cheese bread) in Brazil... I could go on all day. The festival is almost three months this year. And even the rest of the year, WDW in general has chicken nuggets that are actually chicken, decent french fries, decent seafood and the pizzas are pretty OK. Of course, the desserts and the alcoholic beverages are great year-round.

(Pimm's Cup from Rose & Crown at Epcot)

Epcot's Food & Wine Festival rocks. Actually, since I've done most of the attractions at Epcot I'm interested in, Food & Wine makes for a great evening at the park. Expensive? Yes. But worth it, every year or so for those of us who don't have Jeff's great fortune to live so close.

It's all fun and games until your credit card bill comes with dozens of charges $4-9 each. 😁