Dollywood Discussion Thread

[bill_s]

2 hours ago, ytterbiumanalyst said:

And your assertion that unemployment payments were the thing that was keeping people from accepting work is belied by the labour force participation rate not increasing in the states that removed the federal unemployment benefits.

https://www.epi.org/blog/there-is-no-justification-for-cutting-federal-unemployment-benefits-the-latest-state-jobs-data-show-the-economy-has-not-fully-recovered/

If it's say, $100 a week plus the 300 federal = 400, that's equal to Dollywood's starting $10 an hour and at $12 that's $2 an hour over staying home, not counting expenses. There may be people higher up the pay scale that can't get anything suitable, but for theme park employees how can it not be relevant? 

That article says Tennessee is one of the states cutting benefits, so we'll be finding out. This has been going on for long enough I think they should have been able to figure out how much people actually need and isn't giving them a raise. I worked all last year, in person, for less, so not sympathetic.

[u4icmusic]

22 hours ago, TEDodd said:

$20/hr for that sort of unskilled labor?
Might entice a few but then ticket and food prices will increase a lot to cover such high labor costs.

The problem with the government paying more to sit at home and do nothing.
At one point here it was equal to $15/hr for a 40hr week (more if you include taxes which generally wasn't deducted), For part time people with only 30 hrs it was like $20.

$20/hr is more than my son makes as a mechanic for the city (not unskilled labor).

Let me tell you what is happening now at Dollywood, most likely because the pay is only $10-$12 an hour. The staff is very young, they are untrained, unfriendly and sometimes downright rude. The two new people working on Drop Line are a prime example of who should NOT be on the Dollywood staff, at least in a position that deals with the public. They are both rude, never smile and act like they don't want to be there. There should be a supervisor walking around and correcting these issues instead of letting these two "kids" make such poor examples of Dollywood employees. Chik Fil-a, right down the street, is staring people out at $15 an hour and Cedar Point is starting people off at $20 an hour without raising any prices other than typical annual price increases we see everywhere. And so what if they have to raise prices. People don't want to wait in line 30 minutes for a drink refill or an hour for a hot dog. Adding 25 cents to the price to get more staff at a restaurant would be worth it to most people. People are not taking low paying jobs anymore when they can go down the street and find one that pays more. Dollywood is raking in the cash and they surely can afford to pay their employees a living wage.

[DirkFunk]

In the states where they terminated the UI, there's not any evidence yet of improvements in labor availability. Old people who were on the cusp of retiring or working part time are done now (or more pessimistically, dead). There's few foreign visa employees because of restrictions for entry and those that are here are arriving very late. The labor shortage in the US has been reported about with frequency in the United States since at least 2014 if not prior. It simply was able to be glossed over for most. Not any more.

[TEDodd]

1 hour ago, DirkFunk said:

In the states where they terminated the UI, there's not any evidence yet of improvements in labor availability. 

Mainly because the effects are just starting to be felt. Sure they announced the terminations in May and June, but most weren't effective until July. Tennessee announced in mid May with an effective date of July 3. So it's barely been a week. Here in Alabama the effective date was June 19. 

And that was only the federal $300 extra. Regular unemployment continues, though they have started requiring reporting again. Hopefully they add back the requirements to show you are actually applying for jobs.


Beyond that, most teens don't appear to interested in working and that was the case pre-pandemic.
Even fast food places were staffed with a lot of older people instead of the teens that were the norm when I was a teen in the 80s.  My kids peers don't generally don't work nor want to. Both 10 years ago when my soon was a teen or now when my daughter is one. And a lot of his peers still don't have long term employment. They bounce around changing jobs all the time, seldom staying at one place for more than a year.

 

[prozach626]

If we're going to argue about minimum wage, can we at least throw in some COVID safety arguments, too? I long for all of this. If only we could find a way to add abortion and gun right debates into the mix. We can make it relevant, because one correlates to the amount of potential customers, and related to the christianity undertones throughout the park, and the other is related to park safety. 

Who's up for some international tariff arguments, since it may be related to the cost of building materials?

[TEDodd]

2 hours ago, u4icmusic said:

Chik Fil-a, right down the street, is staring people out at $15 an hour and Cedar Point is starting people off at $20 an hour without raising any prices other than typical annual price increases we see everywhere. And so what if they have to raise prices. 

