Was this a bad day or just the norm around here?
Me and my girlfriend just finished our first trip to Dollywood and I’m feeling some mixed reviews. The overall start to the day was great, low crowds, rides and theming were everything we had hoped for. But about two hours into our day, fire chaser breaks down and needs to be evacuated right before we had gotten on. No big deal these things happen but it did take about 20 minutes on top of how long we had waited, in total it was about 40 minutes, before they just started ushering people out of the station. No announcement over the intercom about the ride being shut, no communication from the team members about what was happening, just sort of some people being told slowly but surely that they needed to leave the line. As we’re leaving, another guest not with us was trying to ask the team member in charge of row assignment what’s happening and was met with just the ride is closed in a very cold manner, when my girlfriend asked if we would be given anything in response to the time waste, she was also met with a very stern and cold no, followed by being again basically pushed towards the entrance.
Now I’m the last person to complain about someone, the ride ops have a very hard job and it’s very thankless especially working in those hot cues and stations all day. But I also don’t think that in the hospitality industry the way they went about it was the correct course of action. At my girlfriends behest I walked us from the back of the park to the very front to speak with guest services about the issue, they were extremely nice and apologetic for our experience and handed us two single use timesavers. So we continued on with the rest of our day.
A few hours go by and we tired to ride wild eagle, when we had noticed another issue with the overall guest experience, the extremely slow dispatch speeds. We had about 5 trains in total run before us, with dual train operation, and had to wait 20 minutes in total for those 5 trains. Now if this is some sort of safety precaution then I would fully understand, but after having gone through 4 other theme parks this week, they had by far the slowest operation times of any. I just don’t see how there can be any real justification for how slow they were running today other then it being extremely hot and needing to slow down to insure safety.
Overall, me and my girlfriend do want to try and come back soon to give the park another far shot. We most of the people we talked to, the food, and the rides once we got on them, were all amazing. The only other thing I can’t wrap my head on is the filming policy on rides. I wear a pair of rayban metas with an athletic strap to secure them to my head to keep myself and other riders safe, but today on a handful of rides some ops asked me not to film on the ride, but still allowed me to wear the glasses. So is the policy about filming or safety? Cause to me the safety aspect would include asking me to remove the glasses.
I obviously will respect the rules because like I said I dont want to make the lives of the ops harder than they need to be, but I don’t understand the inconsistent nature of both enforcement of the rule and the actual application of the rule.
Any help from some Dollywood regulars would be very helpful and appreciated when it comes to these concerns.