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Dollywood Discussion Thread

P. 796 - Ride closing 10/30 to remove launch and install chain lift!

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I was here today! Made one loop around the park, hit all coasters in under and hr and half.. wanted the Chicken truck but it was closed

 

Lots of technical problems all over the park though! Wild Eagles music wasn't playing the speakers were just popping.. none of the characters talked in blazing fury and the sounds in other parts of the ride could barely be heard.. of course Lightening Rod was closed..

 

Surprisingly all of mystery mine was working great! Even the fog at the beginning! First time I have seen that fog in a while.. they also had all 7 cars running on it, I guess they had planned on a busy day.. it wasn't very busy

 

All in all good quick trip but it would be nice to get their speakers and audio fixed in places!

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

Sorry your day was not that as awesome as most Dollywood days are.

 

Regardless of how busy the park is they seem to usually run 7 trains on Mystery Mine, which is very frustrating because they only use the first loading dock and have the second closed, so once you finish your ride you have to wait for 4 or 5 other trains to unload/load before you can get out. I love Dollywood and the ops are quick but having more than 4 trains on Mystery Mine is pointless at the moment.

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I was here today! Made one loop around the park, hit all coasters in under and hr and half.. wanted the Chicken truck but it was closed

 

Lots of technical problems all over the park though! Wild Eagles music wasn't playing the speakers were just popping.. none of the characters talked in blazing fury and the sounds in other parts of the ride could barely be heard.. of course Lightening Rod was closed..

 

Surprisingly all of mystery mine was working great! Even the fog at the beginning! First time I have seen that fog in a while.. they also had all 7 cars running on it, I guess they had planned on a busy day.. it wasn't very busy

 

All in all good quick trip but it would be nice to get their speakers and audio fixed in places!

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

Sorry your day was not that as awesome as most Dollywood days are.

 

Regardless of how busy the park is they seem to usually run 7 trains on Mystery Mine, which is very frustrating because they only use the first loading dock and have the second closed, so once you finish your ride you have to wait for 4 or 5 other trains to unload/load before you can get out. I love Dollywood and the ops are quick but having more than 4 trains on Mystery Mine is pointless at the moment.

I go almost weekly and my past few times there thy only had about 4 trains going on MM lol. I was just surprised to see all 7 on such a slow evening..

 

I was there a few Saturdays ago (very busy day) and they had both loading docks going then.

 

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^That's interesting. I have a season pass and go a few times a year usually for two to four days straight each visit, and I've always seen full train ops and I haven't see the second load platform in use in at least a year if not longer. I was there over 4th of July weekend and it was a mess but luckily the operations are still relatively fast and there was never a huge line. Plus I got 5 rides on Lightning Rod mostly with exit passes so I have nothing to complain about.

 

Anyways, it must just be a coincidence. I definitely would enjoy it more when it operates how you have described.

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The weekend they ran both loading docks there was a safety trainer there working with the staff training so that may have been the reason they had both open.. it was opening weekend i believe or thr first very pretty weekend of the year.

 

As for not running many trains when I am there, I am very local so most of the time I go about 2 hours before closing and make a quick loop and eat.. basically they may have all 7 trains running earlier in the day BUT not when I am there haha

 

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Well in regards to Lightning Rod, this is hardly the first coaster with a launch system to suffer from some inaugural season growing pains.

 

From my understanding, S:EFK at SFMM was intended to open in '96, but was delayed to '97 due to problems with the LIM system. The Chiller and both Mr. Freeze attractions were all supposed to open in '97 but like Superman, all were delayed until '98 also because of problems with the LIMs. I think Chiller was open for like a single week in '97, but was then shut for most of the season and then marketed as "new for '98". TTD as most of us know had a very rocky first season that suffered from constant downtime. Kingda Ka was shut down completely for about 2 months its inaugural season due to the infamous "accident" during a morning test run that damaged many components to the launch system.

 

All of those attractions eventually got on their feet though (with the exception of Chiller which had various other design flaws), so nothing we can do but be patient.

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Ah... 1998. The year that Six Flags St. Louis opened its last modern thrilling coaster, Mr. Freeze.

 

Anywho, just checking in to see if Lightning Rod is still closed and yep... See you in a couple weeks for more of the same.

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I'm not dogging them for trying something new, because that's how we end up with really groundbreaking cutting edge rides. However, it makes you wonder how much more roller coaster Dollywood could gotten for the money spent on a traditional chain lift wooden coaster.

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I'm not dogging them for trying something new, because that's how we end up with really groundbreaking cutting edge rides. However, it makes you wonder how much more roller coaster Dollywood could gotten for the money spent on a traditional chain lift wooden coaster.

 

From what I've gathered the coaster part is amazing. The issue, as we've revisited time and again, is that an untested company is using experimental tech for a very high-scrutiny ride.

I've found myself idly wondering what the smallest hypothetical change would lead to the ride being open. Like, if an engineer didn't have a wild night on a Thursday night back last September, he wouldn't have come in to work hungover on Friday, and would have noticed and fixed a problem that ended up snowballing into whatever the issue is now.

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There where several people waiting outside of it last night looking hopeful to ride., I have no idea why.. no ride ops where around for it, no one was working on it.. lights off.. it was pretty much locked up and dead as could be last night.

 

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I just wonder, is this thing ever gonna move out of the staton? What's the problem? We know the launch is good and think it's the train. It's like they've just left everyone in the dark from this point. I do know a lot of the LR summer help has left back for college.

 

How do we know this? Seems like there could still be multiple issues just judging from the park's reactions lately. I enjoy the armchair engineering as much as anybody, but to say we know anything is certainly pushing it.

 

If everything is completely shut down right now the only conclusion I would make is that there is nothing the park can be doing right now and that they are waiting on something or someone to come in.

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How do we know this? Seems like there could still be multiple issues just judging from the park's reactions lately. I enjoy the armchair engineering as much as anybody, but to say we know anything is certainly pushing it.

 

There is no room for this type of completely rational thinking in this thread.

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So LR is of course closed today but I went to twitter to look for anything and I found a picture of outside the station, and on coming into the station, you can see a train just sitting there. I'm just curious as to if it's closed for the day why they have a train just out in the open on the brake run and not under the station for the day/night.

image.thumb.png.914be38cc492d0717d28faa33527a9b7.png

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Will be there tomorrow. LR tears aside, any park tips? I think their fast pass is similar to Hershey's (one ride W/o waiting long during certain time frame)?

 

Any suggestions on park route to avoid it, any flat rides or shows that are must see? Appreciate it!

 

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