Trillbilly Worker's Party - **UNLOCKED** The William Tell Experience (w/ special guest Justin Roczniak)

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

For Dolly's birthday we're unlocking this very special episode on the structural and engineering integrity of Dollywood and of amusement parks/roller coasters in general, featuring Justin Roczniak of the Well There's Your Problem (@wtyppod) engineering podcast. Check them out here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPxHg4192hLDpTI2w7F9rPg and support them here: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod And of course you can hear more premium episodes like this by supporting us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

I love that this is going to be yet another brick thrown at the dolly, huh? It's like these motherfuckers just will not quit. You know, it's funny. As a comedian or a political commentator or whatever, you got to know when the bit is over. And I personally feel like the bit is over when dolly stops making shit up so as long as she's still doing this i thought you were gonna go with the bits over when i say it's over which which is which is where i stand on it um no i the bit is over when I say it's over, but it is also just really goddamn funny to keep fucking with people.

I mean, there's nothing funnier than dismantling sacred cows, obviously. I just think the cult of personality is weird. I just look at this and I say, why do people have this obsession with this woman? And then I looked at the theme park and I was like, oh, this entire thing is built around cultivating a parasocial relationship. No, that is exactly what it is, Justin. That is exactly correct. It is a pair. You're exactly right.

Because, like, most theme parks are about an idea. You know, there's six flags over texas there's silver dollar city you know there's even disney world six flags over kentucky yeah king's island king's island this this is a a theme park around a specific individual which is a very interesting idea very interesting idea at least mickey mouse has the decency to be fictional that's true that's true exactly yeah i like how somebody i forget what it was that's probably like a month ago or something somebody actually lumped dolly and mickey mouse in the same category except that i had to point out that mickey mouse, in fact, neither corporeal, but like Dolly, also not involved in the day-to-day operations anymore

of his park either. Yes. Also, another Dolly thing that I love that people throw out is how she saved Appalachian. I'd just like to point out the front page of our newspaper today. Coal employment has fallen to only 17 in Letcher County, down from, oh, about 3,000 to 4,000 a couple years ago. Right.

Well, how much coal are they extracting, though? A few pounds, probably. Labor productivity sounds like it's way up. Yeah. I'd call that a win. That's right. Yeah, that's true right it's true it's true it's uh coal production has like risen by like 400 percent while coal jobs have like declined at the same clip yeah um yeah no you're right and also i just want to say um before we get started

really like going in on it one of the big things i guess we can just go ahead and get started really going in on it, one of the big things... I guess we can just go ahead and get started. Fuck it, why not? This week on the show, if you haven't guessed already, we're taking a deep dive into the belly of the beast, really. We're going to get as close to Sauron's all-seeing eye as possible. By that, I mean we're talking about Dollywood, obviously. Here to help us do that. Sauron, but with huge titties.

Yes. Sauron with massive jugs. And the voice of an angel. Sauron with massive jugs. No, but yeah, to help us do that, we got justin rosniak from a podcast that i i really enjoy i'm a noob at this kind of stuff justin but the podcast is well there's your problem um but you guys single-handedly convinced me that 9-11 was not in fact an inside job and so for that i thank you sir i appreciate it no i mean the i, I'm fine with the idea that Bush did it.

You know, I think that's okay. But, like, he didn't put bombs in the towers. Right, right. Well, I mean, yeah, I suppose you're right. He could have hired people to fly the planes, which that is a believable story. We could say that at least yeah um yeah all rich people just pay uh you know the poor and disenfranchised to do their dirty work that's exactly right so it's like uh instacart for terrorism i was about to say yeah al-qaeda are workers um yeah

that's right um but yeah no so like what i what i was gonna say right before Kaida are workers. Yeah. Just call it what it is. That's right. But, yeah, no, so, like, what I was going to say right before we did the introductions, Tom, you mentioned that Dolly's credited with saving Appalachia with Dollywood, and obviously that's not really panned out. Another thing that she's been credited with a lot recently, right? She's been credited with ending apartheid in South Africa, for example. Impressive.

Impressive, right? Yeah, we haven't done that. We haven't done that. That's exactly right. She's been credited with reading Octavia Butler and informing the masses of that. This one, here's the thing that kills me about that. And, I mean, it's well-trodden territory but dolly parton three years ago retired a racist dinner show called the dixie stampede and yet because the sort of liberal revisionist history she'll be remembered

as like this great champion of black literature because she name dropped octavia butler exactly um she will also be remembered as someone who discovered the covid vaccine with jad abram rod's dad but uh she won't be remembered for the fact that severeville which is 15 20 minutes down the road from pigeon forage where most of the employees for dollywood work has the third highest covid rate in the nation i wonder i wonder why that is. Is there something there that employs 4,000 people and makes them work during the... That's weird.

Yeah, strange, man. Very strange. Very strange. And then obviously... It's probably a coal mine. Probably a coal mine. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Yeah, that's right. And then obviously, like, the big one, which is she saved a nine-year-old's life on the set of her recent Christmas film. You sure did, Dolly Parton. You sure did save my life. And referred to herself as an angel in the process. Well, I am an angel after all. Like, you know, like the little, she winked and you hear the glean sound. The wink of Sauron's eye.

Yeah. So for this one, we wanted to go to Dollywood itself for really one reason. The purpose of this episode is not to be like a fun scold or a buzzkill or whatever amusement parks are amusement parks as soon as you walk through those doors you basically take your own life into your hands yes um but the reason i wanted to do this episode specifically is because there is an inherent contradiction here between someone who is on hand, extremely obsessive over their own personal image. For example, saving a nine-year-old's life or finding the COVID vaccine. And on the other hand, someone who owns one of the most liability-ridden, legalistic burdens in American life.