Yet. Right now they are just trying to stay operational. We haven't seen the effects of the higher wages yet. If they raise prices much right now they will loose customers.

But just like in the past with increases in minimum wage it takes a while for the effects to be felt. But every time it's been increased in my lifetime the result was the same. Within a year prices increased such that the buying power stayed the same for those that were making minimum. And those that were in the gap between the old and new minimum saw buying power reduced to match those at minimum. And those slightly above minimum saw a reduction in buying power.

[savetheclocktower]

14 hours ago, sdcfan88 said:

Off topic on a lighter note a Storm Chaser friend of mine unveiled his new license plate today which I pointed out to him that it fittingly matches a certain popular rollercoaster at Dollywood. He loved it and laughed.

That's a pretty neat coincidence!  Too bad Blount County isn't called Dollywood County, it would fit even more then!

[TEDodd]

18 hours ago, ytterbiumanalyst said:

There's no such thing as unskilled labour. Every job requires skills.

You know exactly what that term means. Specialized skills above the general level with specific training and experience.

Changing the oil in a car is unskilled. And random person can be quickly taught how to do it.
Rebuilding a car engine is not something you can teach in a week.

Any random person can make burgers food restaurant. That doesn't mean they are a Michelin star chef.

Most can drive a car, that doesn't mean they can safely operate a semi-truck.
 

[SharkTums]

Please, keep this discussion on track and don't argue about stuff we've been arguing about for over a year now, thanks. 

[ytterbiumanalyst]

47 minutes ago, TEDodd said:

Any random person can make burgers food restaurant.

Huh...seems like writing might be skilled labour too.

[DirkFunk]

1 hour ago, TEDodd said:

Beyond that, most teens don't appear to interested in working and that was the case pre-pandemic.
Even fast food places were staffed with a lot of older people instead of the teens that were the norm when I was a teen in the 80s.  My kids peers don't generally don't work nor want to. Both 10 years ago when my soon was a teen or now when my daughter is one. And a lot of his peers still don't have long term employment. They bounce around changing jobs all the time, seldom staying at one place for more than a year.

 

Why would teens want to work at a fast food restaurant or a theme park for pennies? Doesn't make sense vs. investing their time in academic or athletic pursuits that are likely to result in much greater returns through college scholarships/admissions. Besides, can't just rely on 14-17 year olds to make Taco Bell food or ring up groceries at 1AM on Tuesday nights. So hours are shortened and more like they were 20-30 years ago. 

Also LOL yeah I bounced around a little when I was younger doing minimum wage jobs. That's what's supposed to happen, isn't it? 

 

[TEDodd]

1 minute ago, DirkFunk said:

Why would teens want to work at a fast food restaurant or a theme park for pennies? Doesn't make sense vs. investing their time in academic or athletic pursuits that are likely to result in much greater returns through college scholarships/admissions. 

Also LOL yeah I bounced around a little when I was younger doing minimum wage jobs. That's what's supposed to happen, isn't it? 

Money for gas, to go to movies and such with friends, buy clothing your parents won't, buy video games, All the same reasons most teens worked 30-40 years. We didn't have too, but wanted the money to do/buy stuff. I was buying concert tickets, records/tapes, car audio, etc.

At least my kids peers aren't/weren't investing in anything that would help their future. Video games and consuming social media. 

As for bouncing around, maybe in high school and college. A year+ at a steak house, about that long at a grocery store, then a technical job in college for a few years ($10/hr for part time work in the 90s). I started my first post college job at 25 and stayed there 12 years. I'd probably still be there if they had not closed the location I was at.
 

[teacherkim]

As a just retired teacher and parent of an 18 year old that has worked at SFSTL for the last three seasons I can tell you that teens working traditional teen or summer jobs has been on the decline for a long time, the pandemic just exacerbated it. The parks were already having trouble filling spots before the virus hit. Many suburban teens are being pushed to spend summers doing extra classes and unpaid internships, in my opinion to their detriment, in order to beef up college admission resumes. Unfortunately, they are missing out on real world skills that no amount of extra classes can give you. But it has become a bit of a "looked down upon thing" to work that summer type job a lot of us did as kids. I actually had parents in my neighborhood quite shocked that I was "allowing" my son to work. Crazy. I don't think a lot of them can see that we are raising a lot of people that look good on paper but cannot handle day to day challenges. And for some dumb reason they cannot seem to make the connection of continual school/too many activities with the fact that we had two successful suicides and and multiple attempts at our very well off, large suburban high school.

