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Dollywood Discussion Thread

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

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Just a thought - purely speculative.

 

Last year, most of the season, they were running the ride with rows empty. I haven't seen them doing it this year. Since the ride is launched on a pretty steep incline and the LSMs ends before the top, wouldn't the additional weight cause the ride to lose a little momentum before cresting the first hill? I'm not sure that the weight of 4 people or so would cause a noticeable change or if the launch system compensates for weight to reach the desired speed...

4 adults can be 600+ pounds.. last year I saw them run it with as many as 6 empty seats so some rides could have as much as 1000+ extra pounds on it yes so I can definitely see that slowing it down or causing a noticeable difference towards the top

 

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Checkout the time differences on a Friday at 350p. What ride wait time is not like the other. They need to get that 2nd train up bad. Also lines barley move due to the fast pass and disability lines always staying full.

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Checkout the time differences on a Friday at 350p. What ride ride time is not like the other. They need to get that 2nd train up bad. Also lines barley move due to the fast pass and disability lines always staying full.
This is something I knew would happen with their new Fast Pass system.. all theme parks that want to use a system for quicker lines needs one that can be scheduled like Dollywood old one or even Disney's.. the current system Dollywood has can't be scheduled so it's basically "jump in front of the line system" which is great for those who buy it but horrible for regular customers

 

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Sucks to suck. Pony up and buy the fast pass. Or, maybe it's time for Dolly to raise her fast pass prices to cut down on the number of patrons using them, but still keep the same profit. The fast passes where you don't have to schedule your ride are the best and well worth a premium. Another thought, maybe the lines wouldn't suck so bad if Dolly were to be able to run both trains on Lightning Rod?

 

Man this park irritates me, just like HW. "Look at us! We're the greatest!" (But not really)

 

Sincerely,

Stickupmyasstoday

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Sucks to suck. Pony up and buy the fast pass. Or, maybe it's time for Dolly to raise her fast pass prices to cut down on the number of patrons using them, but still keep the same profit. The fast passes where you don't have to schedule your ride are the best and well worth a premium. Another thought, maybe the lines wouldn't suck so bad if Dolly were to be able to run both trains on Lightning Rod?

 

Man this park irritates me, just like HW. "Look at us! We're the greatest!" (But not really)

 

Sincerely,

Stickupmyasstoday

That's the problem, they don't charge a premium so during the summer it seems every tourist has one and they don't seem to be limiting them.. luckily most of Dollywood lines don't have any wait this year like they did last season.

 

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Just received a very strange survey from Dollywood about tourism being down and basically had questions about what would make me visit.. one of the questions was about Dollywood offering more discounts and another was "if you had a guarantee that LR would be open"

 

Just speculation on my part, but do you think numbers and attendance are fairly down this season?

 

The survey had promo adds and asked if it would make me more likely to visit, it asked questions about the fire and if that keeps me from visiting and so on?

 

Kind of a scary survey if you ask me.. it asked about other locations I have visited this year such as Atlanta, Myrtle Beach, Nashville.. it asked about things I have done in the area outside of Dollywood and then it asked how many times I had been to the area vs how many times I had been to Dollywood this year..

 

Not their fun surveys they normally send out about new rides and stuff

 

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Isn't Lightning Rod restricted to just one ride on the Time Saver too? That's particularly bad if that line is still filling up then.
There site says "Limited to one ride per person" for LR and Drop Line but when I was there last week that rule didn't seem to apply to the unlimited.. The unlimited passes which is basically just a lanyard was all that the guest were showing to get on.. I know some folks had ridden it multiple times with their lanyard or so they said

 

IDK, I have never purchased one, I'm just confirming that it has been slowing down the regular line drastically like DJKnox said lol

 

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Isn't Lightning Rod restricted to just one ride on the Time Saver too? That's particularly bad if that line is still filling up then.
There site says "Limited to one ride per person" for LR and Drop Line but when I was there last week that rule didn't seem to apply to the unlimited.. The unlimited passes which is basically just a lanyard was all that the guest were showing to get on.. I know some folks had ridden it multiple times with their lanyard or so they said

 

IDK, I have never purchased one, I'm just confirming that it has been slowing down the regular line drastically like DJKnox said lol

 

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DW sells two types of Time Savers: Regular and Unlimited. The regular Time Saver allows you to skip 10 lines during the day, but you are limited to one skip each for LR and Dropline. The regular Time Savers are the ones that you get for free if your stay at the DreamMore Resort. Dollywood also sells an Unlimited Time Saver, but they limit the amount of the Unlimiteds they sell each day. (I don't know what that number is though.)

 

We just got back from our DW visit and we got to ride LR 2-3 times a day. We stayed at the DreamMore, so we got the regular Time Saver every day (and you get one for each person in the room). Our strategy was to get to the park 20-30 min early (they let you in early) and then get into the LR queue. LR opened with the park each day or shortly after opening. We would usually ride twice at opening and then come back later in the day with our Time Saver. Most of the rides were pretty much walk-ons last week, so I don't think we used all of our 10 skips any day. The only rides we really needed the Time Saver for was LR, Dropline, Fire Chaser, and Mystery Mine. Once I catch up at work, I plan on doing a longer trip report.

Edited by VegasBaby
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That's the thing, they say they limit the unlimited one but I saw tons of them my last visit and they kept offering them.. so who knows what the real limit is lol

 

But like you said, most of DWs rides have been a walkon most season.. that's why it was weird and scary I just got the tourism survey from them

 

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I also got the survey yesterday and the Lightning Rod question was strange.
Yeah, it was really random.. being local choose the answer as it really wouldn't affect me coming if I had that guarantee.. I'm sure folks that aren't local, that is a reason to keep them away though haha

 

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I have been saying attendance has been down all year but my question is, how bad.. if they are sending a survey out I feel it's probably much worse than it looks? Or at least bad enough that Dollywood is trying to figure out why?

