 Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee is a phenomenal theme park owned by Hersch and Family Entertainment. I had the opportunity to visit this theme park over the course of three days in December of 2019 and I had an amazing experience here. In addition to great charm and overall fantastic operations, Dollywood has a very solid collection of roller coasters. Today, I am ranking all nine of Dollywood's roller coasters from worst to best in my opinion and I will give you my thoughts briefly for each one. If you want to hear in-depth thoughts about any of these rides, I've done separate reviews for the top seven coasters on this list, which you can check out on my channel. This is Dollywood Ranked. Coming in at the number nine spot is Whistle Punk Chaser. This is just a very average kiddie coaster. There's not really much to it. It falls in the very last spot. Number eight is a ride that I'm actually a pretty big fan of. I love this ride. I got several rides on this over the course of my days at Dollywood. Blazing Fury, which is the oldest coaster in the park and it technically is a coaster. It has three drops which utilize gravity, but most of it is just a dark ride and you go through all these scenes. This was actually built by the park. This is just a really cool unique old school type of dark ride and I had a lot of fun on this. Number seven is Fire Chaser Express. For a family coaster, Fire Chaser Express is really good. I mean, this was a really fun ride. Didn't really have much airtime or anything like that, but it goes forwards and backwards and it's sort of like a modern mind train style of ride. It was built by Gerstlauer, opened in 2014. It has a couple of launches. I had an absolute blast every time I rode this. It has some really cool effects where you begin the backward section of the ride. So even though this is a family coaster, it really provides thrills for everybody and that's what makes Fire Chaser Express so great. Number six is another really, really good family coaster and this is the new for 2019 Dragonflyer, a Vekoma family suspended coaster. There are many clones of this particular layout around the world, but this ride actually starts off fairly intense. The first half of this is really fast, a lot more intense than you'd expect. The first element after the main drop is almost an inversion. It's short. It has not very good capacity. It can only run with one train, but it's a very, very fun ride and one that you definitely shouldn't skip out on when you go to Dollywood. Number five is Mystery Mine. This is a Gerstlauer Eurofighter. The first one in the United States actually. It opened in 2007 and this just has really fantastic theming, has a couple vertical lifts. There are a lot of surprises in there that I won't spoil for you if you haven't ridden it and honestly, I had a lot of fun on Mystery Mine. A lot of people seem to not really care for this ride a whole lot. Find it kind of bumpy or it has a lot of headbanging. I did experience a little bit of headbanging on it, but it didn't really take away too much for me. I do wish that they would put lap bars on this because I really feel that there is no need for those hard over-the-shoulder strengths and it would be a lot better without those, but this was America's first Eurofighter and it's a very, very unique ride and it has a lot of dark ride sections too, so it's a very long ride. I really enjoyed this and it has one of the best finales on any coaster I've ridden. Number four is Wild Eagle, which was the first BNM wing coaster in North America. Wild Eagle really surprised me. Going into it, I thought Wild Eagle was going to be very mediocre. Even though it's a wing coaster, it just has a very like bare bones, floorless coaster type of layout. Really basic elements, nothing really unique about the layout. It looks gorgeous being a BNM that sits way up on the mountain. The layout is nothing special, but when I rode this for the first time and on all of my following rides, I was just really surprised by how great the pacing was on this. It's a little bit more intense than people give a credit for. It really flew through the course, had amazing pacing, really fun ride. There were a couple decently forceful elements and overall it was just really fun and I am a fan of the wing coasters. I've ridden two other ones, Thunderbird and Gatekeeper. Ultimately, I did decide that I like Gatekeeper a little better than Wild Eagle and Thunderbird is my favorite wing coaster, but still, Wild Eagle is a really good coaster in my opinion. Number three is Tennessee Tornado, the 1999 Aero Dynamics custom looping coaster. And man, I really wish we could have seen Aero stay around for a while longer and create more of these newer custom looping coasters because of course, their old custom loopers are known for being very janky, having weird transitions and lots of headbanging. This one is completely smooth. I didn't experience any headbanging really at all. I got at least eight rides on this. It's a fantastic ride. It has a great pop of airtime going down the drop. It is very short, which is one thing that goes against this ride, but the ride that you do have, it's all killer, no filler. It's just a really well-paced ride. This ride is fast, intense, has really good inversions, great pacing and it's very smooth. And also, it was designed by Ellen Schilke. Number two is one of the best wooden coasters in the world. This is Thunderhead. Thunderhead opened in 2004 and this really kicked off sort of a new era for Dollywood. This is when Dollywood really started investing a lot into major thrill rides and especially coasters as they would go on to create many coasters in the years after this. Thunderhead has been voted very, very high in the Golden Ticket Awards as far as wooden coasters go. And honestly, I can see why. This is an amazing ride. It's really wild, out of control. It is a little bit rough, but it's not really painful. It has amazing pacing, lots of really good ejector airtime moments, some good floater too. And I just had a blast on Thunderhead. I mean, it's one of the best coasters I've ridden, period. And I can also say the same thing about the number one coaster on this list, which of course you guys know what it is already. It's another one of the best wooden coasters in the world. Some people say this is the best wooden coaster in the world or even just the best coaster period. And this is Lightning Rod, another Ellen Schilke design. This was of course built by RMC. The world's first and so far only launched wooden coaster. What else can you say about Lightning Rod that hasn't been said already? Really intense, amazing pacing. It has some of the most airtime out of any coaster out there and it's all basically really insane ejector airtime. Lots of sustained ejector air too. Really strong air. Some pretty good positive Gs as well. And I find it to be pretty smooth. Of course it's a lot smoother than traditional wooden coasters being that it's RMC topper track, but I found it to have enough bite to it where it wasn't like too smooth. It's an extreme ride. It's one of the most intense coasters I've been on personally. Like I said, there's not really much else to say about Lightning Rod. Everybody knows about this. It has that amazing quad down. It uses the terrain very well and it's just an amazing ride that every enthusiast should make a point to experience. As long as it's open, of course. Thanks so much for watching Dollywood Ranked. If you made it to here, please be sure to hit that like button and subscribe if you haven't for more content like this weekly. Be sure to leave your thoughts as well about the coasters of Dollywood. One last thing. I do have a merchandise store as well with tons of really cool stuff for everybody at all price ranges. Any support is of course greatly appreciated. This has been CoasterDaddy. Bye.