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The most underrated and overlooked park chain is...

Welcome to the first entry in Thrillrider’s Guide to the Galaxy. This blog was created to share my opinions and viewpoints with you on the amusement industry and the parks themselves. You’ll see a lot more than just roller coasters on this blog. I consider myself a park enthusiast and not a coaster enthusiast. I hope to point out things you may not have thought of or seen. There is so many entertaining and fascinating things in the amusement industry that are overlooked, and my goal is to bring those to you. Also, I’ll be using this blog to send live pictures plus reports from events, media days and the like. Without further adieu, let’s jump right into my first entry.

When I told some of my friends that my first entry would be on the most underrated and overlooked park chain, I got a ton of guesses. They ranged from Anheuser Busch (my favorite, but it is not overlooked), Cedar Fair (God forbid) and Six Flags (which I hope was a joke). This only re-affirmed my stance that this chain doesn’t nearly get the love it’s owed.

So who is it? It’s Herschend Family Entertainment Corp., who runs Dollywood and Silver Dollar City, among others. While Herschend doesn’t have a Disney-like budget or a Six Flags-ish amount of properties, what they do have works and works extremely well. Herschend owns what seems like a majority of Branson attractions, including Silver Dollar City and Celebration City. They also operate White Water waterpark, Showboat Branson Belle, The Wilderness campground/resort, Talking Rocks Cavern, Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede, and the popular Ride The Ducks river tour. Outside of Branson, they operate Dollywood and Dollywood’s Splash Country in Pigeon Forge, Stone Mountain Park near Atlanta, Ride the Ducks in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Memphis, plus three waterparks in Texas. Herschend has a very diverse entertainment portfolio not limited to theme parks.

But since this is a theme park-oriented site, let’s look at “the big three”, Dollywood, Silver Dollar City and Celebration City. While none of these parks boast a giant line-up of thrill rides, each park has a dynamic roller coaster that tops the list of their park. While most chains will jump into uncharted territory to break out a new thrill ride, Herschend parks have played it more conservatively. Twice has Herschend turned to Great Coasters International, Inc. for signature rides (Ozark Wildcat and Thunderhead), and come out with winners. GCII coasters are well-built with little downtime and are fairly easy to maintain compared to most wooden coasters…even at modern standards. When Silver Dollar City needed a boost, Herschend turned to B&M for Wildfire. While to some enthusiasts, this may not be the most thrilling ride, you’ll be hard-pressed to find many of the guests at the park saying it’s not that thrilling. Again, B&M coasters feature great uptime and are fairly easy to maintain. Reliability is a great plus when you break out new thrill rides, just ask Cedar Point.

All three parks have distinctive and convincing themes. In 2006, Silver Dollar City will be debuting a new themed area, and from the looks of the concept art(Images can be seen at Screamscape), it looks to be a real winner. They took run of the mill rides and added an extra dimension to them. It may not seem like much, but little details do help. When Dollywood broke out Thunderhead, they didn’t just plop another coaster in the park and leave it alone (See: Six Flags). They added an entirely new section to the park and continue to improve it. This year, they will be adding a complementary thrill ride in the new Timber Tower ride.

While most parks seem to try to target single audiences with new thrill rides, Herschend balances it out. A year after the debut of Thunderhead, Dollywood received a ride package geared towards the family (Read: all ages, meaning 100% of their target audience). In 2006, Silver Dollar City will receive ten family-oriented rides a year after they debuted Powder Keg. Any park that can successfully appeal to all ages opens themselves to a world of opportunity (but you already knew this). Kings Island successfully boosted attendance for a few years without adding a major roller coaster , which they finally did this past season.

To conclude my argument for Herschend, let’s look at the top of the corporation. While one major theme park player has power struggles at the top due to mismanagement, Herschend is steady where they need to be. Co-founders Jack and Peter Herschend both were inducted into the IAAPA Hall of Fame because of their tireless efforts at their parks and within their communities as well. Jack worked to put 200,000 trees back into the Ozarks after deforestation. Have you seen the amount of trees at Silver Dollar City? It puts the concrete paradises of most modern parks to shame. Is it any wonder Dollywood has taken off under Herschend Entertainment? Herschend knows what they have to work with, and they know how to get the most out of their parks in ways other chains should take notice.

Quick Notes:

-Kennywood Entertainment is also a very underrated theme park chain, and was the guess of most people when I asked them what they thought the most underrated chain was.

-Thanks to Wes aka Bgwfreak for letting me use his Dollywood photos.

So, which chain do you think is the most underrated? Leave your comments and view other's below.

posted by Bryan @ 2:35 PM