Dollywood
reviews and complaints

My husband and I brought our son and two grandsons, ages 5 & 9 to Dollywood on Wednesday, August 16. We waited in line for an hour to ride the Dragon Fly.

When we were almost to the front the ride is shut down for maintenance. Standing in line for that long and disappointing children is a real issue. With the cost of the entrance, food and games, I think Dollywood should come up with some sort of compensation for the people in line who have wasted an hour of their "park time".

This HR department fails to protect its underage employees from adult predators that work at the park with them. Multiple young female employees have been approached by a 40-50 year old man that works there on a work visa. He sexually harasses them and asks for sex and makes inappropriate sexual comment's to them and has tried to kiss one of them. These incidents have been reported to the upper management in HR and they continue to move this person to different stations but fail to protect these young girls from this predator. Every time he is moved he does it to another young girl, most of which are minors under the age of 18. I as a parent of one of the girls have never been notified of anything from HR, she has not brought home any copies of the incident reports that she has filed over the multiple incidents that have happened to her by this one man. He was told to stay away from my daughter but followed her and still tries to talk to her. They sweep his behavior under the rug and do nothing to protect the females from sexual harassment and the hostile work environment it has created for them. I hope one day he does not progress his behaviors' and hurt someone. This type of behavior is a predatory behavior and the HR department is not protecting its employees. I will be filing an official complaint to the state of TN and the Federal government if something is not done immediately to stop this. It will be to late to do something if he rapes one these young girls. My daughter will not be allowed to work here any longer because she is not safe and I will not have something bad happen to her just because this company fails to properly stop sexual harassment and the predatory behaviors' of this man in the work place.

I was trying to ride the ride Thunderhead, with my little brother who is 49 inches tall. He rode the ride twice before this time because there was no line so we could basically walk right on the ride. Since you have to be 48 inches tall they check his height since he is so close to the border line of not being able to ride. The worker standing infront of the line checking heights let me and my little brother go on the ride. We sat in our seats and another lady working at the ride came and said, “Check his height again, I don’t think he is tall enough.” So we had to get up out of our seats and go to a different person to check my little brothers height. The woman worker started to be rude and have an attitude with me. I was calmly explaining, “ He just got off the ride he is tall enough for this ride.” She then accused my brother he was standing on his tippy toes, which he wasn’t, and started being rude about it. She wasn’t going to let us ride the ride until the other worker said he is fine to ride the ride. My other two sisters were waiting in their seats and they asked me what had happened so I turned around to tell them that they weren’t going to let my brother on and the worker who was being rude, her name is Ally, yelled at me and said “Can you not?” Mind you I was being calm this whole time and she was being rude. So then the ride started going and when the ride was pulling back into the loading station, before the ride even stopped Ally said, “ You are banned from this ride tonight, don’t come back or I will call security.” Mind you I am a teenager, I wasn’t being rude so I got my parents and they went to ask what the problem was and SHE MADE UP A WHOLE DIFFERENT STORY! She said she wasn’t going to tolerate rude customers when I was not being rude. She rolled her eyes at me when I said, “that’s not what happened.” We are season pass holders since we live in the area, definitely not worth it to be treated rudely… My brother is 6 and he didn’t understand why she was being so rude to us and he almost started crying.

WARNING: Dollywood fired a security guard July 2023 for simply questioning his management what could be done to get a bearded man out of a women's bathroom where his family was.

HR Kristina Fox told him that if someone "identifies as a cat, [employees] are to treat them as cats." She stated anyone of any self-identification can go into any bathroom in the park without interference from employees. She told him his [conservative] beliefs "conflict with Dollywood values" and that he must resign. When he refused, she fired the active Alabama law enforcement officer and decorated military veteran.

Parents, grandparents, schools, and churches need to know this is Dollywood's dangerous policy before paying money to send children there!

As of July 1, 2023, businesses must clearly post signs outside any bathroom where both sexes are allowed. This policy is nowhere to be found on the Park, on Herschend Family Entertainment websites, or in employee handbooks.

