Day 14 - Travel to Dollywood
The drive from our hotel by Kings Island to Dollywood was meant to take about 5 hours, and we had a stop planned along the route for some lunch. The weather forecast was really not great though with rain much of the way, leading to accidents and other delays that meant the journey took longer than planned. Plus Manchester United got a lucky win over Leicester as we made our way down, great!
Before we arrived we drove up to Gatlinburg to take a look at the Rowdy Bear Alpine Coaster. I did not ride this due to the cost for what it was but a couple of us did. Then it was back down to Pigeon Forge so we could check in to our hotel for the next 2 nights, Dollywood’s DreamMore Resort.
DreamMore is stunningly beautiful. The hotel is not themed as such; it just has a really welcoming style and a calming atmosphere. It is a place where you can just unwind and relax in the shows of the Great Smoky Mountains, and you get a wonderful view of these from the top floor.
After checking in we grabbed a drink from the hotel bar and took a seat outside. We had concerns before arriving about the hotel bar, Dollywood itself is a dry park and there had been reports that the hotel bar closes very early, but thankfully this was not the case! The plan had been to head out to Pigeon Forge for some food and give the Smoky Mountain Alpine Coaster a go. However a few of us had got rather comfortable sitting outside so we stayed put whilst the others went out.
This meant that we could give the DreamMore hotel buffet a go. And boy am I glad that we did, the food was outstanding. For starters the choice is limited to salad options, then for mains there were things such as their famous fried chicken, some lovely beef brisket in a sauce and plenty of vegetable related sides. Deserts ranged from apple pie and cakes to jelly and fruit salad. Yum!
After a couple more drinks in the bar and feeling rather merry it was time to head to bed ready for our first day at Dolly Parton’s theme park.
Days 15 and 16 - Dollywood
Dollywood is one of those theme parks that I have wanted to visit for quite a while now. It has always looked so beautiful with some good coasters, great theming and fab food. Then the opening of Lightning Rod in 2016 really did make this a must visit theme park.
And let’s start with Lightning Rod. This coaster has been plagued with problem after problem since it first opened. We’d been joking way in advance of this trip about whether or not it would be open; however it did seem that they had finally got things sorted and I believe that it ran towards the end of the 2017 season. However it started having issues again this season and went down at the start of July with a message on their website stating that it was closed for repair. I had emailed Dollywood about this and all they could say was that the ride was in the hands of the manufacturer and it could re-open in either a matter of days, or it could be a number of weeks.
So yes, the damn thing was shut for our visit. When you do a massive road trip like this then you do have to expect to be spited by one major coaster and for us it was Lightning Rod. Not much has really come out about what the problems are however rumours suggest that it may need re-tracking at the bottom of the first drop. It’s still closed.
Anyway, now that’s out of the way we can focus on the rest of the park. We took the delightful trolley bus from Dolly’s fine hotel to the park, and entered through the dedicated Resort guest entrance. There was half an hours worth of hotel guest ERT on Mystery Mine, however as we had hotel fast passes we decided to give this a miss and got straight on to Thunderhead when it opened. This is the park’s GCI woodie and I was expected it to have aged badly. My expectations had been wrong, Thunderhead was brilliant! Fast and fun with pops of airtime throughout, especially riding whilst holding up the lap bar for maximum float space.
Mystery Mine was meant to be next, however it had gone down. I’ll come back to this later!
So next was FireChaser Express, a custom Gerstlauer family coaster featuring a lift hill and 2 tire propelled launches. As a family coaster it is spot on; a long ride that is not too intense, lots of different elements and a nice show scene before the backwards launch at the end. It is just a pity that the capacity is relatively low.
Dollywood has had a lot of new coasters in recent years. FireChaser Express opened in 2014 and in 2012 the park got a B&M Wing Coaster named Wild Eagle. The station building for this is pretty impressive from the outside, and near the entrance is a large sculpture of an eagle. Wild Eagle’s lift hill climbs up the side of a hill in the middle of the park, and next comes a rarity for this type of coaster, a drop straight down! A loop follows, then a zero-g, then an immelmann followed by a corkscrew. A couple of turnarounds occur before the ride, or bird as they like to call it, hits the brake run. Wild Eagle is fine, perfectly enjoyable, but is lacking any real force or any theming to make up for the lack of force. Sure the setting it nice but it’s not really enough.
Tennessee Tornado is the last ever custom looping coaster built by Arrow and opened in 1999. It begins with a pre-drop at the top of the lift, a turn to the right and a large main drop in to a tunnel picking up significant speed. Speed is not something you always want on an Arrow, but this is remarkably smooth! A huge loop follows and then the coaster turns in to another loop and a sidewinder. Next is a turn to the ride then bam, the brakes, ride over. It is a shame that this is so short as what’s there is fantastic!
