Dollywood Discussion Thread

[coasterfreaky]

^^For 9 years Dollywood had an Arrow mine train called Thunder Express. Tennessee Tornado's station is the same one from TE.

 

FCE...not sure how best to describe it, but it doesn't have an Arrow-mine-train-feel to it, to me. FCE has a lot of strong lateral movements (wild mouse?), some good pacing at different points throughout, good airtime, and of course the two launches took me by surprise...thinking they would not have any force to them, but they do, just briefly. It uses the terrain of that hill excellently - moving from one side of the hill to the other, back and forth. FCE for the win vs. arrow mine train. And i LOVE Arrow mine trains...but this is very updated and modern feeling.

 

I think their next coaster will be either a Mack launcher (Helix!!) or an RMC woodie. I would love to see a BM Hyper (4-5'k long, or more) go back in to the undeveloped parts of the park. It's hard to tell what direction they're thinking of going.

 

I'd also like to see some snow and ice attractions for the christmas season...ice slides, tubing...like Stone Mountain. Interesting that SFOG is going to have a Christmas event for the first time this year.

1989 - judging by the acid-wash denim

Edited April 30, 2014 by coasterfreaky

[ernierocker]

FireChaser Express is a family coaster. Not sure there are any similarities to a mine train other than it is steel, has no inversions, and relatively shallow drops.

 

As far a future speculation, I would expect next season for Dollywood to add something new for Splash Country. 2016 will probably be the next major attraction for the ride park.

[Guy T. Koepp]

Acid wash jeans will never go out of style! Neither will the mullet, or the keytar!

 

And might I add, Dolly looks spectacular!

 

Guy "I hate to see her leave, but I love to watch her walk away." Koepp

[aCoasterStory]

So my buddy and I went to the park this evening. We got there at around 5:30, and the park was completely dead. It had been raining, so most everyone had left. We did get rained on a little bit, but it didn't hamper our fun at all. Below is a little mini trip report.

 

We went around to the coasters basically in a clockwise direction, with the goal of hitting everything by closing time at 7.

 

First up was Thunderhead. I'd ridden it before, but I really didn't have much recollection of it. It's a decent enough woodie, but I don't think it's *that* great. We rode it twice, once in the back, and once in the 2nd row. I may need a few more rides to really appreciate it, given that it's apparently a top-5 woodie (per the Golden Ticket awards). The ride ops said they normally do 700pph, but in the 5:00-6:00 hour tonight, they had only 36 riders.

 

Next, we hit Mystery Mine. It's an interesting ride, but it does have a bunch of really awkward transitions. The fire effect wasn't working. My favorite part of the ride is the insane hangtime in the dive loop at the end. We only did it once before moving on down towards FCE.

 

On the way, we walked by the River Battle, which had exactly zero riders. It was just a bunch of empty boats and some very bored ride operators. (At one point in the evening, we heard a ride operator postulate that there were more employees in the park than guests & he wondered why they didn't do a 'slow close' or something to that effect.)

 

Fire Chaser Express is a fantastic addition to the park and a great family coaster. The reverse launch actually packs more of a punch than I expected. We both really enjoyed it. It seemed to have better airtime in the front, but the reverse section seemed more intense in the rear of the train.

 

We managed two rides on Wild Eagle. It had started raining again a little bit. It wasn't too bad on the first lap around in the back left, but it was raining a lot more on the second go around (back right). It's by far my favorite of the 3 US wing coasters.

 

It was still raining pretty good, so we skipped Tennessee Tornado and hit Blazing Fury. I don't know exactly how many things they upgraded in this year's upgrades, but one thing I noticed is that the former splashdown location now has blue lasers that make it look like you're going to go down into "water". It was actually kind of cool.

 

After we got off, the rain had stopped, and we had just enough time for a lap on Tennessee Tornado before closing. The ride ops didn't look terribly thrilled to be there, but they let us do our lap. It was really quite good. By far the best looper Arrow ever built (Loch Ness Monster is my #2).

 

Then it was time for the long walk back down to the entrance. We made it to the car just in time for it to start raining heavily again.

 

All-in-all, an excellent 90 minutes. We managed 9 rides, and the other than Mystery Mine, FCE was the only coaster running more than one train.