On the other hand students in very poor areas, with few job opportunities, that could really use the money; have a very difficult time actually getting to the park. Let's face it, parks in large metro areas are not usually near the more inner city neighborhoods. I worked in a very poor district but it is easily a 40-50 min one way drive to the park IF you don't hit traffic. Not feasible for most. SFSTL has a bus that brings employees from one of the metrolink stops in a disadvantaged neighborhood to the park BUT not only is it a hell of a long ride, the employees have to pay for it which cuts down on their paycheck.

I know that is a long winded answer but the changing morays of teen life and the realities of the economic divide all affect staffing at the parks. Would a pay raise help? Sure. Somewhat, they did raise the pay a bit here, but the problem is too complicated to be solved that easily.

[ytterbiumanalyst]

Thank you, Kim. As usual, teachers know better than anyone else exactly what's up. 

[michaellynn4]

Just to build off of what Kim said above, I'm going to link to a post I made a while back on the subject. The comments are pre-COVID, but it's still speaks to her points:

On 6/3/2018 at 3:15 PM, michaellynn4 said:

There are also some very interesting statistics on a variety of contributing factors to the decline of the "summer job", as it's not necessarily just an increase in laziness. From the article:

Quote

Why did American teens stop trying to get summer jobs? One typical answer is: They’re just kids, and kids are getting lazier.

One can rule out that hypothesis pretty quickly. The number of teens in the workforce has collapsed since 2000, as the graph below shows. But the share of NEETs—young people who are “Neither in Education, Employment, or Training”—has been extraordinarily steady. In fact, it has not budged more than 0.1 percentage point since the late 1990s. Just 7 percent of American teens are NEETs, which is lower than France and about the same as the mean of all advanced economies in the OECD. The supposed laziness of American teenagers is unchanging and, literally, average.

Short answer: more and more teenagers are focusing on their education, including an overall increase in college enrollment and an increase in students taking summer classes. As someone previously stated, the days of a bachelor's degree being enough to stand out in a job market are long gone (hell, I'm kicking myself for going straight to grad school and getting a generic MBA instead of waiting and choosing a more specific masters degree in my field to help my resume stand out more).

Are there lazy kids out there? Absolutely, but that’s no new thing - I worked with plenty of other teenagers growing up who had questionable work ethic. It’s important to avoid the rose-tinted glasses when discussing this subject. I myself am one of those middle-class adults who tends to wax nostalgic about my summer job experience and used to have pretty strong opinions on "making sure my kids grow up right, know the value of a dollar, understand the meaning of hard work, blah blah BS BS yadda yadda". However, facts and statistics don't lie, and, once my kids are old enough, I'll need to consider what the culture, education environment, and job markets are like in order to figure out what's really best for their future before I choose to “gift” them working papers on their 14th birthday like my mom did to me.

In fact, recent statistics are showing that there may be a reversal of that trend, with many teenagers opting for summer employment again. Teenage employment is currently at its lowest rate since 1953. Again, as with my post from a few years ago, there'll always be a group of kids one can point to in order to help support whatever pre-conceived notions we already have about "kids be lazy, man". Gotta look at the macro level, though.

[DirkFunk]

15 hours ago, michaellynn4 said:

Just to build off of what Kim said above, I'm going to link to a post I made a while back on the subject. The comments are pre-COVID, but it's still speaks to her points:

In fact, recent statistics are showing that there may be a reversal of that trend, with many teenagers opting for summer employment again. Teenage employment is currently at its lowest rate since 1953. Again, as with my post from a few years ago, there'll always be a group of kids one can point to in order to help support whatever pre-conceived notions we already have about "kids be lazy, man". Gotta look at the macro level, though.

Bingo. And to no one's surprise, the increase in summer employment trends with increases in pay (which many non-theme park jobs were seeing prior to the pandemic). None of this is a secret. You can go find this in BLS statistics with absolute ease. We're still a very long ways away from having self completing lawn care services or making robots capable of properly grilling onions. And in terms of amusement parks, they've automated everything they could already. You think if they could have automated a Von Roll to not have 12 people running the thing that they wouldn't have?

