The refurbished Knott’s Hotel recounts the love story between Walter and Cordelia Knott and serves as a love letter to the Knott’s Berry Farm theme park that grew from a 30-acre berry farm into a 160-acre playground filled with rides, shows and restaurants.
“That was our North Star – that relationship, that dynamic, that inventiveness,” Cedar Fair Experience Design Studio Senior Vice President Chuck Myers said.
Knott’s Berry Farm showed off the multimillion-dollar renovation of the Knott’s Hotel lobby, restaurant, bar, coffee shop, gift shop and guest rooms during a media preview on Thursday, Feb. 29.
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Cedar Fair’s XDS creative team focused the hotel’s new backstory on Walter and Cordelia Knott — who built a roadside berry stand in 1923 on Grand Avenue at the site of where the Buena Park theme park stands today.
“This is a love story,” Cedar Fair Experience Design Studio Director of Creative Development Ken Parks said. “That’s really key. If you look back at their history, you can see it’s reflected in who they really were as a couple. And that love story really is reflected in what we tried to do with the hotel.”
Walter — a practical farmer known for reusing materials — was often described as both a man of the earth and a bit of a showman.
Cordelia — a farmer’s wife from Pasadena — was known as refined and artful with an ability to elevate and regulate her husband’s creative pursuits.
“There’s a great quote that I love where Walter said, ‘We work well together. I apply the gas and she applies the brakes,’” Parks said during an interview at the hotel.
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During my visit to the hotel last week, workers were framing a new driveway under the porte cochere, installing a fireplace in the restaurant’s outdoor patio and adding the finishing touches to a courtyard flex space amid the sounds of pounding hammers.
The 18-month renovation sought to give the hotel a more homey and comfortable feel, according to Myers.
“It feels very open and bright,” Myers said during an interview at the hotel. “That was the goal: To create a totally new experience.”
An imagined Knotts family guest house serves as the inspiration for the extreme hotel makeover — albeit with 322 guest rooms. The areas of the hotel adopt the language of a home — with a kitchen (restaurant), pantry (coffee shop), great room (lobby) and courtyard (outdoor event space).
“We had this vision of this guest house experience,” Myers said. “This is where guests are welcome. Where they really treat their guests special. Treat them like family.”
The love story between Walter and Cordelia drove design decisions throughout the renovation project.
“We tried to strike a balance between the practical side of Walter and more of the refined and design oriented side of Cordelia,” Myers said. “Ultimately, it was that combination that helped inform the decisions we made.”
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The new porte cochere with a heavy timber frame evokes the look of a barn roof and reinforces the refurbished hotel’s upscale farmhouse chic theme and the Knotts family’s agricultural roots.
The hotel’s new backstory incorporates elements that offer nods to the theme park’s lands using materials like salvaged wood to evoke Ghost Town and Spanish tile to represent Fiesta Village. Early concept art of Calico Ghost Town dots the lobby walls.
“We basically took the story of Knott’s Berry Farm and deconstructed the materials and textures of the park,” Myers said.
The hand blown glass chandelier in the lobby pays tribute to Ghost Town’s glass blowing stand. The floating glass lanterns with dangling strands of jewels make the black iron chandelier look like a swarm of jellyfish floating in the ocean.
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Jelly jars behind the reception desk, which will be filled with seasonal flowers throughout the year, subtly remind visitors of the theme park’s humble start as a boysenberry fruit stand. The lobby will be decorated for each of the Knott’s Seasons of Fun, from the Boysenberry Festival to Scary Farm.
Subtle and not so subtle odes to the fruit that started it all for the Knotts family are sprinkled throughout the hotel. Boysenberries are woven through the design of the rug in the lobby under a black and white wedding portrait of Walter and Cordelia Knott with the couple wearing matching boysenberry print outfits boasting a striking splash of purple.
The refreshed courtyard with adobe bricks, terracotta tile and olive trees will host weddings and Scary Farm special events.
The new Thirty Acre Kitchen restaurant serving farm-style comfort food and classic American cuisine makes reference to the Knotts family’s first 30-acre farm.
“It’s a nod to that original spirit of entrepreneurship, farming and hard work,” Myers said of the refreshed restaurant.
The makeover opened up the layout of the former Amber Waves restaurant, connecting the new Thirty Acre Kitchen dining room to the hotel lobby with a horseshoe bar in between.
Local artists created the seed packet wall art over the dining room tables and a tile mosaic of the Ghost Town windmill with a hidden-in-plain-sight Easter Egg dedicated to the park’s legendary catawampus wooden creature.
A buffet space can be hidden behind rolling barn doors after breakfast, revealing a massive chalkboard with Cordelia’s hand-written notes on a family recipe.
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Work on the 50-year-old former Radisson Hotel built in the 1970s started 18 months ago.
“The biggest challenge was working within the confines of the structure, but making it feel fresh, new and contemporary,” Myers said.
Colorful close-ups of the Knott’s Bottle House greet guests as they exit the elevator on every floor. The Bottle House theme carries over to the hallway carpet leading to the guest rooms.
Hotel hallways feature poster-sized historic photos from the theme park of the Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant, the Roaring 20’s themed land and the former Corkscrew roller coaster.
Inside the refreshed rooms, Cordelia’s wedding china adorns the walls along with more nods to the theme park’s history.
The updated hotel also simplified its name — from Knott’s Berry Farm Hotel to Knott’s Hotel. Rates start at $149 per night.
