Places I’d Like To Go

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about places I’d like to go.  Some of them would be vacations, some day trips, and some are just places to eat.  Here’s a list of some of those places, in no particular order.

• Dollywood: This is the first time in several years that I haven’t bought a Dollywood pass.  My friends that I usually go to Dollywood with all decided not to get passes this year, and I don’t want to buy one unless I know I can make at least 2 trips to pay for it.

• Bonanza: The nearest Bonanza restaurant to where I live is close to an hour away, but we used to take regular trips there to eat.  It’s been too long since we’ve been.

• Myrtle Beach: My family used to take a vacation to Myrtle Beach every summer, but I haven’t been to the beach (Myrtle or any other) since the mid 90s.  I’m still sad that the Pavilion and the associated amusement park were torn down a couple of years ago.

• Cherokee, NC: This is a beautiful part of the country, and the scenery between here and there is awesome.  The area is rich in history, and it is a very interesting place to visit.  The Native Americans there allow you to play many fun games that they have prepared for you.  Sometimes they are so grateful that they even give you money.

• Cedar Point (Sandusky, OH) and Busch Gardens (Williamsburgh, VA): Of the amusement parks I’ve never visited, these are the top 2 on my list.

• Branson, Mo: Branson sounds like an interesting place to visit, and from what I’ve heard about it, it reminds me a lot of the Pigeon Forge / Gatlinburg area of Tennessee.  I’d be particularly interested in visiting Silver Dollar City, which is the sister park to Dollywood.

• Atlantic City, NJ: I’d love to go to Las Vegas, but I don’t like to fly, and it’s really too long of a drive.  I figure Atlantic City is the next closest thing to Vegas.

There you have it!  I don’t get to travel as much as I’d like, so I’m not sure if I’ll get to any of these places any time soon.  At least I can enjoy thinking about it!

The Flooded Mine

Cneil, who provided me with the link to his pictures of the Fire In The Hole ride that I posted previously,  has also posted some pictures of the Flooded Mine ride which still exists at Silver Dollar City in Branson, Mo.

I think I mistakenly mentioned in a previous post that Branson’s Flooded Mine was like an indoor version of Dollywood’s new River Battle ride.  After seeing the pictures of The Flooded Mine, however, I can see that it is actually a ride version of a traditional-style shooting gallery.  The riders have infrared guns (similar to Laser Tag) that they can use to shoot targets throughout the ride, and hitting the targets causes different events to occur.

Thanks to Cneil for the pictures and information about The Flooded Mine.  Be sure to take a look at his pictures here:  http://cneil.blogspot.com/2008/06/silver-dollar-city-flooded-mine.html

Fire in the Hole!

In the comments section of one of my recent posts, Cneil posted a link to some photos and information about the Fire In The Hole ride at Silver Dollar City in Branson, Mo.  I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to post the link to make sure that nobody misses it.  I learned a lot about Fire In The Hole that I didn’t know.

Fire In The Hole is a similar ride to The Blazing Fury at Dollywoood, and as far as I know, they were both designed and built in the 70s.  There are  some differences between the two rides, however.  I was surprised to learn that the theme of Fire In The Hole is much darker than the theme of The Blazing Fury.

The plot of The Blazing Fury is that a town is on fire and firefighters are trying to put it out.  That’s basically it – the cause of the fire isn’t mentioned.  Despite the burning town, The Blazing Fury is a light-hearted ride overall, with most of the scenes focusing on comedy.  For instance, there’s one scene where a girl is chasing a guy around a burning house because she wants a kiss, and he tells her that she looks like she’s “been kissing that steam train”.  There’s also the famous scene where Molly is about to jump off the roof of the burning hotel into the arms of Luther, who is waiting to catch her.  “Now Molly, you be careful, because I’ve got a weak back.”  “Weak back or not, get ready Luther, cause here I come!”  There are some thrills at the end of the ride, with a collapsing bridge, an near-miss with an oncoming train, and a water splash.  It’s interesting to note that a fireman yells “Fire in the Hole!” near the end of the ride, which is the name of the ride at Silver Dollar City.