 

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I have been saying attendance has been down all year but my question is, how bad.. if they are sending a survey out I feel it's probably much worse than it looks? Or at least bad enough that Dollywood is trying to figure out why?

 

So you are asking for the answer to a question that no one can answer with certainly except for someone who would get fired for answering.

 

I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express once, I would expect a 10% drop in expected attendance to trigger a red flag.

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Not necessarily, folks here sometime stumble upon little known interviews that have answers to questions like this all the time

 

People asking questions like this has linked me to some good interviews before, some I wouldn't see otherwise

 

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Edited by dstephe9
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But see that's what's weird, he National Park Service keeps saying that attendance is at a record high.. Not sure if they say this to get folks to come in and it's not actually true or if people are coming just to rubberneck and see the fire but aren't actually staying in the area haha

 

But yeah, the news sure doesn't help things and that was actually one of the questions on the survey.. What had you seen on the news.

 

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^ The National Park Service has, in my past experience with them, been "off" with their numbers, most of the time, no matter what they're counting. One of the first Marches on Washington with LGTBQ was well above a 1/2 million. My David took photos from the top of the Monument, and we grid-counted everybody "from above," lol. But the Park Service "estimated" it at around..... 50,000.

 

 

Never trusted their numbers, since. IMhO.

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But see that's what's weird, he National Park Service keeps saying that attendance is at a record high.. Not sure if they say this to get folks to come in and it's not actually true or if people are coming just to rubberneck and see the fire but aren't actually staying in the area haha

 

But yeah, the news sure doesn't help things and that was actually one of the questions on the survey.. What had you seen on the news.

 

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The national Park Service doesn't want to lose funding or staffing and need to keep numbers high.

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News stories like this from yesterday on CNN aren’t helping things. Anyone that’s been here this years know the whole town is not gone. More fake news. http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/06/us/gatlinburg-fire-dashcam-video/index.html

Where exactly in that story do they claim that the whole town is gone?

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News stories like this from yesterday on CNN aren’t helping things. Anyone that’s been here this years know the whole town is not gone. More fake news. http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/06/us/gatlinburg-fire-dashcam-video/index.html

Where exactly in that story do they claim that the whole town is gone?

 

Nowhere, it's an interesting story featuring first hand accounts of the events that unfolded. As the story concludes, they quote Pete Owens saying that the idea that the tourism industry was affected by this is a misconception:

 

"The entire area is still affected by the misconception after the fires that the tourism industry was adversely impacted,"

 

Any parts of the story that painted a bleaker picture were clearly first hand accounts as the events unfolded and if you actually read the article in context and not just the headline that much becomes clear. None of the 3 major news networks in America (Fox, MSNBC and CNN) are "fake news", they're editorialized, sometimes biased news sources but people should be smart enough to actually read the articles and check the sources to gain some context before dubbing any article they don't like as "fake".

 

The poster is clearly just trying to subtly bring politics into a theme park forum. Nobody who actually read that article would have a problem with it. It's an interesting read. Sadly, nobody wants to read articles... they just want to react angrily to any headline or news source with an alternate viewpoint because it's easy.

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News stories like this from yesterday on CNN aren’t helping things. Anyone that’s been here this years know the whole town is not gone. More fake news. http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/06/us/gatlinburg-fire-dashcam-video/index.html

Where exactly in that story do they claim that the whole town is gone?

 

Nowhere, it's an interesting story featuring first hand accounts of the events that unfolded. As the story concludes, they quote Pete Owens saying that the idea that the tourism industry was affected by this is a misconception:

 

"The entire area is still affected by the misconception after the fires that the tourism industry was adversely impacted,"

 

Any parts of the story that painted a bleaker picture were clearly first hand accounts as the events unfolded and if you actually read the article in context and not just the headline that much becomes clear. None of the 3 major news networks in America (Fox, MSNBC and CNN) are "fake news", they're editorialized, sometimes biased news sources but people should be smart enough to actually read the articles and check the sources to gain some context before dubbing any article they don't like as "fake".

 

The poster is clearly just trying to subtly bring politics into a theme park forum. Nobody who actually read that article would have a problem with it. It's an interesting read. Sadly, nobody wants to read articles... they just want to react angrily to any headline or news source with an alternate viewpoint because it's easy.

Pete in the article says the tourism industry hasn't been affected, but that goes completely against the survey Dollywood sent out.. Now the survey didn't come out and say attendance was down, nowhere did it say that.. but it did ask about the fire, the news, has that affected you traveling to the area, what can Dollywood do to get you to come back to the area, how many times you visited the area last year vs this year, and even the question of "If LR was guaranteed to be open, would you be more likely to visit Dollywood"

 

Questions like that are fairly clear that tourism is affected or has been affected by something. Was it the fire? Is it Dollywoods prices? (Several questions had to do with prices and discounts). Is it LRs uncertainty? It's like Dollywood is trying to figure out what's wrong..

 

I like Pete, but that's been the problem with Pete over the last year or so.. he says one thing but then folks above him say something else in interviews, or Dollywood ends up doing something else that makes his comments look fake and untrue.

 

And then again, maybe the Survey doesn't mean anything but if that's the case, why send it out? It was one of the longest surveys I have ever done for Dollywood and it seemed to be customized due to the answer I had chosen.

 

The very first question though was a fill in the blank and asked about what I had heard in the news and the second question was if I was aware of the fire

 

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The story has the first hand account that the whole town is on fire. Some folks from around the country hear that and think it worse than it actually is. The whole fake news line was just a joke. Sorry for any confusion.

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