And by that, I mean the amusement park. A company town with turkey legs and roller coasters. Yes. Exactly right. So we wanted to bring Justin on to do that because we're not engineers, Tom and I. If you couldn't tell, you know, it's like the famous George Bush saying, we're not economists, we're optimists. Well, me and Tom are not engineers, we're optimists. And so we needed to bring on an actual engineer to kind of tell us about this.

About the theme park industry? I wrote up a brief history of Dollywood. Good, good. Okay, that's good. I just want to say, just before we get into this, I just want enough out of this to poke the dolly high, but not enough out of it to ruin the Tennessee tornado for me. So those are my parameters. I just want to lay that out up front.

Good parameters. So right at the gate, first question we've got to get out of the way. I want to talk about the amusement park, the specificity of the amusement park. Then we'll move on to Dollywood and roller coasters and all that. But on a scale from carnival to sitting in your house on your couch all day, carnival being the least safe, sitting inside all day being the most safe,

depending on where you're at in the world. Where does the amusement park fall on this spectrum from an engineering perspective i would say it depends strongly on the amusement park um you know so there's there's you know you go to your like high high profile amusement park and a cedar point somewhere like that you're probably relatively safe i mean people barely get decapitated at all on those rides um decapitations at a 10-year low at cedar point and then maybe if you go if you go to like i don't know let's say a roller coaster that's just sitting on a vacant lot in coney island, you're an otherwise vacant lot. Obviously it's not a vacant lot because there's a roller coaster on it.

You might, you might, you might have some problems or if you're going, you're going to like action park in New Jersey, which I understand is reopening now. That's what I was going to say. I watched that documentary this summer about class action park. Shit was insane.

Have you seen that? Y'all seen that? I've heard of it. I've heard, i've not seen it yet oh my god dude it's fucking crazy they like they have this one did have you seen justin the one that's like the hyperloop thing it's it's got a it's the looping water slide yeah they had the hatch in it so that they could get people out when it got stuck and yeah then the first time they put a test dummy through it got decapitated oh my god um no i mean like this is kind of an interesting sort of maybe digression or maybe it is it's on the road to where we're going i mean you guys are big fans

of trains at the you know there's your problem podcast isn't a roller coaster basically a kind of train justin uh yes actually the earliest ones were usually uh before they came up with the name roller coaster they called them scenic railways very nice i mean dolly wood itself started out as a scenic railway i I think. It still is. It's kind of a scenic railway. Right. They still have the train, the old train that goes through there. Yes. Right, right.

So, yeah. So, at an amusement park, it depends on where you're at. Obviously, you're not getting a carnival, something that's set up within 24 hours with rickety nuts and bolts by someone who's you know fucked up on methamphetamines um but at the same time things can go wrong things can go very wrong um and uh bad things can happen bad things you'd be surprised you'd be surprised how quickly these so-called permanent rides go up i mean there's usually like an off season in the winter and they put, you know,

they take down the old roller coaster, they put up the new one and, you know, they ship the old roller coaster to some second tier theme park. Yeah, that happened at Dollywood. I mean, we can get into it, but I think the Thunder Express. So they were Sockle rides.

They do. Yes. Right? Oh, God. All right, all right. They do. Yes. Right? Oh, God. All right. All right. So you never know. You may be getting a second or third hand-me-down roller coaster, Tom.

You never know. So, yeah. So anything can happen. You know, someone can fly off. A bar might not, you know, might malfunction on a roller coaster. Roller coasters themselves are sort of, I mean, I was looking up the history of them. They started out like as almost sort of like ice slides or something in Russia. I don't know.

Yeah, so there was that and then there were some mine railroads where they had an inclined plane and they would just open it up so that folks could ride down in the mine carts down the inclined plane. Sort of like on Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong, you ride on the mine cart. Yes.

Hell yeah. But for like the loops and stuff, you're getting into some complex physics there, right, my friend? and stuff, you're getting into some complex physics there, right? My friend. I mean, you've got to rely on, uh, centrifugal forces. Is that correct?

Yeah. Some of the, some of the first, uh, looping roller coasters, they, um, so when they first tried to do a looping roller coaster, the first one, I forget which one it is. They tried to do like a regular, like circular loop, right? Yeah. tried to do like a regular like circular loop right yeah what they discovered was that this created enormous g-forces and would essentially um you know it came close to like breaking your neck right and after they sent a through monkeys through they they realized you have to you have to actually design the loop like an oval, right?

So you go in fast, you slow down at the top, you come down fast, right? And that one doesn't kill you, right? So we figured out loops. Imagine there's some elderly chimp somewhere smoking cigarettes that was a survivor of the first loop. You know, the first loop trials. It's like, man, you don't know what i've been through oh my god um the the road to fun it's really funny how like the road to fun is very often

littered with all kinds of funny stories and anecdotes it's never a straightforward path. Yeah, littered with bodies. Yes. But there are other rides at amusement parks, like toppling towers and, you know, lines. I don't know, zip lines and stuff. You know, the ones that release you and you swing through the air really fast. Just the terrifying ones, the ones that just zoom you straight up in the air and you come back down i i can't imagine getting on one of those things that seems like a lot of amusement park rides i look at it i'm like that's the dumbest thing i've seen in my life why would you do that to yourself though um man what was the scariest ride y'all ever rode ridden road i can tell you the one and this is relevant for

where we're going the scariest ride i've ever wrote ridden was the texas giant at six flags over arlington um that roller coaster was manufactured by a german group called Gerstlauer. Gerstlauer also manufactured the Mystery Mine roller coaster in Dollywood. Texas Giant has had a few, I think it's got a few bodies on its hand. I think several people have died on the Texas Giant. I don't know if it's like good form or poor form to say this. We can take it out and decide on the ethics of it later.

