Opryland USA

Opryland USA
Location	Nashville, Tennessee, United States
Owner	Gaylord Entertainment Company
Opened	May 27, 1972
Closed	December 31, 1997
Area	120 acres (0.49 km2)
Rides	27 total 6 roller coasters 3 water rides
Slogan	"Home of American Music" "America's Musical Showpark" "Great Shows! Great Rides! Great Times!"

Opryland USA (later called Opryland Themepark and colloquially referred to simply as Opryland) was an amusement park located in suburban Nashville, Tennessee. It operated seasonally from 1972 until 1997. During the late 1980s, nearly 2.5 million people visited the park annually.

History

1970s

Billed as the "Home of American Music," Opryland USA featured a large number of musical shows along with typical amusement park rides such as roller coasters, carousels, and the like. The theme park was opened on May 27, 1972, by the now-defunct National Life and Accident Insurance Company, a Nashville firm best known for operating WSM-AM-FM-TV and the Grand Ole Opry. The park was named for WSM-AM disc jockey Grant Turner's early morning show. The Opry itself moved to an adjacent site, the Grand Ole Opry House, from downtown's Ryman Auditorium on March 16, 1974. However, music at the park was not limited to Country & Western; there were jazz, pop and rock and roll-themed shows as well.

Shortly before opening for the 1975 season, Opryland, located along the banks of the Cumberland River, fell victim to a large flood that covered most of the park and was as deep as sixteen feet in some locations. The park's opening was delayed by a month and several animals in the petting zoo were killed by the floodwaters.

Opryland became extremely successful during the mid-1970s, and by the 1977 season the park was drawing nearly 2 million guests annually, the preponderance of which were from Tennessee and adjoining states, since the nearest theme parks comparable to Opryland were located in distant places such as Cincinnati (Kings Island), Charlotte Carowinds and Atlanta (Six Flags Over Georgia). Attendance continued to climb into the 1980s.

In 1977 the Opryland Hotel (now called Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center), a large resort-style hotel, was built next door to the park, and has expanded several times to become the largest non-casino hotel in the world.^[1][2][3]

1980s - 1990s

In the early 1980s, National Life was taken over by Texas-based insurer American General (now part of the American International Group). American General, not at all interested in operating a theme park or broadcasting interests, attempted to sell all of the National Life properties including WSM-AM-FM-TV, the theme park, The Opryland Hotel, and the Grand Ole Opry as one, approaching companies such as MCA, The Marriott Corporation and Anheuser-Busch. While many of the companies showed interest in one aspect of Opryland, such as the theme park alone or the radio station, none was willing to buy the entire complex. American General began to feel that the only way to sell Opryland would be to split it up into separate entities.

Suddenly, the Gaylord Broadcasting Company of Oklahoma City stepped in and purchased the entire Opryland property in 1982. It also bought the WSM radio stations, and it would have bought WSM-TV (now WSMV) as well, had the company not already been at the television ownership limit at the time. After the purchase, the company changed its name to "Gaylord Entertainment Company". Ed Gaylord, the then-controlling figure of Gaylord Entertainment, was a huge fan of the Opry and weighed in on the decision to purchase Opryland.

In the mid-1980s, "Trickets" (three-day admission tickets for one price) were introduced and large numbers of season passes were sold to residents of the Nashville area.

Also included in Gaylord's acquisition of the Opyrland assets was National Life's fledgling cable network, The Nashville Network ("TNN"). TNN became a television network dedicated entirely to country music. For years, its offices and production facilities were located on-site at Opryland, and a nightly variety show (originally Nashville Now, later Music City Tonight and Prime Time Country) was taped at the Gaslight Theatre inside the park itself. The theme park was often featured on the network as a concert venue for country music stars. Also, beginning in the early-1990s, as a nod to TNN's NASCAR coverage, as well as Opryland's official designation with NASCAR, the annual "TNN Salute to Motorsports" event would take place over a weeklong period. This included numerous motorsports exhibits as well as meet-and-greets with racing personalities.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, two new competitors to Opryland would emerge: Kentucky Kingdom in Louisville, Kentucky, and Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee (which had recently been converted and expanded from its previous incarnation as "Silver Dollar City"). These two parks grew into regional destinations, contributing in part to a decline in Opryland attendance. Partially in response to the competition, and to entice out-of-town guests to come, package deals including rooms at the hotel, tickets to Opryland, and admission to the Grand Ole Opry were developed and marketed throughout the region.

