Just got back from our trip to Tennessee which included a couple days at Dollywood. We went opening day (Friday) and on Sunday. The park was
very crowded on Friday and our travel partners were, ah, not quite up to the challenge of getting on the road in time. Add in traveling with a couple of one-year-olds and that none of us had the appetite to shell out $600 to skip lines... I tried to keep my expectations in check.
Anyway, between the two days the only coasters I missed out on were Firechaser Express and Mystery Mine (which is still closed, though it's testing). We didn't expect the new ride to be open and it doesn't appear to be that close. There's a
lot of track lying on the ground outside the show building, which has (understandably) not been fully enclosed.
Lightning Rod is
awesome. I got to do this a couple of times and it's one of the best coasters I've been on. Thunderhead is similarly very good, surprisingly so given its age. Wild Eagle was a lot of fun and offers great views of the park and even Tennessee Tornado was smoother than I expected.
Fire in the Hole is an absolutely bizarre ride. If you can go in blind... do so. I didn't know what to expect and it's
very weird (this is a compliment!)
Otherwise, the vibe of the park is immaculate. The location is lovely, the food we had was great and everywhere you go Dolly's music follows. It's really great. It's clearly a very good family park, but probably more so for kids 5 and up. There was very little for the girls to do, and even the rides without height requirements didn't allow any lap sitting (which is allowed on virtually every attraction without a height requirement at Disneyland).
It's also pretty clear to me that they oversell their skip-the-line pass. Hotel guests get a limited-use version of it, which I imagine is part of the problem, but they also struggle with proper line merging by asking the grouper at the station to scan passes before assigning rows.
And, one last gripe, they
have a parent swap system ... but it requires you to bring the kid in line with you all the way up to the boarding area. On some of these rides, it then requires you to lift the kid over the coaster to transfer them to your partner. This is... stupid. But they're clearly not going to pay a ride host to stand outside the entrance nor are they going to pay someone to enforce a merge point
and a grouper. That is lame. Not Six Flags lame, but lame nonetheless.
Anyway, we had a good time. It strikes me as a great season pass holder park because there's so much to see and do without ever getting in line for a ride.