But my friend Tracy played Wonder Woman at whatever the Six Flags one in Atlanta or near Atlanta is. And she saw the kid that went back to get his hat and jumped the fence and got his head cut off. Oh my god, man.

She saw that. It was like she's been in therapy for a long time. I shouldn't cackle at that. Take this all out. Just a little aside. It is vital to the larger point we're making here. The amusement parks embody the full spectrum of American life.

They can be sites of extreme fun, ecstasy, pleasure. They can also be sites of extreme tragedy, bloodletting, genocide, you name it. Anything can happen. The thing that they've always been for me, I like roller coasters, but I didn't always like roller coasters. So I think I could trace the roots of my anxiety to the first times I went to Kentucky Kingdom, Six Flags over Louisville. And I'm trying to build up the courage the whole day you know what i mean like to go and just like do the one the drop zone you know where they just you start and just drop your ass yeah

or uh someone got their legs cut off on that ride at kentucky kingdom by the way t3 is the one they got there it's like the terminator themed ride is the one they got there. It was like the Terminator-themed ride, I think. Oh, wow. I didn't realize that. It was Terminator-themed. Yeah, they discontinued that, I believe. Maybe they did. I don't know.

I mean, it is kind of a strangely tragic thing to die on a roller coaster in America. And I just want to drive this point home again. If you're talking about Dali, just like you're talking about the commodity form in American, in capitalism, you have to reckon with the thesis and the antithesis here, or at least the different poles of the contradiction.

Like I said, ecstasy on one hand, misery on the other. These two things have to be embodied in the form of Dali. You can't take one without the other. If you're going to accept Dali as the savior of mankind, you also have to accept Dali as the person who not only exploits work and all that. That's whatever. But possibly, possibly is at least tacitly responsible for snapping several primate necks. Yes.

Exactly. So let's move on to Dollywood now. So, Justin, you have a history of Dollywood. Tell us about Dollywood. I have a brief history. It starts exactly where you would expect, which is the Klondike gold rush of 1897. Naturally.

Alright, so okay, folks found gold right up near Dawson City in the Yukon Territory, and Canada was very strict about ensuring that if you came to the Yukon to prospect for gold, you had to bring enough supplies so you wouldn't freeze to death during the winter, right? Right.

That was about one ton of crap. So, and you know, the prospectors got really pissed off at this. So they decided, because you need to do several trips at that point to get all your crap to the Canadian border. So you get prospect for gold. So obviously they need to build a railroad, right? Right, right. Okay. so you get prospect for gold so obviously they need to build a railroad right right right okay so they build this railroad called the white pass and yukon route from skagway uh towards dawson

city you know it's a difficult terrain tight margins they do a three foot narrow gauge railroad may 1898 they start building the railroad they have some difficulty securing permission to proceed because the railroad had pissed off Skagway's crime boss, a man named Jefferson Randolph Soapy Smith. So you do not want to be on the wrong side of Soapy Smith. You do not want to be on the wrong side. You don't want to be on the business end of this big soap. Yes, he was called Soapy Smith because he had a soap racket. Wow, man. Dude, that's the most UConn territory shit I can imagine.

Like your crime bosses have fucking soap rackets. He had a soap racket. He would put $100 bills in some of the soap bars and sell them, right? The idea is it's sort of like a raffle, right? If you buy enough soap, you get a prize, right? Imagine washing your body in the shower you put a hundred dollars he's the he's the willy wonka of soaps that's right but he also was good at uh sleight of hand so he made sure that the uh the soap bars with the money in and only went to his cronies good i love that so anyway this this problem this problem was solved when the railroad's president

uh shot soapy smith dead on the juno wharf on july 8th and they started building the railroad right okay so around around uh february 1899 they made it to the white pass summit they made it to car cross right they made it to white horse about a quarter of the way to Dawson City in 1900, just as the gold petered out. Yeah, if you've ever played Red Dead Redemption 2, this is the world we're talking about. Tuberculosis is running rampant. Yes.

You've got mine wars. Is this like Tombstone era? A little afterwards, but Wyatt Earp is still alive. Okay. At this point, he's probably in his 50s, and he's pretty washed up, but he's bounty hunting in the L.A. area. Okay. Yeah, this is Red Dead Redemption with more snow.

A little further north. Right, and with more soap. All right, so after that, you know, the railroad, you think it may not have a purpose, but luckily they serious mining started after the gold rush. They started hauling copper, silver and lead down to Skagway. And in the Depression, the railroad nearly failed. World War Two happened. America was afraid Japan might invade Alaska. so they built the Alaska Highway, right?

I promise this is going somewhere. It's fascinating nonetheless. It's all good history. Yeah, yeah. Go for it. So Whitehorse was an important staging point for construction, so the White Pass and Yukon Railroad suddenly had a huge source of traffic, right? Right.

So the Army scrounged up all the narrow gauge railroad equipment it could they sent it up to the white pass in yukon they made some specially built war department locomotives with mostly any random narrow gauge stuff they could find to help you know send materials up for the alaska highway um after world war ii the the railroad had been surprisingly immaculately maintained. They had a huge surplus of equipment, right? And they were, you know, the only railroad capable of handling the mining traffic. So this railroad somehow survived, right? Right.

