My Blog Post Title
Hi Everyone,
Welcome to the first post at What’s Up At Dollywood - a bloggy/Vlog!
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| toot, toot, toooooooot |
Hi Everyone!,
I want to be able to convey information about Dollywood to my followers in between publishing videos. My videos are editorial and it's challenging to publish videos quickly - it's a time consuming process.
So, be sure to follow not only my YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/JeffBurkhardt), but also this vlog/blog. Put the RSS feed into your favorite news aggregator, (Feedly, for example) or wherever you keep up with other blogs and news stories.
Now you can follow me on Facebook at Facebook - What's Up At Dollywood.
A bit about me! I'm Jeff Burkhardt and I love amusement parks! As a kid growing up in Nashville, I loved Opryland. Once I overcame an initial fear of roller coasters, I became fascinated by how they worked, how they were designed and built. Eventually, that led to a fascination with all types of flat rides, water rides and roller coasters too. I think my favorite flat ride at Opryland was the Barnstormer Ride.
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The Barnstormer at Opryland USA - in its ''unextended'' formation.
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| Spec Sheet from the manufacturer. This details the ride cycle. | source: Internet / Unknown |
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| Old Chicago's indoor Barnstormer, the prototype, 70-foot tall version, early 1980's | source: internet / unknown |
It was an enormous ride to me as a child. It was a 100-foot tower with 12 bi-planes attached to a star-shaped circle with cables. The ride started ascending and rotating. Once at the top it would bounce as it locked into place. After a few moments of spinning, the hydraulic counter-weight would somehow switch the cables - I'm still unsure how this worked! - the planes’ cables would extend and the planes would flare about 20 to 30 feet outward, creating a diving sensation. Eventually, it would be hoisted back to the top of the star formation, unlock, and begin the descent back to the ground. Each of those movements would create a bounce that caused all those who were unfamiliar with the ride to gasp, but once I learned how it operated, it took the white-knuckle feeling out of the experience, and I could relax and enjoy it for what it was...very fun. Only three models of this type were made. The prototype was at Old Chicago indoor park and was a 70-foot tall model. World's of Fun had the 100-foot tall version like Opryland, but early on it suffered a hydraulic leak incident which injured several riders and it lost its diving feature, but continued to operate for some time. The Opryland Barnstormer was the longest lasting of the three, and operated with the diving feature the entire time it was at Opryland.
In addition to Opryland, Nashville was the home of a very small amusement park called Fair Park, and it was at the Nashville Fairgrounds. It had its own unique charm, a little shabby and completely unlike Opryland. Many of the rides at Fair Park were geared towards young kids, though not all of them. One of my favorite memories was from their Haunted House attraction, which was a Pretzel Dark ride (Wiki for Pretzel Rides - Pretzel Amusement Ride Company - Wikipedia). There were many gruesome horror scenes throughout the ride, but the one that stands out was a person being sawed down the middle of their body with a giant rotating circular saw. Eek! But the cool part to me was the two or three roller-coaster dips in the middle of the haunted house. I can remember riding with my mom and we were both surprised at the roller coaster dips, which must have been about 10 to 15 foot drops. It’s so funny to look back and to remember being so frightened of that, but now I regularly enjoy roller coasters with 200, 300, 400 foot heights.
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| Yours truly, Kodak Film/Cigarette/Candy store/Shotgun Red store, Western Area, Opryland 1990. Anyone need some Rock Candy, 110 film and Marlboro Reds? |
Unfortunately, in the mid 1980’s Fair Park was razed and in 1997 Opryland was razed to make way for a shopping mall…. just around the time when shopping malls were beginning their decline in popularity. So, my wonderful childhood memories at Opryland and Fair Park could not be re-experienced and that does sting, a lot actually, and now if I want to ‘’revisit’’ it has to be done through the generosity of others who upload photos and videos to YouTube or social media in general. Thank you to everyone who pulled out their camcorder back in the day, and took the time to document that, save it all these years, which is a miracle that it survived, and upload it for others to enjoy.