I left my phone in the bathroom, I returned immediately to retrieve my phone. The mens room attendant told me that the attendant for the womens room found the phone and gave it to him. He then told me he personally gave the phone to another park employee to bring to the lost and found. Upon leaving the park I stopped at lost and found to retrieve my phone and was told it had not made it there yet. I went back to the Dollywood resort and had my daughter check to see if she could find my phone on 360. We did and took screen shots. The phone is now an hour away in Morristown TN. The employee never took my phone to lost and found. I am unable as of this morning to reach anyone.

My family and I have been season pass holders for both parks for years. We enjoy splash country every Saturday when it is open and enjoy Dollywood the other times during Halloween and Christmas. I have a gold pass for the benefits of free parking, discount on items and free food for both parks. My wife has a silver pass which would get her into both parks. Both passes were not cheap but worth it since we could go any time we wanted until now. As of the year 2023, the silver pass has blackout dates that apply for both parks. You can not use a sliver pass for Dollywood during the months of November and December unless you pay extra money. This is completely uncalled for. As a pass holder, we spend a lot of money and time at both parks. You shouldn’t Jack up the rates for loyal customers. A sliver season pass should go back the way it was last year when a pass holder didn’t have to worry about black out dates. When you spend a huge amount of money for season passes for both parks, you shouldn’t have to pay extra to not receive blackouts. You should be able to go to the parks anytime you want. This needs to change. I see a lot of loyal people not buying season passes.

We visited Dollywood on May 27, 2023. We were very excited to ride our favorite rides, we are diamond season pass holders, so we were very excited about Big Bear Mountain. We decided to purchase Time saver passes. When retrieving our time savers, we found out the coaster wasn’t eligible, we waited in line for over an hour, noticed that they were running the cars empty. I looked at my app, and noticed the ride had been shut down. Of course I want the ride to be safe, I am not upset that it wasn’t working, but I was upset that my time and money were not valued, and no employees communicated this to any of the riders.

We moved on, are time savers saved us no time, we waited in long lines, they might have shaved 10 minutes off our wait time. We purchased time saver the las Time we came to the park, and we ran into the same problem. Definitely not worth the money.

I enrolled my daughter (4) for the pre-K imagination pass on April 19, 2023 and purchased a silver pass for myself on April 28, 2023, after spending much time comparing benefits and budgeting, because who isn’t budgeting in this economy? I decided on the silver pass because this would give us 2 passes for my husband to come with us twice to make family memories. When we arrived at the park on a Saturday, my bring a friend passes were not showing up at all, and we were told we can’t use them that day anyway because they’re not valid on a Saturday. So we had to cough up another $100 for a pass for my husband. At the end of the day we went to guest services to try to apply his ticket toward upgrading my pass to gold, that was a no go unless he wanted to apply it to a pass for himself. I was also told they stopped issuing bring a friend passes on April 24 and I was out of luck.

I called guest services on 5/25 and explained how I had to budget to afford that pass and the reason I couldn’t buy it earlier was because I was saving for it, and also there was no indication that I would miss out on being a friend passes. She told me the cutoff date was April 23 for the passes. This is a discrepancy from what I was told at the park. I asked if there is anything they could do since I missed it by FIVE DAYS and this was to be our opportunity to make family memories and she put me on hold then came back to say there’s nothing they can do and I can try emailing guest services.

I emailed guest services once again explaining the whole situation and asking that they please add the passes to my account because purchasing another pass is out of budget and was told to pound sand.

This is despicable. I would have never expected to run into this issue, especially with this so-highly-praised park. I am terribly upset, and am now forced to use my pass to take my daughter by myself, while my husband stays home. It’s unimaginable. I will absolutely not be spending a dime at this park next season.

I am a gold member for 4 years now and I have to say that your front management team ( Jackie and Ally names from their name tags ) are very rude to their employees on many occasions I have seen that they ignore their employees or give smart*** comments to them or rude facial expressions. I don't know if you are aware of this so I wanted to say that those two are very unprofessional, Dollywood needs to do better cause you guys have a great place but management needs work. Breaks my heart to see employees who are trying to work and be kind to guests get treated unfairly. I personally never had a problem with the employees but I have seen and even tried to say hi to the two I mentioned above and got snubbed plain rude

I took my son family to Dollywood for the first time. Total of five people.

Traveled from Atlanta, We stayed overnight and went to the park on Wednesday, April 5, 3023. We rode a total for 4 rides and waited in line over seven hours.