And they had all these brand new locomotives that were suddenly surplus because they started buying diesels immediately afterwards, right? Right. So, all right. Meanwhile, in eastern Tennessee, a group of rail fans bought the defunct East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad. It's also known as the Tweetsie Railroad.

Probably used to ship a lot of coal, I would assume? I think so i'm i'm i'm not i'm not exactly sure what their main source of traffic was this is probably the one i should have researched more than the white pass in yukon but probably i would venture to say it was coal related well uh the white pass to yukon is uh it's much more interesting interesting, I'm sure, than this. Why is it called the Tweetsie? There was a local crime boss named Pat Parton. Yes. So it was called the Tweetsie because of the very shrill whistles on the locomotives.

Ah, I see. See, that's got to be pretty annoying. Like, you're in your coal camp, and you don't hear the loud booming noise of the locomotive coming through. You have this, like, loud dog whistle-type screeching noise. I know. You got this Thomas the Tank Engine-ass whistle. Right, right, right.

Right, right. So, these two brothers, Grover and Harry Robbins, along with a few rail fans, gained control of this failing operation in the 50s, right? And they acquired a bunch of surplus locomotives from the White Pass and Yukon to sort of expand operations as sort of a tourist railroad, right? I see, I see. Right. I see. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. They got a bunch of War Department S-118 locomotives, which are built for the White Pass in Yukon and the Belgian Congo. Wow. So our story stretches all the way from the tendrils of Dali stretch out all the way to the Yukon to the Belgian Congo. Belgian Congo. Belgian Congo. Yes, she might have ended apartheid, but she also is responsible for King Leopold's reign of terror. Yes. By the way, I will say that that is what we're saving up on Patreon to buy surplus locomotives.

That's what the Tripoli's Patreon is mostly for. That's a smart decision. You can bring the train back to Whitesburg. That's right. So these two brothers, they run this Tweetsie Railroad, which is still around. It's still a tourist operation. They actually have a big steam shop, and they do a lot of work for other narrow gauge railroads, including Disney, until recently. I think Disney switched to Strasburg because it accidentally revealed that the Disney locomotives were outside of Disney, and they're psychotic about that sort of stuff.

So these two brothers, you know, this one railroad's successful, so they decide to start another one. A new tourist railroad in Pigeon Forge called the Rebel Railroad. The Rebel Railroad. Just so you know what those origins are, by any chance, have you seen anything on that? Oh. Just curious. Which is, by the way, this is one of the fascinating things about Dollywood and about the Rebel Railroad and the Dixie Stampede.

If you know your Southern history, Eastern Tennessee was a stronghold for Unionism. It almost seceded from Tennessee and became the free state of Franklin, I think is what they wanted to call it. It was never a part. As portrayed beautifully by Matthew McConaughey in a film of the same name. I've never seen the film, but yes, that is it. So, it is doubly ironic and malpractice for them to...

It's just ahistorical, really. Right, for them to harp so much on that history. But yes, the Rebel Railroad. So at the Rebel Railroad, right, you got on this train, right? You went around the mountain, you go onto a loop of track, and then there was a simulated attack on the train by Union forces. And of course, our boys in gray repel them. Naturally.

It's like in Shiloh. And then you came back around the mountain back to the station, right? So there's also, they also did simulated Indian attacks and train robberies. Oh my God, dude. Oh my god. That's a fascinating... That is a fascinating thing. You could do the same thing today.

Imagine like a Muhammad Atta doing a train robbery at the Rebel Railroad. This would be like you're flying Delta one day, and then you just got the Muhammad Atta package. You know what I mean? And it's just like six guys. Yeah. This is so fucking crazy.

It reminds me of a tourist trap outside of Natural Bridge, Virginia, which is still around, where a guy did a bunch of sculptures of dinosaurs, right? Attacking Union troops. Oh my god. Natural Bridge, Virginia, just a slight digression, is owned, it's privately owned. It's owned by a millionaire who had an idea to, he bought several strip mines in West Virginia. And this was when Obama put out the Clean Power Plan. He bought several strip mines in West Virginia in order to keep mining them, but planting trees on them as he mined them in order to offset the carbon.

It was like this sort of pyramid scheme. I can't remember his name now. Is Tom something? But anyways, that's the owner of Natural Bridge. Kind of the reverse of a pyramid scheme. You're sort of taking down the pyramid, you know? You're right. The exact opposite.

Yeah. But anyways... Natural Bridge, Virginia. Pay 20 bucks to see the bridge you drove in on. That's right. You have to pay to get in, which is a fucking scam. Yeah. So, this Rebel Railroad, it wasn't that successful, right?

this uh this rebel railroad it wasn't that successful right it's 19 1970 art model is the owner of the cleveland browns bought the rebel railroad he rethemed it as a wild west train ride so you know we we get rid of the union troops we get we get we get um uh more indian attacks right right um adds a log flume adds a theater a church for some reason um you get sprayed with tuberculosis bacteria and see if you catch it or not right right yeah you gave the take the tuberculosis challenge um sold again in 1977 it was renamed silver dollar city tennessee owned by the same folks as the branson, Missouri, Silver Dollar City. The Herschend family. Yeah, they had more thrill rides.

Railroad starts to play, you know, sort of a lesser part. But in 1986, working class hero Dolly Parton bought an interest in Silver Dollar City. It reopened for the 1986 season as dollywood um and so at that time it was still technically owned and operated by hersh the hershen family but dolly had a large interest in it is that correct that's that's what I believe, yes. Yeah. And so they, I mean, you know, they start, you know, building all of these roller coasters. There are several different parts of the park. And I have right here in front of me, this is the list of Dollywood attractions. So there are several different parts.

