Flash flooding soaks Dollywood, park reopens the next day

The creeks in the park will occasionally rise after heavy rain but I have never seen anything like this before. Photos from the park today appear to show that most of the major pathways are clear and cleaned up.

What's surprising is that it's so hilly, you'd think the water had somewhere to go. But if I'm remembering right, the parking lot is all at the bottom.

The parking lot flooding isn't too much of a surprise since it seems to be the lowest point, but it was wild to see even the higher portions of the park like Wild Eagle and Wildwood Grove see so much water accumulating.

I was shocked to see video of people wading through waist deep water that was flowing pretty strongly. They were hanging on tight to their kids. I'm surprised the park didn't intervene and hold everyone until the worst of it subsided.

I saw some videos of midways roped off to keep people out of the water, so it depends on the when and where. That's how flash floods work, I suppose.

Yeah, I get that. I'm just surprised they let them leave the front gate area and walk back through the current toward the parked cars. That current looked as if it could sweep someone off their feet.

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wahoo skipper:
I'm just surprised they let them leave the front gate area and walk back through the current toward the parked cars.

While I have to believe the park has an emergency response plan, honestly, I'm not sure any response plan is going to be enough to really handle this type of occurrence. I mean, to go from sunshine to huge amounts of water gushing in about an hour, there's only so much you can do. And I'm not sure the park had a lot of dry space to evacuate / keep people, as I bet the "natural" areas to put people (Jukebox Junction, Rivertown, and Showstreet) were probably all pretty soggy, and I suspect going uphill to craftsman valley might have been challenging as well, really leaving only Wildwood Grove and Timber Canyon to be "drier".

Walt S:

I'm not sure any response plan is going to be enough to really handle this type of occurrence.

For real. Remember Hershey a few years back? They had to put down a couple Bison due to the speed the water rose. Last time this happened at Dollywood was six years ago and from everything I've read, the park remained open, so seemingly wasn't as bad as the other day.

I've only been to the park twice so I don't know it very well, but those are good points with regards to options. Maybe there simply weren't any. Also, I suppose they could have had staff at the gates warning people of the possible danger of walking to the cars...but I'm not sure they could forcibly keep them from doing so.