“Do not get so busy making a dwelling that you simply overlook to make a life.”
That is simply one of many a whole bunch of “Dollyisms” spoken by the Backwoods Barbie herself, Dolly Parton.
Parton actually has made fairly a life for herself. She’s one of many best-selling feminine music artists of all time, with 10 Grammy awards, two stars on the Hollywood Stroll of Fame and a plaque on Nashville’s StarWalk. Moreover, she’s earned inductions into the Nation Music Corridor of Fame, the Grand Ole Opry and the Nashville Songwriters Corridor of Fame, to call a number of.
Nevertheless, the nation music legend has used her skills — which lengthen far past her skills as a singer and songwriter — to create a life that’s significant, joyful and generally downright stunning.
Take Dollywood, her theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, for instance. In 1986, Parton collaborated with Silver Greenback Metropolis theme park proprietor Herschend Household Leisure to take over the theme park and rename it “Dollywood.” Parton was raised in Sevierville, Tennessee, not removed from the park’s location.
Why become involved with a theme park? As a result of regardless of how a lot time she spent away from dwelling, Parton has all the time felt the pull of her Smoky Mountain roots.
Her hope was that lending her title and likeness to Dollywood would bolster the native financial system, present jobs for close by residents and create a spot “the place the tradition and other people of the Smoky Mountains could be celebrated and loved by everybody,” in keeping with Parton’s web site.
TPG not too long ago sat down with Parton to study extra about her plans for Dollywood’s future and why the park is so essential to her.
Dollywood’s multimillion-dollar enlargement
Now in its thirty eighth season, Dollywood is the most important supplier of jobs in Sevier County and attracts in additional than 3 million visitors yearly. Dollywood’s constant development has led to the addition of many sights over time, together with Dollywood’s Splash Nation water park and Dollywood’s DreamMore Resort and Spa. Nevertheless, Parton — Dollywood’s “dreamer-in-chief” — has even larger desires for her namesake park.
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In 2021, Parton introduced a decadelong, $500 million funding in Dollywood, starting with the opening of the family-friendly Massive Bear Mountain curler coaster in Might of 2023 and the 302-room Dollywood’s HeartSong Lodge & Resort, scheduled to open within the fall of 2023.
Dollywood’s HeartSong Lodge & Resort
In the intervening time, Parton is especially excited concerning the opening of Dollywood’s HeartSong Lodge & Resort, evaluating it to a “high-class wilderness lodge.” The resort, like all of Dollywood, will embody Parton’s love of the Smokies.
“I am a mountain woman, so if I am gonna have a park, it must have that contact,” Parton mentioned.
Dollywood’s HeartSong Lodge & Resort will carry the outside in with excessive vaulted ceilings, uncovered beams, lantern-inspired home windows and a big stone hearth within the 4,000-square-foot, four-story atrium. Additionally, many rooms will characteristic balconies from which visitors can take within the splendor of the Smokies.
There are additionally themed suites, household rooms with bunk beds, indoor and outside swimming pools, a fireplace pit, a screened-in porch and different communal areas to foster household togetherness and connection — an instance of Parton’s need to make Dollywood a premier vacation spot for households.
Parton’s dream of constructing a family-friendly vacation spot
Whether or not at certainly one of Dollywood’s resorts or contained in the park, Parton desires households to really feel like they’re at dwelling.
“Effectively, like they’re at dwelling in the event that they have been being completely catered to. All of us want we may have our personal chef and somebody to scrub up our home on a regular basis,” Parton laughed.
Dollywood really makes you’re feeling cared for and cared about. Examples embrace the restaurant server who calls you “darlin'” all through your meal, the worker (or host, as they’re referred to as at Dollywood) who offers you a route that helps you keep away from any steep hills whenever you ask for instructions and the pleasant faces handing out complimentary s’mores kits on the hearth pit close to the lodge pool each night time.
In truth, it is one of many issues Parton is most pleased with.
“I journey all around the world and discuss to so many individuals who’ve come to Dollywood. The factor they speak about most is how good the individuals are,” Parton mentioned. “I take nice delight in that … that is simply who they are surely; you may’t practice folks to try this.”
Parton can also be pleased with Dollywood’s fame as a clear, protected, enjoyable vacation spot for households, which is an enormous motive why the park’s enlargement is leaning into including extra family-friendly choices. The newly opened Massive Bear Mountain curler coaster within the Wildwood Grove space of the park is an ideal instance of that.
The coaster was designed so that everybody within the household may journey collectively and have time.
“We wished to construct a coaster that catered extra to households and younger children, as effectively,” Parton mentioned. “Youngsters love the suspense and the sound results of the bear growling, however mother and father who journey it get to be children once more, too,” she added.
The way forward for Dollywood
Parton’s plans for Dollywood embrace much more alternatives for youths to be children and fogeys to be children proper together with them.
“I feel that is what’s good about this park,” Parton shared. “Grown-ups can form of be kid-like, too.”
There are plans for extra resorts and presumably even a campground. (In fact, for the final word Dolly Parton expertise, you may keep in her retired tour bus.) Parton, a perpetual dreamer, can also be developing with concepts for brand new rides and themed areas of the park.
“One dream spawns one other, and so forth,” Parton mentioned. “We’re all the time dreaming.”
One factor is for certain — Parton’s dream to create a vacation spot the place households can benefit from the pure splendor of the Smoky Mountains is greater than a fantasy. It is a actuality that thousands and thousands of households get to expertise yearly.
Her desires simply preserve getting larger, too.
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