We found our way over to the main ticket building. I had never seen it so mobbed. There was a long queue line in front of the building, but the line snaked out of that and all the way back across the covered bridge. Fortunately, they opened up two more windows at a building opposite the ticket building and within ten minutes we had our wristbands. Knoebels didn't offer season passes nor discounts. The wristbands were $58 a piece. A book of 50 tickets cost $50, so the wristbands were definitely the better deal.

By then it was almost 1:00 and we were hungry, so we headed for Karen's favorite place to eat, the Round Stand which served pirogies and tri-taters (sort of three-sided hash browns). While Karen placed her order there, I went next door to the pizza shop and got two slices of cheese pizza. We sat at a little round table under a revolving canopy (a converted merry-go-round mechanism) and enjoyed our delicacies. The food is one of the things we enjoyed most in the park. It was always delicious and always reasonably priced. The pizza, for example, was just $4.50 a slice. Our entire meal was under $20.

After we finished, since we were right next door to it, we took a trip through Knoebels' legendary Haunted Mansion. It wasn't included with a wristband and cost $3.50 extra but it was well worth it. I got the tickets and we walked through the surprisingly empty queue line. There were a lot of internal changes since the last time we rode it. Many scenes were removed and some were relocated. For some reason, the ride felt emptier to me. In the past, most of the scenes were what you might expect to find in a haunted house, with a few surprises thrown in. This time there seemed to be a lot less coherence. But it was still fun, if a bit confusing. One ride was enough for Karen, but I took another.

From there we walked over to the west end of the park. Karen had never ridden the Black Diamond Mining Company, so we queued up for that. Normally at Knoebels, queue lines move really quickly. But not in this instance. A large elderly woman (who probably shouldn't have been allowed to ride) couldn't get out of the car and had fallen backwards into it. She apparently had no strength and couldn't move her legs. Her companion and a ride attendant spent about ten minutes trying to get her out of the car and into a wheelchair. Once that was accomplished, the line began to move quickly. Black Diamond was another of Knoebels' heroic rescues. It was at built for a park in New Jersey and was the only dark ride/rollercoaster made by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company. It was set to be demolished, so Knoebels bought it and reassembled it. They did a great job with it. The ride had a few fun coaster-like drops but was generally really mild and a good family attraction. Most of the scenes inside were humorous depictions of miners.

We paid a visit to the nearby Chalet gift shop, which featured a lot of nicely themed souvenirs. I was surprised at how their stock was in short supply. There were very few t-shirts left in my size, and it was evident that many other souvenirs had been selling well. I guess that was a good thing. Across the midway from the Chalet was the venerable Phoenix, my favorite wooden rollercoaster. That day it had the longest line I had ever seen, stretching over 100 feet past the ride entrance. It always amazed me that even though the park ran just one train on the coaster, the queue line moved faster than many other parks that ran multiple trains on their rides. It took only about 20 minutes to arrive at the station. We queued up for the front seat and in a few minutes were seated and quickly sent on our way into the dark winding tunnel and around to the lift hill. As we sped down the first drop and flew up into the first turn, I was glad that the ride was still as fast and smooth as I remembered it. And it still had the most extreme airtime of any coaster I'd ridden. On every hill I was clinging to the lap bar because I was afraid I was going to fly right out of my seat. What a phenomenal ride!

Next to the Phoenix was Gasoline Alley, the unique antique car ride that wove through the structure of the coaster. This had a really long line as well, but it too moved pretty quickly. One thing that surprised me was the number of people in line who were vaping. And a lot of them were young teens. We saw that all over the park. It took about fifteen minutes of standing in the line to get seated in our car. It was a nice long ride winding through the shady structure. Karen wanted to check out the Christmas Cottage, so that's where we went next. The "North Pole" outside the store always fascinated me. It was a pole that was constantly frozen. I assumed they ran some sort of refrigerant through it. There were the usual Christmas baubles you'd expect to find in that type of store, ornaments and decorations. There were lots of mechanical snowglobes. There were quite a few customers inside as well.

We strolled along the shady paths. The many streams in the park looked so bucolic. But they also were a challenge since they frequently flooded the grounds, sometimes catastrophically. But for now, all was peaceful. We made our way over to the Pioneer Train, a long quiet trip through the structure of the Twister rollercoaster and out into a forested area next to the campground. It was nice to see they still had the cars built by the Miniature Train Company, the same ones that I used to ride (and run) at Mountain Park. There was another long queue line, but with two trains running it moved quickly and we were soon rolling along the tracks. Out in the woods, Knoebels had set up little wooden carousels, like fans on their sides, with corncobs on the ends. A deer was enjoying a little snack as we cruised by. When we returned to the station it was about 4:30 so we decided to call it a day and head to our next hotel.

We love Knoebels. It really needed more than one day to fully enjoy it. In our few hours there, we got to experience such a small amount of the park. But I knew we'd return here time and time again. Perhaps next time we'd rent a cottage or a cabin. For me, Knoebels is a home away from home.