We also waited in line for over an hour for lunch. Just for hamburgers.

I spent a total of $608.65 at Dollywood that day. I did not realize the park would be that crowed that day. Because of the park being so overcrowded my two granddaughters were very disappointed. Due to the cost being so much, I don't think I can afford to bring the back on a less crowed day.

Lawrence E Morrow

90 Midnight Run North

Dawsonville GA. 30534

[protected]

To Dollywood Management,

We were first time season pass holders for the calendar year 2022. We are a family of 6 and were excited to buy two gold passes and four silver passes for our children ages 6 through 11 (at the time of purchase). At the time of year, this came with “bring a friend” passes, which we were excited for. We recently moved to Tennessee. Early this summer, we upgraded all our passes to be two-park passes.

When we purchased them, we did not understand there were “blackout dates” for the use of those passes. We figured this out eventually, but still found it confusing. The website (particularly the mobile version) was not very helpful in figuring these out either. We finally made some friends at church and were excited to try and bring them to Dollywood. This was November 27th. We found out upon arrival that these guest passes are blacked out for the rest of the year.

My wife decided to ask customer service if there was anything we could do and got a very curt and discourteous response from the supervisor who was working that area. Granted, the previous two customers were also confused about blackout dates and how they were listed… and the individual directly in front of my spouse was pretty upset. Celina, however, is always quite calm and courteous and didn’t deserve this response from one of your supervisors.

The family we were with were disappointed but talked about it and were willing to get 2023 season passes. This isn’t a small purchase for a family of 6 on a day they were expecting to be treated to an afternoon of fun and memories. Originally, they were going to purchase all silver passes, but then quickly realized this season is blacked out (along with nearly half of 2023 with silver passes). We let them know we purchased gold for the adults and silver for the kids and had no problems. They decided they could do that, but then were told two of their children (ages 11 and 14) would not be able to enter the park with silver passes and required gold passes to not have exclusion dates.

This is ludicrous. The park was nearly empty on this day. C lot and less than half of D lot had cars in it. You turned away concessions and merchandizing potential for not just us, but other groups. In addition, the idea that anyone who isn’t old enough to drive requires a gold pass and families cannot enter without it is a travesty for a place that promotes itself as family friendly. This practice is making 2023 unattainable for many families. I would think this organization would want to cater to the local community and have a little more inviting policy for season passes.

Online, I’ve seen numerous complaints about this. I trust we are not the only ones who will not be returning for 2023. Interestingly, the website has been even more difficult to find calendar information and blackout date information.

While I have your attention (unless of course you stopped reading) I had a very unrelated but even more disturbing interaction with your organization. It involves the hiring process.

I applied for a leather craft workshop position towards the end of summer. I have quite an extensive resume including a lot of professional work, military background, being bilingual, and being a retired professional fire captain. To my surprise, I received a text from an HR manager about 30 seconds after I submitted my application. It included information that was specific to my application, so I was sure it wasn’t an automatic form text or anything like that. She asked a couple of follow-up questions and asked when I could come in for an interview. I gave her a time and she said we will see you then.

About a day later, I received another text from her letting me know that hiring manager was on vacation that week and we would reschedule the following week. Along comes the next week, and I receive another text, this time asking what time would be good between 2:00 and 6:00 PM on a specific date. Note: she did not say I could come in some time between 2 and 6. She asked me what time I could come in. I said 2:00 works well and she said, “See you at 2:00 on Thursday September 1st.”

That day, I arrived at 1:45, dressed professionally in a pressed shirt, slacks, with shined shoes and samples of my leather work (I also run a small leather company). There were others arriving, and I noticed nothing was set up yet for any hiring event. It became apparent this was a mass hiring event. I asked one of the workers at the venue if they’d seen anyone from Dollywood. He said they normally were set up by that time. Right about at 2:00 someone showed up. There was no interaction with the approximately 10 people already waiting. Within 10 minutes more Dollywood employees arrived, and they were setting up for the event in the room. It wasn’t until one of us waiting asked about 2:00 that the person running it mentioned it didn’t start until 3:00 today. This wasn’t published anywhere online, and everyone was under the impression it was at 2:00. I even showed some the text I had from HR telling me to be there at 2:00.