 

 

We are planning to head back to the park tomorrow. We heard tonight that Dolly herself is going to be at the park tomorrow, so we are expecting the crowd to be a good bit larger. Hopefully they all stay at the front of the park and leave the coasters dead...

[larrygator]

http://www.history.com/shows/american-pickers/episodes

 

Dollywood is featured on next week's episode of American Pickers, as Mike and Frank search for decorations used as Firechaser Express themeing.

[djcarrell]

FireChaser seems to be having some issues lately of trains stopping on the brake runs and such. I was there Monday and am here right now, and both times riders have been on portions of the ride for 5 to 10 minutes before returning to the station. Maintenance is working on the track now. It's pitiful a brand new ride is having issues like this.

[djcarrell]

Mystery mine down as well. Not a good day for Gerstlaur.

[Guy T. Koepp]

^^It was running great last Friday and Saturday. By tha by, awesome family ride. Me n' tha Fam loved it!

[sugart]

Trip advisor can be so bit or miss. We are thinking of heading down the end of July for a few days. Any hotel recommendations? Arriving Monday afternoon leaving Thursday. We would be driving from New Jersey.

[coasterfreaky]

Trip advisor can be so bit or miss. We are thinking of heading down the end of July for a few days. Any hotel recommendations? Arriving Monday afternoon leaving Thursday. We would be driving from New Jersey.

 

 

www.dollywood.com/PigeonForge/places-to-stay.aspx

 

By going through the Dollywood.com site, you may be able to bundle together park tickets and lodging for local hotels or Dollywood-cabins. I would recommend starting there to see what your best options are. If that doesn't work out there's always orbitz, kayak, Travelocity, etc. Just about every hotel brand has something in PF, as well as some mom and pop hotels, plus there's several resort hotels in the area like Wilderness At the Smokies (waterpark and hotel). VRBO is good for cabin rentals. Endless options are available.

[dstephe9]

Mystery mine down as well. Not a good day for Gerstlaur.

 

Idk if its my luck or what but Mystery Mine is always down for several hours on all my visits. I believe its just that type of ride BC dare devil dive at sfog is also down a lot when I am there

 

Ride op at six flag says there is a sensor on the restraints that will get all funky if someone tries to pull down at the wrong time. Not sure if mystery mine has the same issue but it could. He told me thme only way to reset the sensor is to put the ride back into test mode and cycle it. On mystery mine that can take a while! It has a lot more trains than DDD and all trains have to run through once then a ride op has to run through meaning they can't get off to report the test is over until all trains have ran two times! Then they can open it up.

 

I was on the platform one time during a storm and they let me stay so I got to see the test cycle

 

Can't always trust ride ops but sounded good to me haha. DDD does have slightly different restraints though but the main arm is almost identical

 

Bummer fire chaser is breaking down though!

[Big Papa]

Hey everybody, this is my first post and I want to start by saying that I love Dollywood and I love this thread. I have read through nearly every post in this thread and if I have a "home park" it would have to be Dollywood since I only live around 1.5-2 hours from it depending on traffic. The wife and I bought season passes for the first time during the Smoky Mountain Christmas last year. We each had been a few times, but not in the past five years. The park has definitely changed from what I knew it as and I loved reading all of the updates from you guys through the years (yes, I started the thread on page one, I have no life) My wife isn't big on riding coasters although I'm trying to talk her into the Firechaser Express sometime soon to get her feet wet. We just like to walk around the park and look at everything. As mentioned throughout this thread several times, Dollywood literally has something for every member of the family and that is what I think makes it a truly great park. It's just something we can do to get away for a day or two that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. We went during the Smoky Mountain Christmas event, the Festival of Nations and will probably try to plan a trip during all of the other special events as well.

 

