"I hope this isn't moving NORTH!"
By now, I think we all know what the most talked-about new coaster of 2004 is. It is, without a doubt, the encore pairing of Herschend Family Entertainment Co., and Great Coasters International, to bring us the follow-up to Celebration City's Ozark Wildcat: Dollywood's Thunderhead.
Dollywood is in Pigeon Forge, which is just slightly off the beaten track, so to speak. The exit from IR-40 is indicated as "Sevierville", and signs indicate that you are in Sevierville metro almost as soon as you get off the expressway. Then it is a long, slow drive to get into Pigeon Forge, then a long, slow drive through Pigeon Forge to get to Dollywood. The traffic snarls in Pigeon Forge, which are mostly the result of incompetently timed traffic signals, are legendary. Remember this, as it will become important at the end of the story.
Parking at Dollywood is $6, which is almost reasonable, especially considering that the park uses long, narrow parking lots which extend all the way around to the back of the park, making tram service pretty much mandatory. The park obviously understands this; the tram conductor indicated that once the park closed that night, the trams would continue to run until the last car was out of the parking lot. That's nice of them. As for me, I can't stay that long, as it's a long drive home. I paid my $42 and entered the park.
At first glance, Dollywood looks like one of those typical, annoyingly-designed doughnut-shaped theme parks. It turns out that while Dollywood uses the same visual tricks, it's really a more traditional layout, with a long midway 'backbone' with a protrusion coming off the middle, making the park a series of dead-end paths converging at the center. It's not easy to build an amusement park on a mountain. Inside the gate, most of the park is off to the right. Naturally, I went left. To the left is a long, winding path up the mountain. Personally, I think Dollywood should install stairways across a couple of the switchbacks to reduce the amount of walking required for those of us who are not in wheeled vehicles. Because a long walk is merely a delay in getting up to Thunderhead.
This is the initial drop out of the station!
This track is re-entering the station for the queue fly-by.
How about a show of hands: Who likes Thunderhead?
The entrance to Thunderhead is under a loop of track, then up into the station. Most of the layout is not visible at this point; in fact, the only place where you can get a really good view of the ride is from the top of the lift hill. The ride's series of neat tricks starts right away with a downward helix from the station to the base of the lift hill. Now that's kinda cool! Even cooler is the double-deck station: The loading platform is about 10' in the air, and above that, the train flies through at high speed 8' above the platform, offset a little to the exit side. In front of the entrance there is a test seat which consists of a sample Thunderhead seat and lap bar. I didn't bother to sit in the test seat, as I had no trouble with Lightning Racer and haven't grown much since I rode that. But I did try an experiment with the test seat. I pulled out my trusty Millennium Force tape measure, reset the test seat lap bar to its first latching position, and checked the distance from the end of the lap bar to the seat back. That distance turns out to be 13". I was not at all surprised. I performed the same measurement between the seat back and the lap bar on the Cannon Ball yesterday at Lake Winnepesaukah and got the exact same result. So GCII's highest lap bar latching position is the same distance from the seat back as the 'traditional' PTC drop-down double-bar. Interesting.
I climbed the stairs and entered the station. There, I picked a row at random, and in just a moment I heard one of the operators call for a single rider. I jumped at the opportunity. I climbed into the train, I fastened the shared seat belt, and I pulled down the lap bar. It clicked into its first notch, which is right up against me. Not tight, but snug enough that it can't come down any further. Hmmm...I wonder if I am exactly the body type the GCI Millennium Flyer trains were designed for. The attendants did their thing, the operator did his thing, and the train slid out of the station. The ride begins with a tight, pretty-much-unbanked helix that leads down to the base of the lift hill, and that alone, where the train smoothly navigates a tight, nearly flat turn, is impressive. No hunting, no screeching, no wobble, no shuffle, just a nice smooth curve the likes of which no PTC train can manage. It's most assuredly a sign of things to come. The train ascends the lift, and there is a nice view of the rest of the ride laid out to the right. From the top, the track swoops down in a graceful right-hand arc. Once off the lift hill, there is only one section of straight track on the ride, where the train flies through the station. And even that section is banked to the right a bit, making it that much easier to wave at the operator and at the people waiting to board the train. The ride flies through a collection of graceful curves and drops, but it's different from the other GCI coasters I have ridden (Wildcat and Lightning Racer). This one actually has airtime, on the tops of many of the hills. Yes, it is a tangled mess of a twister just like GCI's other coasters, impeccably timed out. This one adds to that GCI design a couple of the hallmarks of the best CCI coasters: From the time the train leaves the lift until it hits the final brakes, the ride doesn't slow down. It defies gravity and does that CCI ignorance-of-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics [Footnote 1] thing that made Raven and Shivering Timbers and Zeus such notable rides. That's right, like the best CCI coasters, Thunderhead does not slow down. It doesn't have quite the out-of-control feeling of the Legend, as it is built more precisely, without the crushing lateral forces that I don't care for on some twisters. Thunderhead is one of those rides that comes along once in a great while that can satisfy all kinds of tastes, be a darned good coaster, and still be approachable for just about anybody. The last time I rode a new wood coaster that had this kind of universal appeal to it, I was taking my first ride on Shivering Timbers...and if I remember correctly, that was about a hundred coasters ago. Thunderhead is also a ride that just about anybody can ride all day. So I rode it repeatedly, for about a half dozen cycles. The crew was particularly accommodating. Although the crowd was light, they were dilligently working to fill as many seats on the train as possible, calling for single riders on almost every dispatch. This meant that even with a healthy crowd in the station, I was able to ride with little or no waiting. Finally, having ridden in the back and in the middle, I decided I really should take a front-seat ride. I was two trains back from getting that front seat ride when Something Bad™ happened. It seems that each ride at Dollywood is equipped with a numeric pager. At Thunderhead, the pager was sitting on top of the control console when it went off. I think the operator said the code was "333" or something like that. He stopped everything, picked up the phone and made a quick call, then he translated for us: "Sorry, folks, there is lightning in the area and we have to shut down." Oh, great. This means that not only is Thunderhead down, but so is everything else in the park. I took this as my cue to move on down the midway. I figured it would be a short delay before some parts of the park started to come back up, as it wasn't even raining.