According to Cneil’s description, Fire In The Hole adds an additional element to the plot – the town is on fire because it’s being ransacked by bandits called “BaldKnobbers”.  As opposed to The Blazing Fury’s light-hearted theme, Fire In The Hole sounds more like a horror-themed ride.  The BaldKnobbers aren’t ordinary bandits.  They look more like villians out of a horror movie, with black hoods over their faces and something that looks like antennas sticking out of the tops of their heads.  There are scenes of BaldKnobbers pointing guns and even a cannon at the riders.  There are even dead townspeople lying around that have been done in by the BaldKnobbers.  I’d highly recommend that you check out Cneil’s blog to see photos and to learn more about Fire In The Hole.

Here’s the link to Cneil’s Silver Dollar City posts:  http://cneil.blogspot.com/search/label/Silver%20Dollar%20City?max-results=20

Dollywood Part 3 – Rides of the Past

In this post, I’m going to discuss some of the rides that I remember being in Silver Dollar City / Dollywood in years gone by that are no longer there. I’ve really been looking forward to doing this post. Hopefully I can share some information that some of you might not have known. In the list below, I’ll include the name of the ride (if I remember it), the very general time frame when the ride was in the park (remember, I’m doing this from memory), a description of the ride, and my comments on the ride.

“Wagon Wheel” (?-mid 80s): I don’t remember what Silver Dollar City called this ride, but I always referred to it as the Wagon Wheel. I think the generic name for the ride is the Trabant. I’ve also seen photos of it at some parks themed as a roulette wheel. This ride is a round disk with the riders sitting around the edges. A hydraulic lift raises one side of the ride until it’s leaning at a 45 degree angle, and then the ride rotates. This ride was in the area that is now the Country Fair.

The Cloud Grabber (?-mid 80s): This ride was similar to a space needle, except that the cars hung from cables and were pulled to the top of the tower by the cables. The version of the ride that I remember seeing in person had 2 large gondolas, but an old Silver Dollar City pamphlet that I remember showed 4 smaller gondolas.

Log Flume (70s-approximately 2003; also known as Country Fair Falls): This was a traditional-style log flume, and a ride that I was very sad to see go. It was always one of my favorite rides, and was actually one the park’s flagship rides in the 70s. I recently learned that this ride was actually relocated to Silver Dollar City from the New York World’s Fair. I think a couple of things led to the demise of this ride. First, the park needed the room so they could add several new rides during the Country Fair expansion from 3 or 4 years ago. Secondly, I think park management probably viewed the ride as being expendable, since the park also has Daredevil Falls, which is a more modern version of the log flume. The original log flume was sold to another park, so as far as I know, it is still intact and running somewhere.

Tilt-a-Whirl(?-approximately 2003): The Tilt-a-Whirl is one of the most common carnival rides of my lifetime, but Dollywood’s Tilt-a-Whirl deserves special mention because it was the BEST Tilt-a-Whirl I ever rode. The cars spun so fast that the G-forces felt during the ride were incredible. I think I could feel my face rippling, like what happened to James Bond when that guy trapped him in the training module that astronauts use to train for rocket launches and turned it on “high”.

The Mountain Swinger (?-approximately 2003): This ride was replaced by a new swinger during the Country Fair expansion. The main difference between the old ride and the new one is that the seats on the Mountain Swinger were in a single-file line, while there are side-by-side seats on the new swinger (which is commonly known as the Wave Swinger, as there are several of them in existence).

The Inventor’s Mansion (?-1985): This attraction was located in that building up on the hill that looks like a haunted house. It was like a Fun House, and included one of those “anti-gravity” rooms with the slanted floor. When Silver Dollar City changed to Dollywood, this attraction was temporarily changed to the Dolly Parton Museum, until the museum was moved to another part of the park. The Inventor’s Building Mansion is no longer open the public, and I don’t know what is in there now. I’ve thought for years that they need to re-open this building as a haunted house.