I have to do a disclaimer here. I've never actually been to Dollywood. I've been to Pigeon Forge and Sevierville and all that. But, Tom, you've been to Dollywood, correct? It's the only place we ever vacation, of course. So there's several different parts of the park. There's the Country Fair, Craftsman's Alley, Owen's Farm, Jukebox Junction. Well, I should say this is the new layout.

It's been a few years since I've been there. Right, okay. There's Rivertown Junction, Timber Canyon, The Village, Wilderness Pass, Wildwood Grove. A lot of these have various roller coasters and rides. I thought it might behoove us to go through some of these rides, okay? One of these rides, and this is kind of keeping with the same theme here, Justin, it seems to me that over the course of the roller coaster, they combined those two ideas, right?

What you were just saying. There was the novelty train ride where you get attacked by fake train robbers sometimes maybe real ones um but then they sped it up and added hype you know loops and all this um and so maybe the sort of quintessential example of that is the mystery mine ride at dollywood like i said earlier manufactured by gerstlauer, it's a Eurofighter model, heavily themed as a haunted mining operation from the 19th century. The coaster was Dollywood's largest single investment in the park's history at the time, costing $17.5 million to construct. A large portion of the track is located indoor, and this is where we split from our forebearers,

because now you can do all kinds of special effects. As anyone who's, and I haven't rode this one, but the Avatar ride in, like, Disney World and shit. Like, you know, you got all kinds of special effects that you can do. Here's how the Wikipedia page explains this. The ride's story and themes are introduced in the queue

as guest center. Visitors pass old newspaper articles and signs condemning an old abandoned mineshaft. And the queue winds around a rocky area before climbing stairs to the boarding area. During this time, guests occasionally hear recorded audio stating, if the canary ain't tweeting, you'll be sleeping.

Oh, baby. Wonderful. Wonderful. Quick-paced banjo. We know a little something about that, don't we, boys? We actually simulate the death of a canary in front of the guests. That's right. Quick-paced banjo music can also be heard front of the guests. That's right. Quick-paced banjo music can also be heard

playing in the background. Jon Voight steps out and looks at you menacingly. Yeah. After boarding, the eight-passenger car launches quickly out of the station. A miner's evil laugh echoes down the first small drop as the car... Why does it have to be the miner's evil laugh?

Perpetual demonization of the working class. That's right. A wall full of calling crows and a caged canary watch the car as it passes. As it turns the corner, passengers come face to face with a giant spinning rock crusher. The cart quickly drops beneath the grinder and whips around a hairpin curve as the car slows to a stop. A crow calls loudly from somewhere above, and a small lever labeled mine gas cranks into the on position. Just like all mines, they have their, you know, mine gas. The mine gas, yeah.

That's a standard feature. Standard feature of a mine. That's right. What, your mine doesn't have any mine gas? The car ascends approximately 85 feet up a vertical wall of a track at a 90-degree angle. Graffiti litters the sheet metal walls on both sides. After reaching the top, the car drops down a short hill outside the ride building. I mean, reading this description is almost as fun as being on the ride itself this is great prose um a sign advertises burnt out

bridge ahead and the car swerves around the trestle a steep drop then sends the vehicle careening up a vertical u-turn the car proceeds to swing around a few small helices before plunging back into the abandoned mine building where it slows down now in the darkness the car stops at the peak of a hill a lit fuse is heard in the distance and soon becomes visible snaking along both sides of the car a green lantern suddenly illuminates sitting on top of a mound of dynamite and boxes hooked to the quickly approaching fuse as the lit portion reaches the dynamite simulated flames shoot out as the car drops beyond vertical drop of 95 degrees and into a barrel roll followed by a half loop.

The car slows, entering the final break as it returns to the station. Now, I just want to read here. There was an accident on this ride just this year. I mean, in the pandemic. During COVID, they were operating this thing. So if the methane don't get you... I was about to say, the mine gas is just COVID.

There's a little twist with the mine gas this year. That's exactly right. There was an accident on this ride just this year. On July 11, 2020, three park guests were walking on a pathway that trails underneath a bridged part of the ride when a decorative chain gave way and fell on top of them. One of the guests suffered from a laceration on her forehead and injured her arm.

The other woman was also taken to a hospital in an unknown condition and the third person was treated at the park. So kind of minor. The third person took advantage of dolly care. Yes. That's exactly right. Now, yeah, kind of minor, kind of a minor thing. But I think the important thing to remember here is that this roller coaster was built by Gerstlauer.

Gerstlauer built the Texas Giant ride, as I said earlier, in Six Flags Over Texas. But it has kind of a troubled history. And so this is what we mean when we say you're sort of taking your life into your own hands when you get on one of these rides. Gerstlauer is maybe best known for something that happened in the UK on a ride called the Smiler. It opened in 2013 as the world's first Gerstlauer Infinity coaster with 14 inversions. The Smiler holds the world record for most inversions on a roller coaster. However, it has experienced a series of incidents. And, by the way, if you're trying to track down any of this information,

it seems to me like roller coaster manufacturers are just as aggressive and litigious as like, you know, tobacco. Co-bosses. Co-bosses, right? They don't want you to know. I mean, it's kind of like the Boeing 737 thing. You know what I mean? It's like they don't want you to talk about this.

