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Dollywood is such an iconic name for a park. Even my non-enthusiast friends around the country are familiar with it. I really hope even if Dolly parts ways with the park that Herschend can strike a deal to continue using her name. Would certainly miss her presence, regardless.

Silver Dolly City

Word is Zumanjaro and Ka have been running together. Anyone else see this? Rumors also suggest they are trying to get lap bars for Ka. Not sure how much I believe that one..

LOL they haven't finished the queue, etc. Calm down. Member preview is gonna be a from like 4-6pm on random Wednesday afternoon in early June (because they're probably aiming for Memorial Day but they'll miss that) announced the day before and you're gonna have to buy a $30 t-shirt in order to ride.

If Dolly Parton is in fact selling her stake or whatever, there can still be licensing agreements in place to keep the museum going, bring her and others in for shows, etc... I'm pretty sure that one of the reasons that she's stuck around for so long is because she and Herschend's brand mesh together so well. Silver Dollar City and Dollywood are IMO the best theme parks in the US not named Disney or Universal, I don't see that changing a whole lot. Maybe a little less butterflies though.

Managed to snag reservations and go with the family to opening day; here's my report. -Entry processes have changed; you fill out a paperwork with your information for COVID contract tracing purposes; they give this to you at the tollbooth and you fill it out at your vehicle and hand it in at the ticket booth. -Security is far more efficient now; you walk through a camera which can see inside any bags being brought in, and security can selectively choose who to search based on what the camera shows. Most people now just pass right through. Temperature checks are done as well. Masks are required but a lot of people had them on improperly and not much seemed to be done to enforce the rules. As for the day itself: the park was pretty crowded for opening day; mostly locals, people were pretty excited to get to the park for the first time in 18 months. Six Flags seems to be desperate to get people to the park... season passes are being sold for just $49.99, and the all season drink sports bottles are being sold for just $28 (they were nearly $60 in 2019). Granted they say "2020" on them; clearly last year's stock they never got to use that they're trying to get rid of! While the entry procedures and COVID protocols seemed to run pretty smoothly, staffing and most ride ops were anything but. You could tell it was the first day on the job for many people, some probably having literally just been hired with in the past week... one of the guys running the pizza stand, for example, was particularly incompetent and didn't understand the concept of how the meal plan works. Finally had to get the manager over to take care of it. With one exception which I'll get to, the ride ops were generally pretty slow... sending trains and rides half full really slowed down the lines, especially on rides which were capacity nightmares to begin with. We waited over an hour to get on the Storytown Train, a combination of only filling every other car and the pitifully slow operator... and having to stop and sanitize the entire train in between cycles. At one point the train sat still while full of people, almost as if it was waiting for something... more than likely it was because Flashback broke down and needed to have the line mass exit (more on this soon). My sister and niece were literally about to get on Flashback when the ride broke down. It looks like the cable lift that pulls the train backwards up the first lift hill broke at first, but it was some pin loose or something. They had to exit the entire line as soon as they closed the ride; it was down for about an hour or so. Ghost Town is a mess. The only portion accessible is the pathway between the bumper cars and Canyon Blaster... everything else is tarped off. Construction is underway for Adirondack Outlaw and the new entrance for Steamin' Demon, which is down until Outlaw opens. Condor was still standing, but its cars have been removed and were laying on the ground... it looks like some work may have been done to them. Canyon Blaster was the usual one train ops, but the ladies operating the ride were by far the single most competent and fastest pair going in the entire park... they were enthusiastic, and cycling those trains efficiently so the line moved extremely quickly. I didn't time them but I'd guess the dispatches were around a minute or less. All in all, not a bad day at the park.

My thoughts exactly. Dollywood is very recognizable and is almost certainly the most well known non-chain-branded park when it comes to the non-enthusiast people I know, at least for being halfway across the country from it. The name in itself is a draw with Dolly's popularity nation-wide, and it'd be unfortunate to lose that.

Typo since it only one of 3 lines and the other two just say Dollywood. As nice as SDC is, Dolly is a big part of the draw and without it DW would just be a little regional park (like it was before she got involved). Just compare the activity in this thread to the SFC thread. This one might be 350 pages if it was SDC East instead of DW.

Thunderhawk’s new paint scheme, looks great. Source: Camille Jourden-Mark (GM of MA) on Twitter.

Honestly, I feel the survey was just a typo. I work for a company with three brands. Communications, surveys, what not sure always similar. Lots of copy/pasting.. Doesnt SDC have similar, if not the same, festivals?

