Have you ever been to a theme park and witnessed a malfunction or accident? Have you ever seen 3 in one day? I have.
I don’t really know how we ended up at Dollywood. We had traveled cross country for my sister’s Odyssey of the Mind competition in Tennessee and on the way back decided to take it slow. I was allowed to pick the hotel we stopped at, and I picked one with a mini water park near Pigeon Forge. This is also near where Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s theme park is, and so my parents suggested we go for a day.
I’ll be honest, I was in middle school and didn’t know who Dolly Parton was, so I was mostly just excited about the rides. We didn’t go to theme parks that much growing up (aside from the handful of pilgrimages to Disney World or Disneyland) so we kind of skipped all the Dolly parts of Dollywood. Instead, I made a beeline to our first attraction, called the Mountain Slidewinder.
This water based ride has you sit essentially on a foam like raft toboggan and hurtle down the mountain on a slide track. I was so excited for this, and it felt like a long walk to get to the top and then a long wait. But after what seemed like ages it was our turn! I watched as the raft in front of us took off…and the water suddenly stopped following. The people in the raft in front of us came to a halt and looked back. The employees asked that they stayed calm and that they’d be rescued shortly. They then turned to us and let us know the ride was temporarily closed. No shit! I was mad after all that waiting.
So we hiked back down, looking at the other rafts stuck in weird positions without the water to move them. Undeterred by this issue, we decided to try one of the other water rides, Smokey Mountain River Rampage, a canyon raft ride.
As we got on, I noticed there was a wheel in the center. After everyone was seated, I grabbed hold with all my might and started to spin it, thinking it was like a spinning teacups center wheel. It wasn’t. Instead, the entire wheel and column unscrewed in my hands. An attendant sighed and grabbed it from me right before we took off on the rapids. I was a bit shocked. Things weren’t supposed to just come off of a ride, right? But the rest of the ride went as expected and we got sufficiently wet which was welcomed on a hot day.
As we walked around shopping and trying to decide on our next ride, my parents pointed to a Splash Mountain style log ride, called Daredevil Falls. Â I’m not a fan of those type of rides, so I wasn’t looking forward to riding it, but as we approached we saw the ride was closed…and one log was stuck at the top of the ride with people still in it. We decided to get lunch and shop some more before deciding on a different ride, but an hour later when the fire department showed up with ladders to rescue people I was adamant I wasn’t getting on any more rides. 3 incidents in a few hours was enough bad juju for me.
My dad and sister weren’t deterred though, and decided to go on the fastest wooden rollercoaster in the world. I begged with them. “It’s wood! From what we’ve seen it will likely catch on fire!” They ignored my protests and somehow made it back alive. We decided not to press our luck and left early to go back to our hotel and enjoy its mini-water park instead.
I know it was just random coincidence that all three incidents happened on the same day while I was there, but I avoided theme parks for many years because of this one day. (However, this year I did ride my first rollercoaster! Baby steps!)
Note: All photos are from the Dollywood.com website.
Travel Missteps is an every-other week series on how sometimes part of the journey is making mistakes and getting lost.
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