They want to try to make sure that all the searches that come up on the internet turn you away from this. So, for example, if you search incidents at Gerstlauer, hardly anything will come up. You have to do a little bit of digging. The Smiler, this is something that happened in 2015. Let's see if I can find this the ride has experienced a number of structural and technical issues

the most serious incident occurred on 2nd of June 2015 when a loaded train collided with an empty test train causing serious injuries to a number of riders an additional train has been added to the circuit when an empty train so I mean it's like you'd have to explain this to me Justin but like number of riders an additional train has been added to the circuit when an empty train so i mean it's like you'd have to explain this to me justin but like um roller coasters operate basic

on the same sort of basic idea as a train track right like yeah so you got extra wheels on the bottom to keep it on the track but you know you you know you can't have like a roller coaster just have two trains on there and pass each other you You know, they're going to smash into each other. They're supposed to have blocks. Right. Right. So that two trains can't be in the same spot at the same time. I guess, you know, they screwed up.

Right. No, I mean, there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, seven different incidents on the Smiler. The Smiler does not cause smiles um seems like it's uh poorly named yeah i don't know if you're if you're into if you're into just horrific disasters it'll put a smile on your face um no i mean there's all kinds of stuff on reddit Reddit as well about Gerstlauer and some of the rides that they've manufactured and operated. So that's the Mystery Mine at Dollywood. There's a few other incidents at Dollywood.

One of them was on the Timber Tower in June. So the Timber Tower, let's see if I can find this real quick. Do you know exactly what the Timber Tower is, Tom? Did you ever hear about it or ride it when you went to Dollywood? I rode the

Timber Wolf, which is the big water slide thingy, I think. Oh, the Topple Tower, I'm sorry. No, it is Timber Tower, my bad. Thank you, I think. Oh, the topple tower. I'm sorry. No, it is timber tower. My bad. June 16, 2007. The topple tower installation, known as timber tower at Dollywood, became stuck

after a faulty safety sensor engaged. The tower was in an upright position with the gondola at the top. The safety system would not let operators override the sensor, leaving 40 passengers stranded on the ride for up to six hours. This caused them... So this resulted in a lawsuit in 2012

that was resolved between Dolly Wood and the lawyer for the class action lawsuit. It resolved out of court. But this is kind of what I'm talking about. I mean, like, if you're someone like Dolly, this isn't good press. You don't want this. You don't want Meemaw and Papaw getting stuck with little cousin Timmy up on top of Topple Tower for six hours.

That's a bad look, man. Somebody definitely pissed on themselves during that time. Absolutely. I would have. I just let it ride, man, somebody definitely pissed on themselves during that time. Absolutely. I would have. I just let it ride, man. Save here. If you're like upside down, you might have pissed on someone else. Yeah, that's true.

That's right. That is right. Earlier we mentioned the Thunder Express, which, you know, earlier we mentioned recycled roller coasters. The Thunder Express was a roller coaster at Dollywood that was dismantled and shipped off to Six Flags St. Louis. St. Louis. St. Louis.

It has been several different places. Before it was at Dollywood, I think it was at the River King Coal Mine. What is... That would be funny if they were taking tracks out of coal mines and reconstructing those roller coasters. Just have one continuous traveling roller coaster. They just build the tracks in front of the train until it gets to the next theme park.

Oh, my God. Yeah, the Thunder Express, like I said, it was taken down in 1988 after this happened in 1984. This was before, to be fair, this was before Dollywood took over Silver Dollar City. 1984, a 46-year-old woman from Indianapolis, Indiana, was rising the Railblazer roller coaster, the Thunder Express, when she was flung from the ride and fell 20 feet to her death. Park officials claimed that the woman fainted and fell out of the car, but her husband, who had been beside her, said that she had not fainted,

but had simply been tossed from the ride when it whipped around a curve. At the time, this is the thing that blew my mind. This is the only reason I'm reading this news item. At the time, the ride was the only third stand-up roller coaster in the world, but following this incident, it was converted back to a sit-down roller coaster. Why the fuck would you have a stand-up roller coaster in the world. But following this incident, it was converted back to a sit-down roller coaster. Why the fuck would you have a stand-up roller coaster? I've ridden stand-up.

They got... Oh, I have seen those. I think. There's one at Kentucky Kingdom that I rode one time, and it was awful. How do they keep you on it? Justin, what is the physics here? Apparently they don't.

Good point. Oh, man. You're supposed to have restraints on these things. But, like, I don't know. Right, right. Every time we would take, like, a field trip to a theme park when i was in like middle school or high school elementary school one of the teachers would always say invariably if y'all knew what kept you on those rides you wouldn't ride them then they were just

kind of like snicker menacingly okay maybe this is what they're talking about. Are they implying some kind of magic? Dark, satanic? I think they were just saying it was like gravity and something, something. I mean, you are relying on the good graces. It's kind of like eating hot dogs or something. You know what I mean? It's like if you knew what went into it. I mean, the roller coaster restraints seem to –

I've never really ridden too many roller coasters i have friends who have those up at one of my friends was trying to convince me to get on the cyclone at coney island a while back yeah and um well for for for reasons we were not able to go on that ride but my friend was like you know i'm gonna i'm gonna go on this other roller coaster right next to it right um and he he was uh'm going to go on this other roller coaster right next to it, right? And he was, I think, the only person on the roller coaster train. And just, like, after the first drop, he just slipped out of the restraints. And he was just holding on for dear life the rest of the way.

