Dollywood pushes into the “Wildwood Grove” for its 2019 season, giving the popular park its first new, additional area in a decade in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
“Here, in Wildwood Grove, kids and their parents now can explore and play and imagine together as a family,” park spokeswoman and superstar Dolly Parton said at an unveil of the $37 million park expansion.
Guests enter the area through the massive hollow trunk of a fallen tree.
Then you encounter the green, leafy canopy of the 55-foot-tall “Wildwood Tree,” a structure adorned with thousands of butterflies that dance playfully by day and glow with a kaleidoscope of color by night.
That’s an ode to Parton’s 1974 classic “Love is Like a Butterfly.”
In all, Wildwood Grove includes a landscape of 400 new trees and 1,000 shrubs plus six unique ride attractions. Among them: a suspended family roller coaster dubbed “The Dragonflier” and a hop-on tour for all ages, “Black Bear Trail,” that Parton says was inspired by the wildlife of the nearby Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
You can also soar inside a giant acorn on the “Treetop Tower” or savor southwestern flavors at a new restaurant called “Till & Harvest.”
“I’ve told you before about how I’d let my imagination roam free when I’d be out exploring in the hills around our home in the Smoky Mountains,” Parton says. “I’d pretend that the frogs and butterflies were my friends. I’d imagine about what it’d be like to fly with a dragonfly or to follow a bear family through the woods. Now, all these things are coming true for our guests to experience in Wildwood Grove.”
dollywood.com, 800-DOLLYWOOD
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The story above appears in our Jan./Feb. 2019 issue. For more like it, subscribe today or log in to the digital edition with your active digital subscription.