My buddy and I decided to brave the rain and go down to Dollywood today. I had a bring a friend for free pass from my season pass that was going to expire in a couple of weeks and needed to use it. We thought that with the rain this morning it might keep the crowds down a little bit. We got off the interstate around 10:30 this morning, but because of the heavy rain at the time we decided to kill some time at Bass Pro and Smoky Mountain Knife Works. We got to the park around 12:00 and the rain turned into a few sprinkles by then. We had to park at Tram Stop F, which was kind of surprising to me because of the rain, but it was a Saturday afterall. In hindsight, we should have bought the Qbots, but both of us being the cheepos we are didn't want to spring the extra cash. We started at Thunderhead and made a clockwise motion around the park. Thunderhead was awesome as always. The sign on the wall in the queue that we had to stop at said a 30 minute wait, but it was probably half that. Thunderhead ride ops were on their game today. Probably the longest wait of the day was at Mystery Mine (about 30 minutes) and coincidentally I didn't get to ride it because of my large stature. I was able to ride it make when we were there in November, but I suppose I put on a few pounds over the winter. No worries though, however, I definitely made sure I checked into the sizing seat at the front of Wild Eagle and then got into the plus size row 4 for good measure. I must say, I rode front row, left side back in November on Wild Eagle and the 4th row left side to me was a better ride. Maybe it was because I knew more of what to expect this time. Wild Eagle was probably a 20 minute or so wait. We were going to ride Firechaser Express next, but the queue line was all the way out to the entrance of the ride so we decided to skip it today and went on the Tennessee Tornado. Probably around a 20 minute wait for this ride too. We rode in the next to last seat because that was the shortest line. Tennessee Tornado is probably the most underrated coaster at Dollywood. All of the newer rides get most of the love, but Tornado gives you a great ride. After this ride we were pretty hungry and decided to go for some of Lillian's Chicken. Probably had to stand in line for around 20 minutes, but wow was it worth it! I'm not sure anybody could ever go wrong with any food at Dollywood, but with my gold pass an all you can eat meal of this great food was $12 and some change. Didn't get to see Miss Lillian though so I was kind of disappointed about that. After eating we headed down to the Country Fair section to let the food settle a little bit. My buddy played a few games, but didn't win anything. He thought that since he was a beer pong champ in college that he could win the game where you toss the ball into the yellow circle, but failed miserably. Felt kind of awkward with what looked like a 5 or 6 year old girl right beside him playing the same game, and nearly winning but her ball lipped out of the yellow circle. After the games we headed back up to Barnstormer. Since it was only two of us we got to skip ahead of at least 20 people to get on the ride in about 7 or 8 minutes. This was the first time I have rode Barnstormer and it was a nice little surprise. You can definitely feel the hang time while you are praying that the restraints hold. After Barnstormer we went for Daredevil Falls. The sun had come out by this point and it turned into a nice, warm day. Daredevil Falls is what it is. A lot of floating around and then one big drop. It was fun giving the kids in the seat in front of us a hard time though, all in good fun of course. Speaking of kids, there were several school groups at the park today. I kind of felt sorry for the kids. Back when I was in school and we took field trips, most of the fun was being able to get out of school to go. I don't think it would have been as much fun having to go on a Saturday! Anyway, we had time for one more ride so instead of re-riding anything we went for the Blazing Fury. That ride has definitely changed since I last rode it 5-6 years ago. The effects are better, but the ride was going so much faster than I remember it ever doing through the "town" that you can't really take it all in. I assume they just want to get the trains through quicker and get more riders in. If this was the case, it worked because this was only about a 10 minute wait. I do wish they would slow it down a little bit though. The rain had stayed away from us most of the day, and it even turned out to be a nice day. Looking at the radar on my phone though told me that it was time to head back home and we left around 5ish. Overall, it was a nice day at the park and the coasters were running great from what I saw. I wish we could have gotten some re-rides in, but we only had about 5 hours in the park and wanted to ride as many different rides that we could. My wife and I are planning to go back sometime in early to mid June with her family and will try to hit it on a weekday to hopefully dodge some of the crowd.

 

Well there is my first post/trip report. Sorry if this was way too long or if I bored any of you! I will leave you with one simple question that I have from all of the reading of this thread that I have done. Why do they call the lockers fluffy fluffy bunnies filled with medicine and goo? I've been wondering that since I started reading this thread, but I've never actually rented one. Are they actually filled with medicine and goo? haha.

 

EDIT: How did I forget to mention this??? I of course bought two loaves of cinnamon bread on the way out. It was definitely a nice surprise for the wife when I got home!

[josephcissell]

FireChaser seems to be having some issues lately of trains stopping on the brake runs and such. I was there Monday and am here right now, and both times riders have been on portions of the ride for 5 to 10 minutes before returning to the station. Maintenance is working on the track now. It's pitiful a brand new ride is having issues like this.

