Pigeon Forge, Tennessee: Dollywood

How to Get a Free Day at Dollywood: I once worked at Dollywood during a summer break from college -- briefly that is, until I was an unfortunate victim of their hillbilly management style as a cast member on the Dollywood Express. From my experience, it seems that Dollywood would rather have a couple literally run over by their 110-ton, coal-fired, steam locomotive than have a simpleton like me "ruin" their day by asking them to get off the tracks.

The Dollywood Express attraction involves a five-mile round trip up into the outer reaches of the mountainous terrain of the park. Along the way, the train is "held up" by a fictional group of characters for a short interactive comedy skit. Cheesy as it was, it was always fun. We alternated positions, switching from actors, to ride attendants, to safety attendants at the gates. In order to give visitors a truly authentic feel for the 1800s, the gates at the train crossings were designed to be manually operated when a train was coming. Most reasonable people would not argue with a piece of machinery even greatly outweighing Dolly's massive mammaries.

However, as my luck would have it, I encountered the two most unreasonable people in all of Pigeon Forge one day. In an attempt to prevent the couple from entering the Kingdom of God as flat as one of the pancakes that can be found at any of the 200+ pancake houses on the Pigeon Forge strip, I incurred their wrath. Perhaps it was their estimated combined weight of over 1000 pounds, or maybe even their unwillingness to part from their large chocolate milkshakes that warranted such hostile opposition to the urgency in my voice as I attempted to ask them to get off the tracks as the locomotive was less than 100 yards away.

In any event, they reported my "rudeness" to the park manager, I found myself out of work that summer, and they got themselves a full refund.

Dolly Parton, who apparently sold her soul to the Devil of Tourism in the 1980s, has thumbed her nose at convention once again by opening an exhibit of her junk at her Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, TN.