[SSL]

On 7/14/2021 at 10:39 AM, u4icmusic said:

Let me tell you what is happening now at Dollywood, most likely because the pay is only $10-$12 an hour. The staff is very young, they are untrained, unfriendly and sometimes downright rude. The two new people working on Drop Line are a prime example of who should NOT be on the Dollywood staff, at least in a position that deals with the public. They are both rude, never smile and act like they don't want to be there. There should be a supervisor walking around and correcting these issues instead of letting these two "kids" make such poor examples of Dollywood employees. Chik Fil-a, right down the street, is staring people out at $15 an hour and Cedar Point is starting people off at $20 an hour without raising any prices other than typical annual price increases we see everywhere. And so what if they have to raise prices. People don't want to wait in line 30 minutes for a drink refill or an hour for a hot dog. Adding 25 cents to the price to get more staff at a restaurant would be worth it to most people. People are not taking low paying jobs anymore when they can go down the street and find one that pays more. Dollywood is raking in the cash and they surely can afford to pay their employees a living wage.

Curious who these 2 who were working dropline are.

[swfan1988]

Hey Everyone!

I know I asked some similar questions in the BGW thread yesterday, but we are also going to Dollywood on the same trip and I thought that it was better to keep it organized in the respective threads.

It's my first trip to Dollywood (and BGW) so I was wondering if anyone had some advice?

I also have a couple more specific questions I'd like to ask:

Does Dollywood have bins for all their rides? I thought I heard somewhere that they do but want to double check.

I've heard the legends about Cinnamon Bread and Lumberjack's Pizza, but are there any other highlight/good places to eat at the park?

What order should we hit stuff? I've heard to start with Mystery Mine, but is that still a good plan or should we start with something else?

Does anyone have any advice for Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg/Great Smoky Mountains National Park? It's also my first trip to that area.

Finally the "duh" question for Dollywood, has Lightning Rod's reliability improved lately? I stopped following it after it missed half a season for the up-teenth time!

Thanks in advance for all the help! I really appreciate it!

[tndank]

Get there before gates open and you can get all coasters in a couple hours most days.  I'd personally hit Lightning Rod, then go back across the entrance for Thunderhead, Dragonflier, MM, Firechaser, Eagle, TT, Blazing Fury.  It's just a big circle. Firechaser is normally the longest line in the park.  LR next.  Single rider line can quick.  Can't stress enough getting there early, but that's the same for any park.  

Bins at all rides.  Ride ops normally will grab your stuff and put it away for you.  They are very nice about this.

LR has been running well lately.  Odds are good (knock on wood) you'll get on it.

 

[coasterbill]

12 hours ago, swfan1988 said:

What order should we hit stuff? I've heard to start with Mystery Mine, but is that still a good plan or should we start with something else?

I get why people say this but I've really evolved to the point where I think that if Lightning Rod is the big draw for you then that's where you should go first. It's not a reliable ride. If it opens for the first hour and then closes for the day and you miss it because you were at Mystery Mine you'll be kicking yourself. You should absolutely, 100% go to Lightning Rod first, then do Mystery Mine and Firechaser after that because of their low capacity. Lightning Rod is more reliable lately. You'll probably be fine but don't mess around either. If it's open, ride it.

[SSL]

14 hours ago, swfan1988 said:

Hey Everyone!

I know I asked some similar questions in the BGW thread yesterday, but we are also going to Dollywood on the same trip and I thought that it was better to keep it organized in the respective threads.

It's my first trip to Dollywood (and BGW) so I was wondering if anyone had some advice?

I also have a couple more specific questions I'd like to ask:

Does Dollywood have bins for all their rides? I thought I heard somewhere that they do but want to double check.

I've heard the legends about Cinnamon Bread and Lumberjack's Pizza, but are there any other highlight/good places to eat at the park?

What order should we hit stuff? I've heard to start with Mystery Mine, but is that still a good plan or should we start with something else?

Does anyone have any advice for Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg/Great Smoky Mountains National Park? It's also my first trip to that area.

Finally the "duh" question for Dollywood, has Lightning Rod's reliability improved lately? I stopped following it after it missed half a season for the up-teenth time!

Thanks in advance for all the help! I really appreciate it!

