Dollywood | Big Bear Mountain | Vekoma Family Launched Coaster | 2023

[ECG]

The Opening Day media event didn't include any on-ride filming, so I had to stick around until the following morning to film this first run of the day.

 

[Pokemaniac]

As a wimpy kid who couldn't handle great heights, steep drops, or going upside down, this would easily have been my favourite coaster ever. It's big, fast, and long, but it clearly isn't scary, which makes it an ideal stepping stone ride. I suspect this will be a hit with young park goers for decades to come.

 

[Ries]

I would love to see a copy closer to home.
It was designed just under two hours from my place, so why wouldn't they...

If you theme this with more rock work, trees, water(falls), it would be even a better coaster.

 

[Stevie]

I would love to see a copy closer to home.
It was designed just under two hours from my place, so why wouldn't they...

If you theme this with more rock work, trees, water(falls), it would be even a better coaster.

I've been wondering if that is "it" for the theming. Looks great, but Dollywood is so pretty and aside from the tunnels, this is barren

 

[ECG]

Here's a couple more...

The on-ride was filmed immediately after my zen ride filming the POV in the post above (benefit of having to return to the park the day after the media event), whereas the off-ride footage was filmed on Opening Day.

 

[bratcurry]

Got to ride it only once on our stop at Dollywood May 17, because it was plagued with downtimes and although there's a separate TimeSaver Plus line ready, it isn't open yet. When we arrived at the plaza, it had a 40 minute wait posted and trains were launched pretty consistently, then it went down for like 15-20 minutes before they had like three trains deployed only after the previous one completed the whole track. Afterwards it went down for another 30 minutes. On the plus side we got to know a nice family from Virginia.

After they had it running again, we were pretty disappointed with the overall ride experience since it looks so much faster and more enjoyable from the outside. I dunno why but there was such a wild rattle going on for the entire duration of the ride which didn't help either. It's okay but far from the best family ride we've ever been on. Maybe we had just bad luck with semidamaged wheels who knows.