Holy shit, dude. Oh, my God. Yeah. Not so good. Not so good. Something you want to avoid. Oh my god Yeah Not so good Not so good Something you want to avoid Again it hints at like When you go in an amusement park

You are essentially taking Something in You know you're taking your life Into your own hands But I find this to be really A really fascinating Feature about roller coasters

because everybody knows that you're taking your life into your own hands, and everybody knows that there are statistics. It's kind of like rock climbing or skydiving. Are you going to be the one that gets decapitated? Eh, does it matter? Are you going to get stuck under a rock and have to cut your arm off? You know? I try to avoid these things.

I don't want this to happen to me. Right. I don't want to make that choice. Right. Are you going to get stuck at the top of Topple Tower with your 86-year-old grandma and she's going to have to pee? If people got stuck upside down for six hours, like, wouldn't, like, they just pass out from all the blood rushing and, like, slip? You know what I mean? Yeah, I think so.

I mean, imagine being stuck upside down for six hours and you have to pee. You would pee and it would go up like this and it would go up. Straight up your nose. Jump off your nose. And down onto somebody else. Just a grotesque scene altogether. off your nose and down onto somebody else.

Just a grotesque scene altogether. Just humankind at its lowest. Like a goddamn Hieronymus Bosch painting but with a roller coaster. Oh, the irony that humanity is at its lowest at the top of the ride. At the top of the ride. At the top of the ride. Oh, my God, man.

But this is the interesting thing about it. I mean, like, you know, you might be the one that gets killed doing it, but there's, like, something weirdly tragicomic about it. It's like, well, you rolled the dice, and this is the way you went. And the weird thing to me about roller coasters is that if you look up all of these roller coasters that I've just

looked up on Wikipedia, Who is like the deadliest of the coasters? I don't know. You know what I mean? Which coaster has got more bodies on it than any hmm let's see let me see the big dipper in omaha nebraska roller coaster fell 35 feet to the ground killing four and injuring 17 it is the deadliest roller coaster in history at the time it was

considered the deadliest amusement park accident in U.S. history. It likely still is today. Dude, if I can... This is the roller coaster that shoots you. It doesn't keep you on the track. It looks like it shoots you off the track. Oh, no, this is... Yeah, that's an old wooden roller coaster, it looks like. Yeah, it's an old wooden one.

You're right. Amazing. Do they have those tracks, Justin, where they shoot upside down? Because it's like the first thing that comes up when I search this is a roller coaster that has a loop, but the top of the loop is not on it, and it's shooting you off the track. This appears to be a YouTube thumbnail. So you know they just Photoshopped that for clicks. Right, right.

It's not real. You're right. Fuck. Well. Yeah, no. I think that would be too unsafe even for theme park operators. At theme parks, as society gets more and more dangerous and life becomes cheaper and cheaper, they probably will start doing that.

They'll probably start doing, like, they'll give you a gun and you can put an apple on your partner's head and you'll do, like, the Johnny Appleseed game or whatever where you have to shoot the apple off your partner's head. Yes, the William Tell experience. Yes. No, but like on all of these roller coasters. Russian roulette, the ride. Yeah, it sends you in the loop of the

revolver itself. And then if you land in the chamber with the gun, you know, you get shot out of it. Yeah. No, they just shoot every sixth person who enters the park. It's just a chance you take it. That's right. But so like the icon of the roller coaster in the American imagination is pretty fascinating to me. icon of the roller coaster in the American imagination is pretty fascinating to me.

If you look up most of these roller coasters online, the image that pops up first will never be the roller coasters themselves. It'll always be the front of the roller coaster or the sign advertising it. It's almost like you're supposed to do two things when you get onto a roller coaster. I'm kind of trying to explore the psychological or maybe ideology involved here. You're supposed to think you're getting onto something that will deliver ecstasy to you. It'll be ecstatic. It'll be fun.

But at the same time, you are supposed to suppress the part of yourself that says, will I die today? Will I die right now? And that is a fascinating thing that these places ask you to do. They ask you to basically suppress the urge to think, will this be my last day on earth? Do I have

all my things arranged? Are my affairs in order before I go for the William Tell experience? Yes. Right, right. I just look at these things and I'm like, there's a huge amount of opportunities for me for my wallet to fall out of my pocket yeah it's never be recoverable

very true your wallet your inhaler imagine i've got asthma my inhaler fell out on one of these i'd be fucked your your glasses your glasses uh any any other? Any other vital piece of equipment? Someone's pacemaker just gets sucked out of their chest. Oh, God. Yeah, Dolly tried to make a roller coaster kill a lot of people with the Lightning Rod roller coaster. It was a wooden roller coaster located at lot of people with the lightning rod roller coaster. It was a wooden roller coaster located at Dollywood marketed as the world's first launched to wooden roller coaster.

I don't know what that means. The thing, the ride is themed. Instead of having a chain lift, there's just something that launches the train out of the station. I see. It seems like a poor decision on a wooden roller coaster but that's that's that's just one man's opinion um well perhaps this is why it never got long it never or maybe it is

working now uh let's see here the ride is themed to a hot to hot rod cars from the 1950s so this is basically the joe biden ride manufactured by rocky mountain construction it was originally planned to debut on opening day in 2016 but a problem with the ride's unique launch system you're right justin delayed the opening to june 13th 2016 a mechanical issue occurred the following week resulting in an extended closure that caused lightning rod to This is... This coaster is currently closed. It was closed for the 2020 season. They're constantly having to fix this thing, apparently. It was closed for the 2020 season while the manufacturer performed necessary changes.

The coaster was also taken off of Dollywood's website around the same time. Let's see. Again, this is pretty fascinating. I mean, if you're Dolly, why would you want this on your website? Why would you want this kind of... Apparently she doesn't.

