“Have you ever stolen something?”
No, I haven't tried it. Knott's Berry Farm suggested I try it.
Theft, the man said enthusiastically, is liberating, and by its very nature comes with reward—or loot. But I was in the presence of an unreliable narrator, as I was taking “honest” Cody Sullivan to a theme park prison—that is, a single cell in the middle of the historic, Old West-themed ghost town of Knott’s. Sullivan’s recent crime? Stealing a judge’s gavel.
I've never worked for a sheriff's department either, but in Knott's annual summer offering, Ghost Town Alive!, you can play just about anyone you want, as long as it's silly.
On a recent visit, I started my day as a mail courier, which led to meeting an elixir specialist, with whom we wondered if there was a cure for “duck pox,” but before the fictional diseases were addressed, I was conspiring with a local hotelier, dreaming up ways to cover up a mouse problem. This happened in less than an hour, as the narratives in Ghost Town Alive! follow one another quickly and get crazy. You might encounter someone who is quacking (the aforementioned duck pox) or be taken aside and handed a sack of toy money, stolen money that one Ghost Town “resident” hoped he could use to win the affections of another.
Come prepared to contribute. But if you don't, participation will find you. I stood there doing nothing as I was approached to arrest Sullivan, played by actor Josh Williams.
In the Ghost Town Alive! experience, Josh Williams, left, stars as “Honest” Cody Sullivan and Evan Battle plays Deputy Chester Davenport.
There’s nothing in any theme park quite like Ghost Town Alive!, which is part live-action role-playing game, part improvised play, and brings with it daily stories, including multiple editions of a newspaper and a cast of quirky characters. A Knott’s staple since 2016, Ghost Town Alive! has its roots and influences in Disneyland’s beloved but short-lived Legends of Frontierland; the experience has matured into one of Southern California’s most original and creative theme park offerings.
What is the key to its long-term success? Ghost Town Alive! understands the heart and soul of what makes a great theme park experience: it’s the people and our ability to connect and play with them.
“People’s lives are deeply affected by the work we do here,” says actress Rachel Roman, who plays postmistress Shelly Melson. Before Roman broke character to chat, her Melson had been gossiping about her coworker, Buttons, and had noticed that the latter had been littering. Apparently Buttons had been littering, well, buttons, all over the fictional town of Calico.
Annabelle Pancake, 11, right, of Anaheim, plays a Calico Gazette reporter interviewing a postal worker, played by Rachel Roman.
A participant holds the Calico Gazette daily newspaper.
A sign welcomes visitors to Calico Founder's Day.
“There are a variety of guests, and some you’ll appreciate, like this little girl who comes in,” Roman says. “She’s my best friend. Each of us has our own best friend. Her parents can’t stop talking about Shelly. She’s so sweet and so much fun to play with. I was on the other side of this as a kid. I grew up going to theme parks with my dad and I was that little girl with passes that all the performers knew.”
Ghost Town Alive! treats the theme park like a stage, allowing guests to become actors. It's a nod to Knott's roots, when the park lacked thrill rides and specialized in Wild West set designs. A song-and-dance revue runs alongside Ghost Town Alive!, all of which gives Calico a lived-in, highly populated feel. Rovin Jay, director of the show, says the park employs 45 actors for the performances.
This summer, my name appeared in the Calico Gazette, I learned about ill-advised experiments that inspired theme park stunts (one involved electricity and a potato that resulted in a late-afternoon explosion), and I served on the jury in the case of a 100-pound stolen catfish. I swore my name as a Calico resident, took a journalistic oath for the town paper (promising to tell the truth, except “when gossip will do”), and earned my first Calico wooden coin. “You can’t spend it on much, but its sentimental value is priceless,” I was told.
Another day, I walked into Ghost Town and was asked, almost immediately, if I wanted a bucket of water dumped on me (I didn’t). I also participated in a plot to use melted cheese to free a prisoner. It made sense at the time. Theories in Ghost Town Alive! don’t need to be plausible. This is a space where the imagination is not only free, but untamed.
“It’s what we did when we were 6 or 7 years old and we played on the playground,” says Jay. “Friends come over and you get to create. We get to do that every day here.”
Rachel Hanson, left, performs as Thelma Kinkade and Josh Williams performs as “Honest” Cody Sullivan in front of Goldie's Hotel.
Some of these events happen every day, but each afternoon (Ghost Town Alive! runs on select days through Sept. 2 from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.) is also filled with impromptu storytelling. Maybe you'll be asked to act in a film show, participate in a mustache contest, take a drawing class, help a gang rob a bank, or inspire a shy Calico resident to invite a lady to the afternoon party. Guests, Roman says, “get very invested in our love lives.”
To describe the show's appeal, Jay asks me to visualize a stereotypical theme park ad, for example, of a well-known character holding a small child's hand.
“It’s a promise that you’re going to have a unique, personal interaction with a character,” Jay says. “We can offer that, and we can do it organically. It’s so funny to me how often guests come up and ask, ‘When’s the show going to start? ’ Meanwhile, they’re robbing the bank. These are characters you learn to live with. They automatically see you. The minute you walk into Ghost Town Alive!, you’re like, ‘Hi! It’s good to see you. ’”
Making a theme park feel personal is no easy feat. In fact, designers have long been trying to solve this problem, whether by creating interactive attractions that respond to visitors’ needs or short-term experiments like Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, colloquially known as the Star Wars hotel.
Ghost Town Alive!’s predecessor, Disney’s Legends of Frontierland (both featuring the same creative team), lasted a few months. And before Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opened at Disneyland in 2019, Disney creatives talked a lot about a land filled with actors and live shows — a reality that never quite materialized.
Justyn High stars as Marybelle Starling. John Guirguis stars as Jackknife Blacksmith. Visitors talk with Evan Battle, center, who plays Deputy Chester Davenport.
“I’ve visited Galaxy’s Edge a few times and I’ve often wondered what it would take to populate that city,” Jay says. “It would take five or ten times the number of people. On a daily basis, we’d have to have a couple hundred people in there to make it feel alive and organic. There are a lot of nooks and crannies there. We only have a couple of streets that were part of our original design. Scalability is a challenge.”
And for guests, it's a worthwhile investment.
Janey Ellis, 36, of Anaheim, is a regular contributor to Ghost Town Alive!. Ellis recently appeared in the Calico Gazette with a story about a fence that grew legs and spilled out of her property. Ellis comes to Knott's to experience that kind of “subplot chaos.” “I'm here to see what can be created out of nothing,” she says.
“I think this is the future of theme park entertainment,” Ellis says. “It's something unique and personal. You can ride something for hours and hours. It's a real-life video game, or a real-life experience.” [‘Dungeons & Dragons’] game.”
And a reminder that you don't need the latest technology. Sometimes all you need is a playground, a little imagination and the joy of acting. You just have to be careful who steals your wallet.
