 Welcome back to another review. Today I am going to discuss the Gerstlauer family coaster known as Fire Chaser Express, which opened at Dollywood in 2014. Fire Chaser Express is located across from Wild Eagle, the park's B&M wing coaster. Once you approach the ride, you will see some of the theme that Dollywood is known for. The entrance has a large tower with the Fire Chaser logo, and is one of three towers the ride interacts with, and the station for the ride doubles as a mock fire station. You'll see an old fire truck which sits right outside of the station and a sign with a statue of a firefighter to pay tribute to these fearless people. To top all of this off, there are some waterfalls that flow down some rockwork that the ride winds around as well. The theming continues throughout the queue line and station area with firefighter memorabilia and posters with Smokey the Bear and other things throughout. Once you board these awesome fire engine themed trains, you'll hear a siren go off, and then you are immediately propelled out of the station with a tire launch from 0 to 16 miles per hour in one second. You twist up to the right then back down to the left through a helix, followed by another helix to the right where you engage with the ride's lift hill. The lift hill takes you up to the highest point on the ride at 78 feet in about 20 seconds and once you cross the top, you make a very small dip to the right and then up into a sharp left hairpin turn before hitting another small drop into a right hand bank turn, followed by a small speed hill and a second larger hill which twists back down to the right and through a tower where you will then quickly rise back up and into a quick mid-course brake section. Following the mid-course, the train turns to the left and slowly descends the side of the mountain. Then there is a hill which flies right under the lift hill, providing a nice head chopper moment. This hill is followed by another fun hill and you can see the ride is picking up more speed in this section. Following these hills, you quickly traverse a few fun S-bends before turning into the highlight of the ride. You will come to a stop in this old shack with tons of explosive TNT theming. You sit in here for about 5 to 10 seconds before things go awry. This shack fills up with tons of smoke. You can't see anything and you are quickly propelled backwards out of the shack in another tire launch from 0 to 20 mph in 2 seconds. You fly up a small hill backwards through a turn to the left, then over another small hill and to complete the ride, you traverse a couple quick turns up into the final brakes. You will sit here until the other train has departed the station and a switch track will engage where you will then move into the station backwards to where you started. Fire Chaser Express is all around just a really quality family coaster that does what it is intended to do extremely well. To go over many of the positive things about this ride, it is very long, very fun, really unique because of its layout, its theming and backwards launch, and the ride has decent capacity as well. Of course, this ride is not intense and there is no reason you should go into this thinking otherwise. It is thrilling enough for adults to enjoy, especially with integrated on-ride effects and backward section, but it is not forceful by any means. It sits right on that perfect threshold for a family coaster and attracts its target audience very well. That's one thing I will make note of with this ride as well. This is an extremely popular ride and gets very long lines. I actually waited to ride this at the end of the night when I first rode it because throughout the day the lines for this got to be about an hour and a half long. I did still wait 55 minutes for my first ride and when I rode it a second time the following day I got on it shortly after opening and only waited about 20 minutes. I did mention quickly before that the capacity on this ride is decent and it is exactly that. Not terrible, not great, but decent. With a theoretical output of 750 riders per hour, this surely contributes to some of the longer wait times. This ride has three trains, but I believe it was only running with two trains while I was riding it and throughout my visit, which wouldn't help with that capacity. So just be prepared for that when you are going into riding this. My suggestion would be hit this up shortly after opening, right after you ride Mystery Mine of course, which has atrocious capacity, or you could wait until the very end of the night when the line seems to die down as well. So with the issue of capacity out of the way, what are some negative things about the ride experience itself? I guess if I'm going to try to get very nitpicky and try to think of something, I could say I didn't really get any kind of airtime over any of the several hills, which do look like they should provide a small amount of air. However, this is just a nitpick in all actuality, as I would not expect any kind of great airtime from a ride such as this, just as I wouldn't expect any great positive forces or anything of that nature either. The top speed on this ride, after all, is 34.5 miles per hour. There isn't anything else negative to say that I can think of. It is absolutely one of the best family coasters out there and does what it is supposed to do extremely well. I also want to talk about the presentation of this ride as it really looks fantastic situated along the edge of the mountain in that area of the park. As I mentioned earlier, there are many theming elements scattered throughout the course of the ride and you have all of those cool looking towers the ride interacts with along with the waterfalls near the entrance, and the ride just winds around all of these things in a mess of track. The theming here, though not the most immersive or even the best theming at Dollywood, is very well done nonetheless. And this ride just looks fantastic. I think its color scheme fits in very well with this area of the park. To wrap up my review of Fire Chaser Express at Dollywood, I'm going to give my final score of the ride out of 10. I'm going to do what I did with Dragonflyer as well and give it two scores. The first score, which I will use to judge it against all other coasters I've ridden, is 7 out of 10. However, that really isn't a good score to reflect the ride experience with this coaster, as this is a family coaster after all. So, for a score solely based on the idea of it being a family centered attraction, I'm going to give it a 9.5 out of 10. It really is a nearly perfect family ride that many people will be able to enjoy as it has a low height requirement and isn't forceful in any way, but also provides enough surprises and thrills for anyone to have an awesome time on it. What are your thoughts on Fire Chaser Express at Dollywood and how does it stack up against other family coasters you've experienced? Be sure to let me know all that and subscribe to my channel if you enjoyed this video. I have many more roller coaster reviews available in a playlist on my channel. Also like my page CoasterDaddy on Facebook and follow me at CoasterDaddyOfficial on Instagram. Thank you for watching. This is CoasterDaddy. Bye.