Annual changes were made to the park to continue to attract local Nashvillians as well as out-of-town visitors. Large attractions such as the General Jackson Showboat, new roller coasters, and water rides were installed on a biennial basis until 1989, with the opening of the "Chaos" roller coaster. The next large attraction to open would be "The Hangman" roller coaster in 1995.

The park also attracted top country music stars to perform nightly concerts at the park's premier venue, the Chevrolet-Geo Celebrity Theater, built in 1992. Initially included in park admission during the first two seasons, Opryland began charging extra for the concerts in 1994. In 1995, Opryland added two venues (Theatre By The Lake and Acuff Theatre—including a renovation and expansion of each venue) to the series, billing it as "Nashville On Stage". After lackluster sales, the multi-venue series reverted to only the Chevy-Geo Theater in 1997.

During the summer of 1993, the popular Mark Goodson game show Family Feud traveled to Opryland and taped several weeks of episodes that opened the show's sixth season with Ray Combs as host. These syndicated episodes began airing in September and featured some of country music's brightest stars including Porter Wagoner, Boxcar Willie, Charley Pride, Brenda Lee, the Mandrells, and the Statler Brothers, as well as at least one week of regular Nashville families playing against each other.

In 1994, the park's official name was changed to "Opryland Themepark". The "Opryland USA" name was designated as the destination's name, to include all of Gaylord Entertainment's Nashville properties. For example: Opryland Hotel, Opryland Themepark, and the Grand Ole Opry were all components of Opryland USA, as were the Ryman Auditorium and Wildhorse Saloon, which are located a few miles away in downtown Nashville.

Shuttering

Opryland was severely handicapped by its location. The park was located on a triangular tract of land with the Cumberland River on one side, Briley Parkway on another, and the Opryland Hotel on the third. This meant that not only was the site subject to occasional flooding, but also that the park could not expand to include new attractions as consumer preferences changed. Opryland was forced to remove older attractions in order to add new ones. By the time Opryland closed, it had reached 200 acres (0.81 km²) in size and had nowhere else to grow. The company, at one time, explored purchasing land on the other side of the river and providing a bridge or tram service.

As the 1990s wore on, Opryland Hotel continued to expand onto the remaining available land, further trapping the theme park. Also, Nashville's climate made year-round operations almost impossible; seasons were largely limited to weekends in the late fall and early spring and daily in the summer. Seasonal workers became hard to find, and Gaylord found itself with a labor shortage. Attendance plateaued throughout the 1990s. By 1997, Gaylord management, amongst a move toward refocusing on their core hospitality businesses, decided that the Opryland property would no longer make a rate of return equal to that desired for its properties and was unlikely ever to return to doing so. Management decided the amusement park should be replaced by a property which made year-round usage of the site.

In February 1998, the remaining park souvenirs were sold at discount prices inside tents set up in the parking lot, in a fashion similar to a "flood sale" in 1975.

Rumors of Gaylord Entertainment opening a new amusement park have been circulating over the past decade,^[4] but none have come to fruition.

Demolition

Ruins of the old "Grizzly River Rampage" (October 2007).

The park closed permanently on December 31, 1997, following the "Christmas in the Park" season. The decision to close the park and replace it with a shopping mall was made public in October 1997. The 1997 "Christmas in the Park" season was billed as a "last chance" for Nashvillians to see Opryland, though only a small portion of the park was open for the season, and many of the larger attractions were already being dismantled. The rides were sold, the park was razed, and construction began on Opry Mills, which opened May 12, 2000, under the ownership of Mills Corporation (later acquired by Simon Property Group). The property now has no connection to Gaylord other than the licensed "Opry" name and shared parking, roads, and pedestrian thoroughfares between Simon's mall and the Opry and Hotel properties.

All five roller coasters and many other large attractions were sold to Premier Parks and moved to a field formerly occupied by the Old Indiana Fun Park near Indianapolis, Indiana, where the company had planned to build a new theme park. Those plans were soon scrapped when Premier Parks purchased Six Flags. The pieces of Opryland's attractions sat rusting in the Indiana field until 2002, when the site was sold. Some of the flat rides were sold for scrap metal, while the fate of many of the larger attractions remains unknown, although at least two of Opryland's former coasters (The Hangman and Rock n' Roller Coaster) found new life at Six Flags parks around the United States under different names. One of the Wabash Cannonball's cars appeared at a park in Europe as part of a Halloween display.

The themepark site was cleared and paved into a parking lot for Opry Mills and the Grand Ole Opry by July 1999, while construction of the mall took place primarily on the site of the themepark's parking lot.