I walked down the hill (Hey, Dollywood, can we get a stairway here?), crossed the entrance plaza, and started wandering through the park, knowing that ultimately I wanted to end up at Tennessee Tornado, but also knowing that it would be closed until the storm went through. My journey was cut short as I got close to the Daredevil Falls flume ride as the skies opened up with a torrential downpour. I ducked into the nearest shelter which happened to be a large treehouse-like structure full of people using compressed air cannon to shoot little foam balls at each other. Meanwhile outside a slow-moving storm dumped several inches of rain on the park in fairly short order.
It took probably a half-hour for the rain to subside, and I walked on down through the rain and through the park. I stopped for a few minutes to watch a glass-blower performing her craft, and I noted that this is one of two parks I can think of off-hand where I have seen glass craftsmen actually blowing glass, not merely sculpting glass rod [Footnote 2].
The Dollywood Express.
Thunderhead as seen from the train.
I was standing in line to ride the carousel, a very large Chance machine that replaced the antique machine that went back to its owner a few years ago, when I noticed that the train was loading across the midway. So I abandoned the carousel and took a train ride instead. Dollywood's train ride has a dogbone layout such that most of the route is single-tracked, up the mountain and back down again. When we got to the top of the mountain, the conductor told the engineer to blow his whistle, but instead the train rolled to a stop, having apparently blown its head of steam. We sat for a couple of minutes, then the whistle blew and we were off again. Live steam can be difficult at times. One thing I did notice was that the conductor must have told us a hundred times to stay seated. Enough that it was well beyond annoying. The train does give some nice views of Thunderhead, though.
When the train returned to the station, the storm had cleared. The creek running through the park was running bright orange because of the large amount of mud dislodged by the storm, and crews throughout the park were cleaning storm drains and getting rid of deep puddles. I walked through the Country Fair section of the park which contains most of the flat rides and was not terribly impressed with the collection. I did notice a decorative advertising poster for strong-man "Gaylord Fahrquad" who would be performing "Unspeakable Acts of Strength." Hmmm...Looks to me like the guy's name is practically unspeakable, or at least darned near unbroadcastable.
Down in this part of the park, things are really a little confusing. There is a 3-way intersection, where it seems that one way heads towards the front gate, one way heads towards The Village and Country Fair, and the third way goes off towards Craftsman's Valley. At least that's what it looks like on the map. In reality, it seemed that while I made it into Craftsman's Valley, I had a hard time picking my way through it to get back to the Tennessee Tornado. I did get a ride on Blazing Fury, though, which is a high-tech indoor dark ride with a couple of roller coaster elements. In spite of what Dollywood claims in their guidebook, I am going to 'officially' declare this one a "NOT coaster" where it can join the likes of a Blauer Enzian, a couple of Pretzel dark rides, and a couple of Zamperla Dragons.
Finally, I made it back to Tennessee Tornado. I last rode it in November of its inaugural season, and I remember declaring it one of the best-running Arrow looping coasters I had ridden. Perhaps it is because the winters are milder in Tennessee, or because it was exceptionally well built, or just because HFEC takes really good care of their rides. I don't know the reason, but whatever it is, Tennessee Tornado has aged exceptionally well. It is running as smoothly today as it was the season it opened. This ride clearly demonstrates that Arrow finally figured out how to build a good looping coaster. Pity it was their last.
I only got one ride, as it was getting late. I returned through the park and took a last ride or two on Thunderhead, finally getting that front seat ride. Thunderhead is a truly amazing ride. I just wish it wasn't so doggone far away from home. I took one last ride, then left the park right around 5:00pm. When I exited the parking lot, there was a road sign with two arrows on it. One directed me down the hill towards Pigeon Forge, and the other pointed the way to Sevierville. Which, I remembered, was the town where I got off the freeway. I figured it must be a back road that goes back to Sevierville and avoids all that nastiness with the traffic lights in Pigeon Forge. As it turns out, that's exactly what it was. Unfortunately, that didn't get me where I wanted to go. Road signs notwithstanding, it turns out that Sevierville as identified by that directional sign is somewhat to the East of Pigeon Forge and all that traffic mess. In short, I wound up almost diametrically opposite where I wanted to be. Bear that in mind; if you are planning to go back to the Interstate, you can get to it via the road to Sevierville, but it is faster to go back through Pigeon Forge.
It took me almost eight hours to get home. It might have been shorter had it not been for the really nasty rainstorms I encountered on the trip. Apparently that storm DID go to the North.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Footnote 1: There's a...law with which all energy must agree: whenever it changes form it loses quality, in other words, "damn that rising entropy." (Jack Micay) [Return to text]
Footnote 2: Cedar Point is the other one, though I am certain Cedar Point and Dollywood are not the only two. Kings Island and Six Flags Great America both have glass craftsmen, but neither park actually has glass blowing. [Return to text]
--DCAjr.
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