The Flooded Mine (probably 1970s-mid 90s): This was a gentle dark-ride themed as…a flooded mine! It was a lot of fun, and included some technology that I feel was state-of-the art for the 70s. The mine was full of animatronic characters, and they had rounded T.V. screens as faces. I’d like to think that they saved some of these characters somewhere, and if so, I’d like to see a couple of them put on display somewhere in the park. The ride also had a couple of cool sections with strobe lights and water flying everywhere. The story of why the ride closed (which I consider an urban legend) is that tons of poisonous snakes were found living in the ride. Some versions of the story say that a rider was bitten. In the “cave” beneath the former Inventor’s Mansion (where the Gem Mine store is located), you can see the last remaining tie-in to the flooded mine ride if you look closely enough. In one of the small openings in the cave wall, you can see a small waterfall running into a wooden bucket, with a sign on the back wall making reference to “Flooded Mine #1″ (the ride was “Flooded Mine #2″). That illustrates how big of a deal the ride was at one time…there were actually references to it throughout the park to get you geared up for the experience of the ride itself.

Thunder Express (early 90s-late 90s): By today’s standards, this was a fairly mild steel rollercoaster. It did not contain any loops. It was removed to make room for the Tennessee Tornado.

I think that covers the major rides that I have seen disappear from the park during my lifetime. If anyone can think of any I’ve missed, let me know!

Dollywood Part 2 – History

In this post, I wanted to take a brief look at the history of the park now known as Dollywood. I’m going to give Lawson co-writing credit, because the comment he posted in response to my first Dollywood post contained pretty much the same information that I had planned to include in Part 2 of my Dollywood series.

I’d also like to give a special thanks to whoever wrote the Wikipedia article about Dollywood, which filled in some gaps in my own knowledge about Dollywood, and to Dollywood.com, which contains some more detailed information about the park’s past that I didn’t know before.

The park was founded in 1961 by The Robbins Brothers as Rebel Railroad. It was a small attraction that included a steam train named “Klondike Katie”, general store, blacksmith shop, and saloon.

In 1970, the park was purchased by Art Modell (who owned the Cleveland Browns at the time) and renamed Goldrush Junction. It was touted as “Tennessee’s Million Dollar Fun Attraction”.  A number of additions were made to the park during this time, one of which was the log flume, which I just learned was relocated to the park from the New York World’s Fair. The Robert F. Thomas Church was also built during this time. It is still in the park and weekly services are held there.

In 1977, the park was bought by Jack and Pete Herschend, owners of Silver Dollar City in Branson, Mo. The Tennessee park was renamed to Silver Dollar City as well, and began experiencing significant growth that continues today. By 1985, Craftsman’s Valley and many rides had been added to Silver Dollar City.

In 1986, Dolly Parton entered into a partnership with the Herschend brothers and became part-owner of the park. It was renamed as Dollywood at that time, and the park has continued to experience major growth and expansion. Attendance between 1985 and 1986 increased by 75%, and the park now hosts around 2 million visitors per year.

In the next installment in my series, I’ll begin taking a look at the park’s rides.

Dollywood Part 1 – Introduction

This is my first post in what promises to be a long series about Dollywood. I love amusement parks – Dollywood in particular. I’m partial to Dollywood because of my childhood memories of the park, the theme and atmosphere, and also because it’s the closest major amusement park to where I live.

My parents and grandparents began taking me to the park as a child when it was known as Silver Dollar City. I have fond memories of those trips, and I’ve been in love with the park ever since.

To me, the theme and atmosphere of Dollywood set it apart from other more generic parks. The entire park has a Smoky Mountains theme, featuring entertainment, crafts, and food common to the area. The atmosphere of the park allows visitors to experience what life was like in the Smokies in the general time period of the late 1800s to early 1900s.

Stay tuned for additional installments in my Dollywood series, where I’ll discuss the history of the park, the rides, and much more.