Post-demolition

The "Opryland USA" name disappeared permanently in 2001 when Gaylord bundled its Nashville hospitality properties into the newly renamed "Gaylord Opryland Resort".

In 2004, The Tennessean newspaper published a statement by Gaylord Entertainment claiming that current company executives had found no evidence that previous management ever had a business plan for Opryland, let alone any strategic analysis that led to closing it, and that no compelling reasons had been found for the park's closure. Most of the Opryland-era executives left Gaylord Entertainment early in the decade when it was refocused into a more hospitality-oriented company.

The long low concrete levee wall which once separated the park's New Orleans, Riverside and State Fair areas from the Cumberland River is still a part of the mall grounds, and visitors who enter the mall property from the McGavock Pike/Music Valley Drive entrance can still view remnants of the graded railroad embankment which once supported the tracks of the park's short-line railroad.

The "Southern Living Dream Home" became a training center for hotel employees, and was moved intact to the former location of "Chaos" until 2011. The large administration building that briefly sat outside the park gates became the offices of the General Jackson Showboat, and was moved intact to a location near the docks.

Most traces of the park are gone, and even the hills and valleys of the park have long been flattened into parking lots. The Opry Mills building now extends onto land where the park gates once stood. Along the sidewalk in the trees between the Opry Mills parking lot and the Gaylord Opryland Resort, the layout of the old Grizzly River Rampage water ride was visible until mid-2011, when the company built a new pavilion designed to hold the hotel's yearly "ICE!" exhibit on the site. By November 2011, all recognizable remnants of the theme park were gone.

2010 Tennessee floods

Main article: 2010 Tennessee floods

Opryland's former site was flooded in early May 2010 after two days of torrential downpours in the Nashville area. Gaylord Opryland, the Grand Ole Opry House, the Grand Ole Opry Museum, and the General Jackson were closed for several months and all reopened in late 2010. Opry Mills is scheduled to reopen in Spring 2012, with some anchor stores opening in time for the 2011 holiday shopping season.

The Gaslight Theatre stood until 2010, but was demolished, rather than repaired, after the flood. Of all the buildings that once occupied the gated park, the Gaslight was the only one that remained standing in its original location following Opryland's demolition. It was used in the ensuing decade as a rental facility and the home of the yearly "ICE!" exhibit as part of the hotel's Christmas festivities. Most of the buildings in the Opry Plaza area (which were technically outside the theme park) also survived the park's demolition, but all were severely damaged or destroyed in the 2010 flood.

Notable rides

View from the Skyride circa 1975. The "Tin Lizzie" old-timey car ride is visible. "The Hangman" roller coaster was built on this site in 1995.

Ride	Description
The Hangman	A Vekoma suspended looping coaster Was the last new ride for the park.
Wabash Cannonball	Arrow Dynamics corkscrew coaster
Rock 'n Roller Coaster	An Arrow Dynamics runaway mine train coaster
Chaos	An Enclosed Vekoma Illusion roller coaster
Screamin' Delta Demon	An Intamin bobsled coaster
Grizzly River Rampage	An Intamin river rapids raft ride
Old Mill Scream	A Shoot the chutes boat ride
Dulcimer Splash (aka Flume Zoom)	A Log Flume ride
Tin Lizzies	An antique car ride (Removed in 1995 for "The Hangman")
Barnstormer	A 100-foot-tall spinning airplane ride
Opryland Railroad	A train ride that went around the park
Skyride	Von Roll type 101 sky ride
Little Deuce Coupe	A Calypso ride that was known as "Disc Jockey" before being enclosed in a dome
Tennessee Waltz	A Wave Swinger ride
Little Rock 'n Roller Coaster	A kiddie coaster

See also

• WSM-AM
• Grand Ole Opry
• Opryland Hotel
• The Nashville Network (TNN)
• General Jackson Showboat
• Nashville, Tennessee
• Opry Mills

References

1. ^ http://www.visittennesseeonline.com/opryland.htm
2. ^ http://www.gadling.com/2010/05/03/nashvilles-gaylord-opryland-resort-to-be-closed-for-months-afte/
3. ^ http://tripatlas.com/Opryland_USA
4. ^ http://www.wsmv.com/entertainment/22337886/detail.html

External links

• ThrillHunter - a site devoted to preserving Opryland USA's history
• Opryland's profile at Rollercoaster Database
• Opryland Radio USA - Live365 internet radio station that plays music from the Opryland theme park.
• Memories of Opryland Yahoo! Group
• Opryland USA Timeline

Coordinates: 36°12′30″N 86°41′43″W / 36.20833°N 86.69528°W / 36.20833; -86.69528