Like Silver Dollar City, Dollywood has a dark coaster named Blazing Fury. It is very similar to Fire in the Hole at SDC, the layout may well be the name, I am not sure. The theme certainly is, however the scenes seem to be of a better quality and it seemed like there are more effects. There is now splashdown during the third and final drop though; this was removed for the 2011 season when magnetic brakes were installed.
The other coaster at Dollywood is Whistle Punk Chaser. It is a standard Zamperla kids coaster. It is crap!
We managed to get all of these coasters done on our first day; however Mystery Mine did not open. We actually left the park early on the first day at around 4pm to head back to the hotel and spend some time relaxing in and around the lovely hotel pool which was most enjoyable. The next morning we headed back on park and Mystery Mine was still down with no sign of activity. So we went to do some other rides, and then at around 2.30pm noticed that Mystery Mine has started testing! An opening was surely imminent!? We started to form a queue at the entrance, and it just kept going round and round before eventually they stopped sending out cars. We had wanted to leave the park early to start our journey to the next hotel, but equally wanted to get on Mystery Mine. We had also finished with the rest of the park by this point, so decided just to sit and wait nearby. Then at about 5pm we were told they were doing final tests, so started to queue again. After a little while it did open; turns out it had a big software problem the day before that took a while to fix, and once they had fixed it the maintenance crews had to perform their incredibly lengthy morning checks but in the afternoon.
Credit to the staff though, they were fantastic! When we got to the station one of the hosts shouted out asking if the Brits had made it (we’d be speaking to him throughout the day for updates) and the op was in a jovial mood singing “pull down, pull down, pull down” over the PA system as people boarded the cars and need to pull down their restraints. The entire ride team seemed delighted that Mystery Mine had eventually opened, and wanted to make sure all guests had a memorable experience.
On to the ride experience, track and train it’s nothing special. The coaster section after the first lift is awkward and feels like a Gerstlauer Bobsled coaster but with Eurofighter cars. Then the coaster section after the second lift is fairly smooth and thrilling, but very short. Mystery Mine is not about the coaster sections though, it’s all about the theming and effects which are outstanding. The dark ride section between the station and the first lift is well themed and features a small drop out of the station, a slow outer banked turn and another ‘hidden’ drop to avoid a spinning rock. The second dark ride section consists of the second vertical lift; you climb this (it is themed as a lift shaft) and a screen on the ceiling acts as a window showing a storm that is brewing. As you pass over the top of the lift the car is held and lit fuse makes its way to some boxes of dynamite, cue fire effects and then you drop for the rest of the ride. It just all works exceptionally well!
So with all of the coasters covered, let’s focus on the other rides we did at Dollywood over the 2 days that we had. Smoky Mountain River Rampage is the parks rapids and whilst fun they are very wet due to some huge waves. Daredevil Falls is a Hopkins flume style ride with two across seating in the boats, it was pretty good fun. Then a final water ride which we didn’t know about beforehand is Mountain Slidewinder, a water toboggan ride where you walk to the top of the hill in the middle of the park and come back down in a large dingy on a course featuring tight turns a drop at the end; really good fun!
Barnstormer is an S&S Screamin’ Swing; these are still one of my favourite flat rides out there. Drop Line was new in 2017 and is a 230ft drop tower which was pretty good. Then we also went on the park’s huge train ride, the Dollywood Express. It is 5 miles in length and takes you up to the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains and back. Dollywood have several coal burning locomotives for the Dollywood Express, 2 of which are used in normal operations. It is a nice relaxing ride that helps to break up your day.
There are quite a few themed areas in the park; however I would say that it’s really split in to two areas. You have the newer left hand side of the park where most of the coasters can be found. This area is higher up and has a more modern theme park feel to it with nice theming around the likes of Mystery Mine and FireChaser Express. Then there is the older right hand ride of the park which feels like it is down in the valley. Here are more wooden buildings containing many shops, craft workshops and eateries. You can tell this was the old Silver Dollar City area of the park.
Dollywood is a beautiful park, it really is. But maybe it did not help that my visit was a week after being at the even more beautiful Silver Dollar City. It just felt it was lacking something for me; maybe that was Lightning Rod, maybe it was because Mystery Mine was down for the majority of the time we had there, maybe it is something else. It’s a great park but I was expecting to like to more than SCD and this was not the case.
One thing that did impress me at Dollywood, as it did as SDC, was the delicious food. There are so many different options and my Ham ‘n’ Beans at Granny Ogle’s was top notch. But like SDC, it is a shame that you cannot have a nice cold beer anywhere in the park.
Dollywood have announced Wildwood Grove for 2019 which I think will be a very welcome addition. I am also looking forward to seeing what they have planned for 2020 and beyond. It is a park that I’m keen to get back to, I think I will enjoy it even more upon my return and Lightning Road is a must do coaster.
Next stop - Busch Gardens Williamsburg, the first park on the trip that I had previously visited.