 

I visited the park for my first time last Wednesday (5/7) and despite opening with the park (Fortunately I got the credit right before it closed), FireChaser closed within 30 minutes of opening and remained closed for the rest of the day to my knowledge. There seemed to be some issue with the final set of brakes right before the switching track piece. At one point maintenance was literally beating on something in that area with a rubberized sledge hammer.

[jynx242]

^^Thanks for the report! It was not too long and it was not boring

 

The l@ckers are called lockers because there is an autofilter on the word. A couple of years ago, there was a TON of griping and complaining about Six Flags and their L@cker policy. It got to where almost every other word typed was "that word."

 

From what I understand, being sick of seeing that word everywhere - they added the filter to change it .

 

Kind of shows an example of the sense of humor around here.

 

David

[dstephe9]

FireChaser seems to be having some issues lately of trains stopping on the brake runs and such. I was there Monday and am here right now, and both times riders have been on portions of the ride for 5 to 10 minutes before returning to the station. Maintenance is working on the track now. It's pitiful a brand new ride is having issues like this.

 

I visited the park for my first time last Wednesday (5/7) and despite opening with the park (Fortunately I got the credit right before it closed), FireChaser closed within 30 minutes of opening and remained closed for the rest of the day to my knowledge. There seemed to be some issue with the final set of brakes right before the switching track piece. At one point maintenance was literally beating on something in that area with a rubberized sledge hammer.

 

Sounds to me time to get a warranty claim on that sucker and have the contractor's that built it come in and fix it unless its a design flaw haha. Never good when they bring out the sledgehammer!

 

I'm sure Dollywood will get the kinks worked out on it sooner or later

[josephcissell]

^ I was rather surprised to see the sledgehammer myself. I have faith that Dollywood will get the kinks worked out, but I must say that the coaster didn't quite have the perfect, glassy smooth feel I expect from a brand new ride. Don't get me wrong, it was more than acceptable, but I do wonder how gracefully the ride will age over the long term.

[dstephe9]

I have never worked on a coaster before but from my experience, with other jobs at least, the rubber sledgehammer is mostly used when something is stuck that you can't damage. You need the force of a sledgehammer but the softness of a pillow. Something must be sticking on the brake run, probably the brakes or something.

 

Or something is bent and they are trying to get it back in place without denting it.

 

Again just a theory formed from my use of rubber sledgehammers

[Guy T. Koepp]

^In my line of work we call them persuaders. When you have something that just won't fit where it's supposed to, you gently persuade it to move into place. That's probably what they're doing.

[Comeagain?]

We've used massive sledgehammers to fix a carousel and a small screwdriver to fix a GIB that's misbehaving. I'd say it's a safe bet the size of the tool is fairly irrelevant to the severity of the work needed.

[Guy T. Koepp]

I'd say it's a safe bet the size of the tool is fairly irrelevant to the severity of the work needed.

 

That's what she said!

[bigbadmomma]

My family is heading to Dollywood for the first time and I'm wondering about plus size fit on rides.

 

Last year at Kings Island NOTHING fit me and my day was a bust.

 

I've lost around thirty pounds and I'm at 289 and 6' tall. Measurements 52.5-51-53. Wear a 22/24

 

My DDD's are are probably gonna prevent me from harnesses. (come on Dolly, give your jug sisters a break!lol)

but anyone out there near my size that can give some insght?

 

And my hubby and sons are tall and have had leg room trouble in the past.

 

Hubby wears a 38 length in pants and sons wear 36 length.

 

Help my planning please!

[dstephe9]

Make sure you test the tester seats most of the coasters have them. You might have problems on mystery mine, it seems to have the smallest seats and the restraints have to go down to a special point.

 

Thunderhead has seat belt extensions for those who need them, so you probably won't have a problem on it. Tornado also has pretty small seats. Wild eagle has bigger seats on row 4 or so people have said

[bigbadmomma]

do you have to ask for the seatbelt extensions?

[dstephe9]

I don't need them so idk but I have seen them bring them over if a rider can't get theirs hooked

[Big Papa]

Mystery Mine will probably be your toughest ride to get on. Wild Eagle may be an issue due to the leg length. On Wild Eagle row 4 is the plus size person's row. I'm 6'3, 300 lbs and the only ride I had an issue on was Mystery Mine, but I was able to ride it back in November when I was about 10 lbs lighter. Just make sure you try out the test seats before getting in line.