Mystery Mine Review
Dollywood’s newest attraction, Mystery Mine, opened it’s doors late March of 2007. The coaster, North America’s first “euro-fighter” is the largest capital investment to date for the park. I recently spent two days in the park, in which I had the opportunity to ride Mystery Mine numerous times.
Spoilers Ahead
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The ride begins with a sharp dip out of the station, which gives a good dose of whiplash as your head hits the headrest at the bottom of the drop. You then veer towards the left, making a unique outward-banked turn, going past hundreds of red eyes staring at you. Your mine car makes another turn before dipping below “the crusher”, giving another headbasher. You quickly turn left before halting at the vertical lift. They do a great job at building the suspense as you get the chance to see what’s ahead.
You begin the ascent up the lift hill. But that doesn’t last long as you crest the vertical lift, and make a quick dip (a smoother one, I might add), before heading towards the trestle. You barely brake before plunging over the first vertical drop. In my opinion, this was the best drop of the whole ride. Your car then maneuvers through the horse-shoe curve and through an upwards helix. You stall briefly at a block brake, which eats away at some of the speed before heading into another helix. You head back under the trestle and soar towards the next large lift. You stop again as you embrace what’s to come.
The sound effects are great as you climb the hill and watch the animation of the mine collapsing. After you crest that hill you stop at the top as you watch two fuses lights ignite a dynamite-fueled explosion which marks the drop. The drop in-itself is alright, not as surprising as the first one. You explode out of the ride building into the two inversions which are taken quickly and rather smoothly. You experience a good amount of hang-time at the top of the rollover, before falling back down into one more pop of airtime before slamming into the brake run.
Spoilers End Here======
Overall, I did not like this attraction. While it was not the worst, I wouldn’t wait more than 30 minutes for it. Both Thunderhead and Tennessee Tornado are much better attractions. I was somewhat disappointed in Dollywood for creating such a small attraction with the money they had to work with. While it is long, a bit of that time is spent stopped at the bottom of the lifts and at the top of the second drop.
The ride was also incredibly rough, and I rode in the front every time I rode. Towards the end I was beginning to learn how to work with the ride by holding my head in a certain position but even that didn’t help that much. Even without the roughness, the ride still would’ve lacked in any intense features. Especially compared to Thunderhead and Tennessee Tornado.
Dollywood is still a great park and I commend them for the quality of theming throughout the ride. The presentation of the ride was very well done, even the overflow queue was themed appropriately.
Do I recommend this ride? Yes, maybe once, but for me, once was enough. If the lines had not have been as short as they were, I wouldn’t have given the ride as many tries as I did. But that’s me, you may ride the ride and find it to be a totally different experience. But for me, Mystery Mine was a very lackluster attraction.
- John Stevenson