The thing about owning a theme park or whatever, people dispute this with me on the internet all the time yes she this is part of her portfolio she does have an owning interest in it she's not just licensing her name and stepping away from it like she is active in the the the goings on like i put like owning a theme park up there with like like owning a pawn shop or being a landlord honestly it's like a very it's it's an ignoble profession yeah yeah yeah loan sharking us up there too yeah yeah yeah no you're right um uh yeah i mean is there anything we're missing here any rides in particular you guys want to cover for dolly what any any larger themes or issues we need to

cover with either the amusement park the the the roller coaster any of these rides, or Dolly herself? There were two which fascinated me. They're not rides. They're sort of exhibits at the park. Okay. They have a museum called Rags to Riches, the Dolly Parton story. Which I guess has just a bunch of exhibits from Dolly Parton's life. You know, you can go there and learn about Dolly Parton, right? And then they have a replica of the cabin that was Dolly Parton's childhood home.

They do, yeah. Yeah, and I was just, this is, there's a cult of personality here happening. I don't know when someone is going to stand up and denounce dolly finally i guess that's what we're doing here we're doing we're doing khrushchev's secret speech but it's just fascinating that the whole park is just designed around cultivating a parasocial relationship as opposed to you know you're not going there you're not going there to ride a roller coaster so much as you're going there to you know be a part of dolly's life yeah i mean theoretically you could do this for any celeb who you have a part imagine

the joe rogan uh theme park people have parasocial relationship with him you have to do mma fights and shit i assume taylor swift will start a theme park at some point that's that's who i'm i'm betting money on uh that's a smart one yeah yeah it's weird like i wonder what would be a nice touch is if they uh with this life of dolly ride if they just like transposed her face on nelson mandela's part of the apartheid thing and just like just it did this completely revisionist history of like dolly was like this forrest gump figure and all of like history's like great liberatory like you know i've never

heard this version of the mandela effect before but it's like dolly was there in tiananmen square and anything else dolly's standing in front of the tank yeah yeah a young american student that had gotten a visa to study in china then the rags to riches ride i mean it'd be funny if they turned it into a ride and you have to overcome all these obstacles, like not having health care and have to get your toes cut off by a broken mason jar. That's just working at the park, though.

Yeah, you just get a job for seven and a quarter an hour and you get the same experience. You have to fight with an African National Congress alongside Nelson Mandela. get a job for seven and a quarter an hour you get the same experience yes you have to fight with an african national congress alongside nelson mandela it's hard yeah yeah no you're that that is you're exactly right justin it's the most fascinating aspect of it i mean you can you can imagine a future where all of our celebrities have their own theme parks and they will they absolutely will yes um this will be the blueprint of course um but uh but dolly cut jolene jailed in the south african prison

not many people know this but she actually wasn't in Nashville for many of those years. But Johannesburg. Yeah, you know how there's those escape rooms? Have you all seen those? Yes. Imagine a ride at Dollywood that's an escape room, but you have to escape from a South African prison. Yeah. I never understood those.

I have won every escape room by not going in them in the first place I have escaped the room by not entering it a good strategy well I guess that about covers it any closing thoughts fellas we're at an hour here it's been a fascinating journey,

like I said, into the belly of the beast, into Mordor. And we've learned a lot. My question, Justin, just to put a bow on it is, in your estimation as an engineer, how, like, should I quit riding roller coasters? Do I need to keep going? What would your recommendation be? I would say my professional recommendation is

some roller coasters are better than others. Okay. Yeah. Use your best judgment. Find out the better ones and stick with those. Exactly. Do your research like any good consumer. Exactly. the better ones and stick with those exactly do your research like any good consumer yeah exactly

and uh the marketplace of roller coaster ideas right right right and uh maybe uh well i guess it ended poorly for soapy but i was gonna say maybe you don't end up on the business end of uh you know burgeoning soap gangster enterprise you may find yourself shot on the end of the juno pier yeah yeah that's right um well justin thanks for uh being down to do this we appreciate it do you have anything thanks for having me on yeah no we i love the show like i said um and you know you have anything you want to plug and i I love the show, like I said. And, you know, you have anything you want to plug? I mean, plug the show, obviously. Where can they find you?

So I have a podcast called Well, There's Your Problem. It is a podcast about engineering disasters with slides. It has a visual component. So we are on the YouTube. We are on wherever podcasts are sold. We have a Patreon where you can listen to some bonus episodes. We do one a month. It is $2.

Well, our tiers go from $2 up to $15,000. That's the Mike Bloomberg tier. You guys. Go ahead. Sorry. Oh. No, that was it. That was the plug.

I was just going to say, go to YouTube, check it out. Because any show with a visual component is great. You guys just did an episode on the Biford Dolphin, I believe. I've not checked that out yet. I put an episode up about the Hindenburg this morning, actually. Right. Yeah. I was up until 5 a.m. editing that. Or waiting for it to render.

Got a bit of a slow start this morning. Yeah. Yeah. I've had a few of those myself. Our next bonus episode will be on the steam locomotive. Fascinating. Well, I mean, yeah, all of these are very fascinating. For me, it's having no background in this whatsoever.

And I think we've talked about the Biford Dolphin thing on the show before. It was a very fucked up and fascinating disaster in its own right. So definitely go check that out. Like I said, Justin, thanks so much for joining us. Let's let's do it again sometime. That sounds good. Yeah. And feel free to come on my show. Oh, yeah. We would love to. Yeah. All right, Justin. Well, we will talk to you next time.

Thank you so much. I want this job.