Heyo! I work there, so let me see if I can answer some of these for you.

My biggest advice, is if you're coming during the summer months, PLEAsE DRINK WATER!!! Hydrate before you come to the park. Hydrate while you are at the park. Hydrate Hydrate Hydrate! Drink water drink water! It sounds obvious, but you'd be amazed at the amount of times we have to call safety to get help for someone who has heat exhaustion or passes out due to dehydration. I literally saw it happen in person yesterday. Also, if you're coming for summer, do make sure to check out your sweet summer nights show. Its definitely worth the wait, starts at 9:40 in Wildwood Grove.

Most, if not all your coasters will have bins. I think they all do. A lot of our flat rides will have them as well. Please note, Daredevil Falls does NOT have bins. You must carry your items on that one. so if you got a phone you don't want getting wet, I'd recommend leaving it with a friend in the que line. I'm not sure about smoky mountain rampage. Might be the same there as Daredevil falls.

Front Porch Cafe is ALWAYs packed. same goes for Aunt Granny's. If you're coming during a weekday during the summer, expect lines. They will be long. Weekends tend to be less packed as far as I can tell, but my work time with dollywood is short, and I'm sure that will change. You may want to check out TIll and Harvest over in wildwood grove as well. Also, the cinnamon bread, you can get that at the Grist mill yes, but a lot of people don't realize you can get that at the bakery right as you enter the park too. The upstairs level to the Grist Mill is CLOsED, so don't try to go up there to get it, you'll be sorely disappointed.

As far as what order to get to things, I don't really have an answer for you on that. Refer to the guys above me. They may know better about that than I will.... single rider lines are good, but not all rides have them. I do suggest the timesaver, particularly if you're coming on weekdays during the summer. This past Tuesday and Wednesday have been the busiest days we've had since I started working here. It does save you a lot of time, particularly if you get to the park after the morning rush at the gates. Get there early, and make sure you have the dollywood app on your phone. It does come in handy, and we update wait times on the rides about every 15 minutes. Please note, if you want to ride Daredevil falls, That ride closes at 8. The website may say differently, but Daredevil falls is a special case in that the ride itself has no lights, which means it closes when the sun sets. Rides in general close, starting at 9 across the park from Country Fair towards Wildwood grove. All the rides over in Timber Canyon up to Wilderness pass will close at 9:30.

As for Lightning Rod. Well. It's at least opening every day. It is still having issues with it's launch every now and then, but it hasn't closed for an entire day during the time I've worked here yet. Typically if it does, it's down for an hour or so, then they get it fired back up. Keep the dollywood app on your phone, and you'll know when it goes down and gets back up and running. I've had a chance to ride it multiple times with the Ibox track, and the air time is still very much there. In fact I got a night ride, last ride of the night, ride on it a couple weeks ago. That was an experience. lol.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

[tndank]

Also, if you want to see wait times recently, you can check any day you want here:  dollywoodwaittimes.com

Can also use queue-times.com which is quicker and easier than using park apps.  Link above for DW makes looking at historical much easier and quicker.

 

[TEDodd]

3 hours ago, coasterbill said:

It's not a reliable ride. If it opens for the first hour and then closes for the day 

It hasn't done that in a long time. I just looked at all of July and not once.

It has a few rough days, but the worst looked to be Jul 16. opened at 10, down at 1:15 for 30 min then up from 1:45 til 2:30 before going down for the rest of the day. (Was that a weather day? a lot was down that afternoon)
Back up the next day after a late start but only down for an hour around 5:30.

 

[coasterbill]

I get it, but since that ride is obviously the big draw it's still a totally unnecessary risk for a first-time visitor so that they can wait a few minutes less for Mystery Mine which still won't have much of a line if they rope drop Lightning Rod and then go straight there. That's just me though...

[TEDodd]

1 minute ago, coasterbill said:

I get it, but since that ride is obviously the big draw it's still a totally unnecessary risk for a first-time visitor so that they can wait a few minutes less for Mystery Mine which still won't have much of a line if they rope drop Lightning Rod and then go straight there. That's just me though...

Oh, LR is first on my list, just not because of reliability.

Start there work around the park, hit LR again. Maybe eat then LR again. Random stuff (rides/shows/shopping) until dark and hit LR again after dark.