The amount of indifference the staff showed towards the individuals and their time was alarming. The company obviously made a mistake in its scheduling or its messaging of its scheduling. Each member there to interview and coordinate showed an extremely lackadaisical attitude, and it was extremely disrespectful to each one of ours’ time. I grew impatient and approached someone stating I had an appointment for 2:00, had other things to do that day and was not going to wait around until 3:00. This was around 2:20 and there were likely 40 people waiting at that time.

They found someone to “interview” me. It became apparent this individual (who I’m sure has other wonderful skills) was not experienced at interviewing and had little to no guidance as to how to conduct an interview. While not uncommon for a screening interview at a hiring event, the whole experience made me glad I didn’t get called in for a second interview. I wouldn’t want to work for an organization that has this callous disregard for workers time and effort. I figured I wasn’t going to get a call back, those who stir the pot rarely do. I was glad to see others in chairs waiting for interviews by the time I was done though. Perhaps it helped make someone else’s day go better.

We’ve spent most of this year trying to convince people Dollywood is better than Disney. We’ve been to both in the past year and enjoy Dollywood better. Perhaps they are more similar than we thought though. It has been a disheartening couple of experiences.

I hope somehow this correspondence is helpful in some way. I hope Dollywood can be more Dolly-like and embrace family and helping the little people.

God Bless,

Patrick Brost

2837 Dutch Valley Rd

Washburn, TN 37888

[protected]

I have a free Employee complimentary ticket that expired Jan1, 2022. I have gotten a season pass almost every year except when COVID hit. I find it very harsh that the lady didn't consider the anything but the expiration date. When I mentioned COVID, she said, "well we were opened". I've lost 2 close friends to COVID and 1 friend stayed in the hospital for 40 days. I was honestly not ready to visit a Theme park. I would like to view the lights now that I'm feel a little better being around crowds.

Visit date 11/13/2022

As soon as I get to the gate from preferred packing lot the lady worker from Jamaica is leaning on the stand and was not friend nor helpful like I had to ask her to scan my gold card. (Very sad) than I buy the taste of festival card and the lady had to ask another employee how the cards work Than I ask for a refill of pop in my mug and she says it’s 3.99 I said that’s this year mug and she said no it’s not the other lady said yes it is and she said no it’s not so she is holding up busy food lines to argue for no reason finally she ings it up correctly. Than to finish the day we are in the. Bakery and the same thing happens with getting cookies with the taste cards Dollywood it’s so sad I have been coming here since 1990 and it’s going down hill rapidly from the new Peking set up to the employees ur hiring now u might wanna tone down and noe try to be a walt Disney world and stick with the country friendly folks u all have always had. And stop hiring the Jamaica workers that is giving a nasty u friendly environment to such a wonderful park it once was

We came to visit Dollywood yesterday, the last day of the Fall Festival. We brought two friends with us, one of which had never visited Dollywood. They were so excited about seeing the lights and especially the Pumpkin Tree on the ridge. We spent most of the daylight hours letting the small children ride rides and play games with the intent of working our way up to the Pumpkin Tree at dusk. When we got there, to our dismay, the workers were taking the tree apart. For a long-time Dollywood season pass holder family this is not what we expected from the "so called" #1 theme park. If the last day of a festival is not to be a full-fledged festival day, then I would recommend letting the public know well in advance that "we'll be open, but not fully operational. That experience was a total embarrassment my family and myself. As a season passholder, I am strongly considering in taking the $600+ I normally spend for passes and investing it somewhere else. 😒

Im not one to write a review or file complaint very often, but my experience last night really bothered me. My family of 6 drive 2 hours to frequent this park 2-4 times a year. We bought tickets for and invited another family to join us on their first ever visit to the park yesterday.