How does that relate to Dollywood? Well, I want to produce videos for people to enjoy, and also videos that are helpful for those who, perhaps, want to know what to expect if they’ve never been, or want to see what is new, or different. It will be interesting to look at these videos in the future to see how things ‘used to be’, as they will undoubtedly change, it's just the nature of it all. Nothing is really permanent at amusement parks, and sometimes the park itself just goes away - it’s happened to me twice now. Poof, Gone! Dollywood is not hesitant to remove attractions to make room for other things, and sometimes they remove things to create open space, it happens quite a bit actually. I started going to Dollywood in 1992 when I moved to Knoxville from Nashville and in that time they’ve removed at least a dozen attractions that I was quite fond of. The Flooded Mine, the Country Fair Falls log ride from the 1964 World’s Fair in New York - or more accurately, one of the two log rides at the fair. They’ve removed a tilt-a-whirl, a Ferris wheel, a Zamperla Balloon Race, a Chance Yo-Yo, a Trabant, The Mountain Slidewinder!, River Battle, The Cloud Grabber, a 200 foot tall observation type ride by Von Roll, Inventors Mansion and its adjoining tunnel, Thunder Express mine train coaster, Timber Topper, the Adventure Mountain ropes course, the Zip Line attraction, they closed the Chasing Rainbows Museum -Dollys own Museum, hopefully temporarily. (In 2024 "The Dolly Parton Experience" will replace Chasing Rainbows). The list is long. So, I want to document as much as I can through video, and share that with others. By comparison, I can recall that Opryland removed only three attractions (actually Four attractions - The Angle Inn in the late 1980s) in my time going there - the antique carousel, the boat float around Eagle lake, and later, the Tin Lizzie car ride, which by a weird twist of fate, was sold to Kentucky Kingdom, and can still be ridden today, and is now owned by Dollywood's parent company, Herschend Entertainment. Change, although its challenging to deal with it at times, it's a constant thing....and perhaps Opryland didn't do enough of that?
Here's a look at some attractions that are no longer at Dollywood.
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| The Flooded Mine interior, Dollywood or SDCtenn | source: unknown /internet |
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Map from early 1980's. Highlights are Flooded Mine (left), Inventors Mansion (center), Country Fair Falls (right'ish) and Cloud Grabber (right) - Gone. | photo courtesy of Dukeis#1
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| Inventors Mansion and adjoining tunnel - gone | source: unknown/internet |
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| Wonder Wheel, an Eli Bridge Ferris Wheel. 1993 to late 2010's | source: Jeff Burkhardt |
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| Adventure Mountain Ropes Course, 2009-end of 2012 | source: Jeff Burkhardt |
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Adventure Mountain Ropes Course, 2009-end of 2012 | source: Jeff Burkhardt
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| Dreamland Forest Playhouse and Bullfrog Creek Splash Pad in then Dreamland Forest | source: Jeff Burkhardt |
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| Dreamland Forest Playhouse Razed for Barnstormer Ride a S&S swing - no relation to Opryland's Barnstormer Ride, a Bradley and Kaye bi-plane ride.| source: Jeff Burkhardt |
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Chasing Rainbows Museum, Closed at the end of 2021 season. This is the museum's second location, the first being inside Inventors Mansion and called Dolly Parton - Rags to Riches. | source: Jeff Burkhardt
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| Imagination Cinema / Turbo-Motion Simulator, at one time, the world's largest. 1996-2012. The movie would change out frequently. | source: Jeff Burkhardt |
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| Mountain Slidewinder, designed and made in-house by Dollywood Maintenance. 1986- 2019.| source: Jeff Burkhardt |
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| Myself, on Sky Zip attraction in 2011 | source: Jeff Burkhardt |
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| River Battle, a Mack Splash Battle ride, 2008-2018| source: Jeff Burkhardt |
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| Timber Tower, a Huss Topple Tower ride, 2006-2012 | source: Jeff Burkhardt |
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| Dolly Parton's own apartment at Dollywood, above Apple Jacks in 2013 - Gone! Nothing is sacred enough to spare lol. |
Fast Forward to more recently, I have been producing cable television for about 24 years and then pivoted with a career change, which led me to producing content for YouTube, and I love doing it!
Thanks for reading my first post, Welcome to the Blog/Vlog, and be sure to bookmark me, or save it or however you read blogs these days, And of course Subscribe to my YouTube Channel - here https://www.youtube.com/c/JeffBurkhardt and my W.U.A.D. Facebook channel here
Until Next Time,
Jeff
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