🎠🎡🎢Dollywood's Weather Guidelines for Rides! 🎠🎡🎢

 Hi everyone, 

I see tons of the same questions in the Spring, Summer & Fall about Storms.  "When do the rides close for storms????? Or, When do they reopen?"  Let's answer this before moving on to Temperature Guidelines.

Here's the answer....

Source: dollywood.com

In November, December, and January the weather/temperature question is ..."Do the rides operate during Dollywood's Smoky Mountain Christmas? The answer is Yes!  The two water rides typically close for the season at the end of October every year, but aside from that, yes, they run the rides with an eye on the temperature for Smoky Mountain Christmas.

Rides will close at certain temperatures and precipitation may also cause some rides to close as well.  These temperatures are not arbitrary.  Each ride manufacturer comes up with a temperature based on the materials used in the rides.  For example, hydraulics can freeze and moving parts can have difficulty doing their thing.  Roller Coasters will experience more friction in the wheels when the temps drop.  Flat rides that operate with only motors are less likely to close in cold temps.  So, since Dollywood is open in colder months, it has a list of the rides and the temps in which they operate, so let's dig into that!

Click on image to see full size version.  

Source: dollywood.com

As you can see it's all pretty straightforward.  They have a note that a few rides cannot begin to operate for the day until the temperature reaches 40 degrees and those are Mystery Mine, FireChaser Express, Whistle Punk Chaser and Lemon Twist.  Everything else should be able to operate above the listed temperatures.  

Some rides have really low temperatures, so if other rides are closed, you might want to turn your attention to these rides.  Blazing Fury is a good choice.  The Waltzing Swinger and the Black Bear Trail ride can operate until 23 degrees.  Drop Line can go all the way down to 5 degrees! 

There are several rides not listed, like the Scrambler, Dolly's Demolition Derby Bumper Cars, Busy Bees, Piggy Parade, Lucky Ducky, Mad Mockingbird, Rockin Roadway, Village Carousel and Dollywood Express.  The commonality here is that these rides operate with motors and no hydraulics, so no worries about issues with freezing temps.

I've been at the park many times when the temperature dips and they begin the process of shutting down the rides. Typically, but not always, they make announcements about the temperature at each ride and then let everyone in the line take a final ride before they close it for the night.

Some notes about braking.... because we want rides to stop at some point. 😀 Most of the roller coasters and some flat rides at Dollywood operate with magnetic braking, which is failsafe in the event of a power failure, any weather or other interruption.  With magnetic braking you have no contact in between the brake itself and the train or ride vehicle, so they are extremely safe and in fact they are much smoother than the pinch-style brakes that became popular in the 70's until magnetic braking became the preferred industry standard around the year 2000.  If you want to learn more about magnetic braking, google Eddy Current Brakes.  You'll see that they're used in many types of environments outside of amusement parks.  At Dollywood, Thunderhead has its original pinch brakes and Whistle Punk Chaser may be the only other coaster without magnetic braking, but I am not positive.

It's now become a bit more common to see parks operate a longer season.  Growing up, my home park Opryland closed up from October to April and Dollywood did too until they started their Christmas season in 1990 or 1991 - which became a game-changer for them and the surrounding area.  Two Cedar Fair parks that operated in that same manner recently announced year-round operations (I have a blog post about that here), so it's becoming a bit more common to see parks operate in colder weather.  Of course, Florida rarely shuts down for cold temps, so it's a non-issue for the most part there...same for southern California.

Pro Tip:  Most folks know that Dollywood lists its Ride Wait Times on its app, but that only works if you are inside Dollywood.  If you're outside of Dollywood, you can still see the wait times!  How??  Well, go to this link to Queue-times.com to see.  Click Here for Dollywood's page.  If you dig around that website, you'll find other parks as well, so enjoy!

If you have any questions, ask them in the comments!

Until next time!