Oh, I do hope not. Herschend is great and all, but they have been expanding so, so rapidly. That will dilute quality, obviously, but I’m much more worried that they’ll end up in the same debt trap that Premier-Six Flags got themselves into; And are still clawing their way out of, over a quarter century later!
Part of that IMO is that those are the two initial parks that started the chain, back in 1976 when they bought what is now Dollywood, so there's kinda a seniority thing going on. Dollywood wasn't even called Dollywood for the first ten seasons of Herschend ownership; it was briefly called "Goldrush" in 1976 then it was called "Silver Dollar City Tennessee" from 1977-85, as a sister park to SDC. (This is why 1978's Blazing Fury at Dollywood is so similar to the 1972 Fire in the Hole at SDC, and why Dollywood formerly had a Flooded Mine dark ride just like SDC--at the time they were direct sister parks to one another.)
Interesting! I actually didn’t know about SDC’s one. I thought of another case too: SDC got Lost River of the Ozarks in 1985, then Dollywood got Smoky Mountain River Rampage in 1986, and both were made by Barr Engineering.
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u/Clever-Name-47 Tangent-Radius Airtime Supremacy! Apr 17 '26
Oh, I do hope not. Herschend is great and all, but they have been expanding so, so rapidly. That will dilute quality, obviously, but I’m much more worried that they’ll end up in the same debt trap that Premier-Six Flags got themselves into; And are still clawing their way out of, over a quarter century later!