DOLLYWOOD & Splash Country

Pigeon Forge, Tenn.

Herschend Family Entertainment

---- THE LATEST BUZZ ----

(9/18/20) Dollywood Posts 2021 Passholder Renewal Special Offer (MORE...)

(9/4/20) Dollywood Making Preperations for Harvest Festival and Great Pumpkin LumiNights (MORE...)

(8/21/20) Dollywood Offering Free Waterpark Tickets To DreamMore Guests (MORE...)

(8/19/20) Dollywood To Host Homeschool Days (MORE...)

(8/15/20) Dollywood Taking Survey About How To Best Get Passholders To Renew (MORE...)

Dixie Stampede (2016) Review

FireChaser Express - Grand Opening & Review

Dolly’s Splash Country Waterpark - Official Screamscape Review

Dollywood’s DreamMore Resort - Official Screamscape Review

General Park News - (9/18/20) Sounding similar to some of the surveys Dollywood did not long ago, the park has released a 2021 renewal plan for current passholders. According to a post on the site starting Oct 19 passholders will be offered the chance to expand their current passes that end on June 15, 2021 through to the end of 2021 for $79 + tax, or convert them into 2-Park Super Passes for $99.

Extra perks to be added also include a Christmas 2020 Bring a Friend Ticket, three flexible 2021 Bring A Friend tickets, a free souvenir mug good for .99 cent refills through the end of the 2021 season, and the ability to spread out your payments over a 10 month period.

Follow the link for the official details.



(9/4/20) Dollywood tells us that their hard-working Special Events team is already preparing the park for this year’s Harvest Festival presented by Humana (Sept. 25 through Oct. 31) that will also feature the fantastic Great Pumpkin LumiNights presented by Covenant Health. Guests can stroll through displays featuring thousands of pumpkins, including special ‘larger-tha-life” sized displays. This year the event will expand into new territory, moving into the Wildwood Grove section of the park, which will feature new stacked pumpkin “sunflowers” that will stand between 6 feet to 9.5 feet tall.

Look for the operations schedule of the park to change with the addition of the Harvest Festival, starting on Sept. 25, when the park hours will shift to 10am to 9pm each day (closed Tuesdays and Thursdays). You can see some great footage from previous years events below.



Brighter days are here! We can't wait to host you again.

Learn more here: https://t.co/o4KCJuxlC0 pic.twitter.com/HcUbw8Nai0 — Dollywood Parks & Resorts (@Dollywood) June 3, 2020

2020 Season Passholder Update. For more information visit: https://t.co/bHyENq6aY8 pic.twitter.com/wEBtkI2TAj — Dollywood Parks & Resorts (@Dollywood) April 29, 2020

2020 - 35th Anniversary - (10/22/19) Dollywood has announced a few more dates for other returning special events coming to the park in 2020 for the 35th anniversary season.

The season will begin on March 14 - April 20 with the return of the Festival of Nations event that will feature a stage productions of Namaste India, Ole!, Drumstruck, JigJam and Invaders Steel Orchestra, plus the return of popular International Food items.

Next is Dollywood’s Barbeque & Bluegrass presented by BUSH’S from April 24 through May 3, followed by the return of The Gazillion Bubbles Show from June 20 through Aug. 2, and Rock the Smokies returning on Aug. 22. This will be followed by the return of the Great Pumpkin LimiNights and Southern Gospel Jubilee events in the fall and then Smoky Mountain Christmas.



(10/19/19) Dollywood is planning a new five-week long festival to take place at the park in Spring 2020 called Flower & Food Festival. This will take place between May 8 and June 14, 2020 and coincide with the park’s 35th anniversary.

Look for colorful displays of blooming spring flowers and stunning 10-15 foot tall topiaries to be found throughout the park along with an assortment of ultra drool-inducing Smoky Mountain dishes to try at every turn.

Dolly describes it best, “When I was just a little girl, spring was a wondrous time,” Parton explained. “Everything came to life – flowers bloomed in the meadow near our house, and the Dogwood, red bud and fruit trees blossomed with the sweetest smells. I imagined having my own special field of flowers that were a fragrant home to my favorite animal friends in the woods. Now, my Dollywood becomes that special place with everything made of flowers – I can’t wait to share it with everyone just in time for our 35th season!”



2021 - Wildwood Grove Dark Ride - Rumor - (2/28/20) We’ve been sent a couple of interesting tidbits that seem to point towards a possible new dark ride coming to Wildwood Grove in 2021 or 2022. First of all some new whispers on the Screamscape Spy Network report that the park may have been in talks with Sally Corp to bring this new dark ride project to life, though this doesn’t mean Sally is the only one involved. For example a team of companies, including Sally, all worked together to bring the Justice League dark ride to life for Six Flags, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see this project also a mix of sorts.

