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They kept the 1880s town theme for the first few years of Dollywood, (they still had a "Town Mayor" character, a deputy and stuff like that) but then by the mid-90s the atmosphere just went all over the place.  That's when the park's vibe started changing, now it doesn't seem special like it use to.

The sad thing is, hardly any of the other guests care, so there's absolutely no incentive for them to go back to some of the old ways. I mean, when you have other parks selling ad space on their rollercoaster cars, the varying effort SDC still puts in to their atmosphere still blows them away.

The bar is continuously being lowered industry wide, thus even if SDC slips in some area it's still proportionately better than that of what other parks are doing at the moment.

Dollywood actually had intentions to build a hotel 20 years ago, but it stalled out. (There's a story there that involved a lawsuit against one of the parties involved, but I can't remember what the details were since I read up on it years ago)

Amusement Business had an article about the hotel plans in 1989.

Did SDC buy new trams like the ones at Dollywood?

Well I look at it this way - if they are going to start with the upcharge attractions, at least the SkyZip will be hardly noticeable running over the park compared something like a giant Skycoaster.

These are beautiful...looks great!  Thanks for posting.

Who ever rides the train at Six Flags? No one. 

Exactly!  The multi-station park train rides are really seen as more of a utility than a "must experience" ride/attraction.

^SDC has three (working) locomotives with two sets of cars.  So they rotate the locomotives around - two running, and one down for maintenance.

I still hate the idea of turning the Frisco Silver Dollar Line into a transportation ride.  Sadly a lot seem to suggest thats Dollywood's eventual plan for their magnificent train as well.

^Now that is SWEET!  I mean seriously... 

It would be great if the park could get some registers and computers styled like that.

Ehhh, not really a surprise.  Honestly I never expected much out of this park from the moment it was announced.  Still said to see it go...well at least in it's current form, anyway.

Found this on Youtube, thought I would share it here.  It's an old promotional video of Dollywood in the Fall of 1987, the second year the park operated under that name.

The theme park segment doesn't start until around the 2:20 mark:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3casefT_zZE&fmt=18

Apparently this was from Dolly's TV show.  I thought it was interesting considering you don't run across much old stuff from the Pigeon Forge park compared to the original SDC.

World's tallest water ride? ehhh....

Can you say "New at Knott's Berry Farm in 2001"?

http://www.holidayworld.com/new2009.html

It seems kind of gimmicky to me...being basically just an overgrown Shoot-the-Chutes.  The only thing interesting about it is the double elevator lifts. 

I wouldn't have expected something like this from Holiday World, considering they refuse to even add a looping coaster.

Given the economy and gas prices, perhaps it would have been even worse if they hadn't added a new ride this year:

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/aug/16/dollywood-adventure/

I forgot to mention when they were running 6 trains they had two dispatch zones. The lines one through six that exist today were accompanied by another line of one through six. The location of this dispatch zone was where the fireman's office is today, directly to the left of the current dispatch zone. There were also no gates to separate riders from trains. This all made it possible to run 5 and 6 trains with no problems.

This is all very interesting.

Do you know if Blazing Fury was initially set up like this as well?  There is a corner of the Blazing Fury station that has been boxed off into another room, I thought it might have been part of the loading platform to begin with.  You can see in this pic:

http://rcdb.com/ig501.htm?picture=2 

(BF has 3 cars per train, but perhaps early on it had just 2 per train like FitH, hence there would have been enough room for a double dispatch station)

I was just curious, can anyone tell me how many trains Fire in the Hole can run at once?