My family and I went to ride the Thunder Head roller coaster last night. Me and my husband were doing a parent swap with the other family joining us as mentioned. They had a 5 month old that obviously could not ride. My 13 year old daughter was the odd ball out and wanted to ride with my husband. Me and my husband rode the ride without issue. After the ride, we did the normal parent swap. My 13 year old was in a row by herself. There were no single riders to ride in the seat next to her. My daughter wanted my husband to ride with her because she didn't want to ride by herself. He attempted to sit down to ride again with her. The attendant told him that he wasn't allowed to ride with her because he had just gone. Mind you, no single riders were waiting and the seat was otherwise empty. He explained that my daughter did not wish to go by herself. He was told that if he wanted to ride with her, that he would have to go wait in line again. Again, the seat was empty and what should have been a common sense non issue clearly turned into a power struggle for this individual. My daughter finally jumped off the ride and said she didn't want to ride it because of this guys attitude. We've never had an issue before with the parent swap. This ruined the rest of the night for both my family and the family who was at the park for no other reason than we invited them to join us for their first visit to the park. I hold a Gold season pass and I bought 7 tickets additional tickets for the visit, 5 for the other part of my family, and 2 for the other family joining us.

Jennifer Pate

[protected]@gmail.com

Me and my family went up for the day yesterday to enjoy the Halloween pumpkins, my first complaint is after getting off the tram had to walk like what seemed a mile to the front gate, I have bad hips and hurt really bad to walk his far to the entrance, also we are season pass holders for years, and to find out yesterday that all the smoking sections have been removed was hard on me as the only way I could physically get around the park was stopping at all the smoking sections I like, a place I could sit and watch everything surroundings and enjoy my ciggerette, I feel like Dolly wood has discriminated me by taking out so many sections, the worker told me there was how only 5 left, I only found 1!

It was not an enjoyable day for us because you decided against smokers so I will not be coming back after all these years, Dolly wood has just ruined the experience with smokers , I talked to many others there yesterday who feel exactly the same also

I was hoping the highlight of my trip to Pigeon Forge was the two days that I had scheduled for Dollywood. Unfortunately, I was mistaken. On the very first ride of the day, after waiting in line for 30 mins. At the time of boarding the ride, "Lightening Rod", I was not allowed to ride, because the seat belt would not extend long enough to buckle. Now, I fit in the seat perfect, and the lap bar fit fine. I'm a big athletic guy, I'm 6'3" 290, I am not obese. I was told that I could not ride this ride and I basically had to take the walk of shame. Now, I've been to many amusement parks around the country and have never experienced this level of embarrassment and shame. I'm all about safety, but again this seems like a simple fix of just extending the secondary safety restraint of the seat beat to be more adjustable. I have seen this type of complaint was already enter, so I doubt Dollywood takes these types of complaint serious. This really ruined the mood of the day and right now I am not sure that I will ever return in the future, which really stinks, because I absolutely loved the park and I'm an avid theme park attendee.

My husband, nephew, and I recently visited Dollywood. We were very disappointed in the distance in which we had to walk to get to the park entrance. My husband is a disabled military veteran. Although he had his cane with him, the long distance from the tram stop to the entrance caused him a lot of pain. We rented the electric vehicle for him to maneuver throughout the park, even though it was pricey. I just think that if Dolly really respects the American Veterans, she would make sure that access ro her parks would be more accessible. It was just too far to walk before we could get the electric vehicle. Then having to do the same thing to exit the park was just too much.

I bought a gold 2-park season pass for myself and a silver 2-park season pass for my husband yesterday, July 20. We have three children the ages of: 20m, 4yr, and 7yr. We entered Dollywood park yesterday just fine. Today, July 21, we arrived the the park around 12:30pm and they stopped us at the gate and told us our four and seven year olds need their own passes. I was prepared to use a guest pass for the seven-year-old and a four-year-old should be free because she is a preschooler born in the year 2017 per the website. But no. Apparently, we can’t do that anymore? Since when? And why? We talked to someone at the ticket counter and all they could do was refund our passes minus 2x 2day DW only. Even though we only went 1 day they “had” to charge us for 2 days because our passes were scanned at the front gate. We never entered the park area. So we were charged $233.50 for 2 adults for 1 day. We immediately left with crying children. I tried calling the info line to speak to someone who might be better able to help, but it was closed for some reason on a Wednesday afternoon.

A worker named Devon harassed my son and I on the dragonfly ride. He came up and asked my little boy which is 6 continuously if he had rode this ride prior to the time we were riding. We had waited 40 minutes before getting on the ride. After the ride he came up and got in my face and said “he was going to let it slide this time but wouldn’t the next.” I told him to roll the cameras back and he was to big of a coward to do so. My son didn’t deserve this and I will be following up on this with the better business bureau if needed.