The skeleton of the Waterboggan Tower is metal so they could simply strip it down to the frame removing all the old wood and then rebuild around it and reuse the tower as a dark ride element for a small coaster. Think Mystery Mine at Dollywood.

I got a few but they are not great. I will get some better ones next week. It's a fresh paint of blue and it looks amazing. It's unclear if they are going to paint/have been painting the supports. Also, CraZanity opened up finally at about 3pm yesterday. I was able to get on the last cycle of the night after waiting about an hour. Additionally, Apocalypse is back open, making every major ride in the park operational except for Batman.

From the parks Instagram...

I guess it's easier said than done, but even if Dolly wants to step down it would be nice if they were able to continue using her name like they do at Bobbejaanland.

Yeah, but I also didn't see a global pandemic shutting parks down for over a year and yet here we are! Nothing surprises me anymore.

I give it MULTIPLE thumbs down, if true!

Has anyone heard about Dollywood transitioning to Silver Dollar City over the next two years? Dollywood is having a huge auction next weekend. They are saying they are getting rid of surplus items from the park. Others think it is due to the transition from Dollywood back to Silver Dollar City. Here is the info on the auction: Auction Story Is Dolly Parton getting out of the theme park business and selling her stake in Dollywood to Herschend Family Entertainment? Does this auction have anyting to do with the park being renamed? It is all a rumor? Here is a screenshot of a survey from Dollywood. Notice how it says Silver Dollywood for one of the questions? Something is going on and inquiring minds want to know. Discuss!

if Season Passes do not include parking going forwards? this will be the last year we do season pass. will NOT get roped into doing a Membership, since don't need the extra "perks" , so will consider a different park chain pass if that happens. But at the moment, our pass includes parking, so very happy with that.

@jackinbox Just make sure you buy and activate your membership at your home park, lets say you go to SFGAm and had still not activated your membership at SFStL you will most likely be denied entry to SGAm. And then according to their FAQ's : "A very limited number of Membership benefits (such as free tickets for friends) are only valid at your home park. Discounts on food, merchandise, tickets, tours, etc are valid at all parks." Also Six Flags, for years now, have prioritized memberships over season passes as the "ultimate way to enjoy Six Flags". Straight from their FAQ page: Their reason you should still buy a season pass:

Correct. From my understanding you only get things like bring a friend free or discounted tickets for your "home park". But parking is chain wide and merchandise discounts are chain wide. This is for the season pass though, I don't touch the memberships. I would assume the same applies if not more.

Eh, I like the new St. Louis/arch-themed logo. The change is nice. And I am sure whichever employee has to trek out to the sign to change the message (and it is probably always cold or raining that day) will love being able to sit at a computer and put new messages up

Luckily any day now Lightning Rod is probably due to launch a wheel into a mountain or spontaneously combust or something so we can stop talking about covid...

So as an update to this...it turns out it's true. In the new book "Kings Island A Ride Through Time" there are multiple quotes from several CF execs that confirm it. CGA was going to get a B&M hyper in 2020 with the name "Megabyte." Eventually the projected costs became greater than what they wanted to spend at CGA so they decided to build the new B&M at KI instead. Based on the interviews it seems corporate essentially called up KI and said "we're sending you a B&M in 2020. Let's figure out what we want it to be." That project eventually became the giga coaster Orion. I think the most interesting part is the CGA ride was going to have the same staggered seating that Behemoth, Diamondback, and Intimidator have instead of the inline seating the most recent B&M hypers have returned to having.

Olympia Dukakis. She won the Oscar for playing Cher's mom in "Moonstruck," and was in numerous plays and movies, including "Steel Magnolias," and "Mr.Holland's Opus." And she was the original Anna Madrigal in Armisted Maupin's Tales of the City, the transgender landlady of where all the main characters lived in San Francisco. Wonderful actress, with a killer sense of humor and great laugh. RIP Olympia. https://www.broadway.com/buzz/198857/olympia-dukakis-distinctive-actress-remembered-for-political-social-activism-on-stage-and-screen-dies-at-89/ Olympia as Anna Madrigal, in "Tales of the City."

A 10 year old boy was shot by my sister's house on Friday afternoon. Around 20 shots were fired, a couple of them went into my sister's house, near where she was sitting on her couch. Last I heard, the boy was still in critical conditon. Sources: Article Video where my sister's interviewed.

Bert, this one is one of two Vekoma SLCs in the US that don't suck, the other being the Great Nor'Easter at Morey's. Beats me how this dumpster fire of a park can take a dumpster fire of a coaster model and turn it into a really good, really fun ride, but they did!