Also tied into this rumor is a new guest survey Dollywood is sending out, asking guests about a new family ride experience in development where 6-riders would compete against each other to collect ‘items’ during the ride. I think they may be pitching a few different name variants on this one, but so far I’ve heard “Undergrove Quest” and “Cryrstal Cavern”.

The plot is you are enlisted to help a “rock-hound” character in search of the long-lost “Hidden Crystal Cavern” that is full of rare gems. Guests will use an on-board device to collect these gems and see who can get the most by the end, but beware… you never know what hidden dangers you might encounter along the way!

Quite a few other dark ride concepts were pitched in the various new attraction surveys we posted about below, but this one seems to be a mix of some of the various elements of those rides, but given it’s own unique story instead.

2022/2023 - New Roller Coaster - (2/29/20) Time to look into the Magic 8 ball regarding the future of Dollywood. While I reported the rumor about a dark ride in the works for the park, I can’t ignore all you roller coaster loving people out there, and neither will Dollywood. If the rumors are true, Dollywood is working on plans for their next big coaster, and from the sound of things it will be a crowd pleaser. This is something that many have been dreaming about for some time now, and it looks like Dollywood is looking into adding a Hypercoaster style coaster to the park, their way… which can only mean they’ll go the extra mile like they did with Lightning Rod and Wild Eagle, and make this sucker fly through the hills and trees, leaving as much of the natural smoky mountain landscape as possible intact.

While everyone will assume they would go to B&M for this, there is the issue that Dollywood sits within the area exclusive range of Carowinds and Six Flags over Georgia, and neither Intimidator or Goliath are 20 years old yet. Of course I’d love to see something unique, like the first Hyper-Inverted, or perhaps they could work a loop-hole and make it a floorless coaster with a Hyper style layout, and maybe add an inversion or two. The other rumor, once we’ve actually heard whispers start mentioning, is that Herschend could tap Mack Rides once again after opening Time Machine at Silver Dollar City, but ask them to create something more like DC Rivals.

Again… just rumors about possible developments at this point, but I wouldn’t expect to see anything until 2022 or 2023 at this point, so stay tuned!



(Feb 2019) An early rumor claims that Dollywood may be looking to build their next major coaster as a Phase 2 expansion to the 2019 project. Manufacturers are being looked at, but rumor has it they may be leaning towards B&M simply for a reliability standpoint. What kind of coaster may be up in the air as well, though after just opening Fire Chaser Express and Lightning Rod, they definitely are not looking to have another launched coaster at this point. While a B&M Hyper may be considered a likely choice, I believe Dollywood is too close to Carowinds and Six Flags over Georgia for that to happen with the typical B&M contracts that prevent similar coasters from being built too close together too soon. A B&M Inverted may be a possibly however, even though Carowinds has one as well, simply because Afterburn was built in 1999, and by 2020 enough time should have passed to allow for it. Plus I think it would be kind of cute to open the rumored family inverted coaster in 2019… and then follow it up with a monster sized version that could run wild through the mountainside and trees, much like Alpengeist at Busch Gardens Williamsburg.

That’s just a dream on my part however, Dollywood could very well opt to go with an entirely different manufacturer to get a Hyper or anything else they want. Stay tuned while we listed for more rumors on the wind.

???? - Second Dollywood Hotel - Planning - (11/27/19) Screamscape first reported that Dollywood was preparing plans to add a second resort hotel a little over a year ago (see below) and now we finally have an update on the project. According to the local news the theme park submitted a preliminary site plan to Pigeon Forge showing a 310-room hotel project with a 325-seat restaurant as well as conference space that would be located somewhere between the current DreamMore Resort and Dollywood’s Splash Country waterpark.

When approaching the current DreamMore Resort, as you reach the top of the first drive-way segment, you have to make a left turn to get into the DreamMore parking lot, but you may have noticed that the drive-way road continues on straight for another 10-15 feet before ending in the brush. That road will be extended to lead up to a round-about that will split traffic between the meeting space and guest room ends of the new resort property.



(11/12/18) During an interview with the local news Dolly Parton where they discuss a new Netflix series she is working on as well as the new Glacier Ridge addition to Dollywood’s Smoky Mountain Christmas, Dolly let another interesting detail slip out. While discussing meetings they have each season to go over what guests like, don’t like, and what people would really like to have added to Dollywood, they decided that they need to build another hotel. According to Dolly, "…just like we’re going to build a new resort because our resort stays busy all the time!”

If you haven’t seen it yet, Screamscape has stayed at and reviewed Dollywood’s Dreammore Resort and we loved it! You can see our official review and photos here.