I’ve had Silver Dollar City on my bucket list for two decades and I’m happy to say the 1880s Ozarks theme park didn’t disappoint after such a long wait and a seemingly endless buildup.
Silver Dollar City most recently popped up on my radar again when the park topped the 2020 USA Today Readers Choice Awards as America’s best theme park. I’d been aware of the park since 2001 when the WildFire roller coaster by Switzerland-based ridemaker Bolliger & Mabillard debuted at the park. Silver Dollar City gained national attention in 2013 when Outlaw Run won the Amusement Today Golden Ticket award for best new attraction. But for many on the U.S. coasts, the mere mention of Silver Dollar City draws blank stares.
I visited Silver Dollar City in the Missouri tourist town of Branson at the tail end of a mid-July road trip that included stops in New Orleans, Memphis and along the Mississippi Blues Trail.
It’s important to mention Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas have become the epicenter of the COVID-19 delta variant. I’m vaccinated and practiced the same coronavirus health and safety measures at Silver Dollar City that I did during my most recent trip to Disneyland — wearing my mask in crowded places, attraction queues, indoor spaces and on ride vehicles where social distancing wasn’t possible.
Before I left on my trip, I was surprised how many people had never heard of Silver Dollar City. Certainly theme park fans and roller coaster enthusiasts across the U.S. and around the world knew the park well, but many Southern Californians familiar with Disney, Universal, SeaWorld and Six Flags had never heard of Silver Dollar City.
The USA Today award was notable to me because I’d visited all the other theme parks in the top 10 except for Silver Dollar City. The list was full of great regional parks like Cedar Point, Kennywood, Dollywood, Hersheypark, Knoebels and Knott’s Berry Farm — and was surprisingly void of any Disney, Universal or Six Flags parks.
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Silver Dollar City reminded me a whole lot of Dollywood and Knott’s.
The Dollywood-Silver Dollar City comparison is obvious since both parks are operated by family-owned Herschend Entertainment. The Tennessee park was called Silver Dollar City before country singer Dolly Parton got involved. Silver Dollar City employees refer to Dollywood as SDCT — with the T standing for Tennessee.
Knott’s popped into my head dozens of times during my Silver Dollar City visit. What stood out the most to me about Silver Dollar City was how the singular theme of the 1880s Ozarks stretched from the front gate to the back of the park and infused every single inch of the place. Imagine if Calico Ghost Town covered all 100-plus acres of Knott’s and you begin to get the idea of what’s happening at Silver Dollar City.
The Main Street, Homestead Ridge and Midtown areas of Silver Dollar City are filled with period buildings that replicate 1880s Ozarks with some authentic structures painstakingly moved to the park one board or log at a time.
It’s pretty clear Knott’s and other theme parks around the country have been paying close attention to what Silver Dollar City has been doing over the past few years. Benchmark visits by theme park rivals have become common occurrences at Silver Dollar City.
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The American coasts may not be as familiar with the park, but the heartland has known about the place for decades. While Silver Dollar City draws many regulars from Missouri and neighboring Arkansas, the park attracts visitors from a geographic base stretching from Chicago to Houston and Denver to Memphis.
The first thing you notice when you set foot in Silver Dollar City is the abundant shade. It’s one of the shadiest theme parks I’ve ever visited — ranking up there with Dollywood and Knoebels. The park has a policy of planting two trees for every one removed during expansion projects. Removing bigger trees must go before a committee. That’s a policy Disneyland could have used in building Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and Avengers Campus — both vast cement deserts with little to no shade.
The Ozark Mountains location means Silver Dollar City also has some steep climbs. Not as bad as Six Flags Magic Mountain — but certainly close. An ingenious corkscrew walkway in the middle of the park helps make the trek up the hill toward the entrance less strenuous.
The park’s spaghetti bowl layout encourages wandering and exploring with little rhyme or reason to the meandering pathways. The superb Silver Dollar City mobile app has a park map that draws your route from point A to point B — a simple innovation every theme park should adopt.
One of the things that stands out about Silver Dollar City is the sheer amount of craftspeople at work in the park and the abundance of shops that sell their wares. We’re not talking about the Knott’s blacksmith making a few horseshoes that are sold as souvenir collectibles to curious tourists. Pottery, glass, candles, soap and candy are all made in large quantities and sold in Silver Dollar City.
There’s a silversmith who will turn your family silverware into rings, business card holders and flower bud vases. The carousel’s one-of-a-kind horses, bears and mules were hand-carved by Silver Dollar City woodcarvers. Leftover cinnamon bread made in the bakery is the key ingredient in the crazy-good bread pudding at the new Rivertown Smokehouse — unless the wildly popular cinnamon bread sells out and then the bakers have to make more in the morning just for the delicious side dish.
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out who in their right mind would buy furniture at a theme park. But when you see the operation at Silver Dollar City you immediately realize why there is an eight-month waiting list for furniture orders. The working furniture factory on display at the park uses woodworking pulley belts to power saws and lathes that turn lumber into beds, dressers and complete living room sets.
Probably the most amazing sight at the park is the log hewer who spends all day chopping 16-foot tree trunks into life-size Lincoln Logs. The logs are used to rebuild 1880s-style buildings throughout the park and provide the lumber for all the luxury log cabins built at the Silver Dollar City Campground.
The park has always embraced its hillfolk heritage with five episodes of the “Beverly Hillbillies” filmed at Silver Dollar City in 1969 at the peak of the show’s popularity. The park’s Homestead Pickers do their own rap version of the show’s theme song.
Entertainment plays a big role at the park with a bluegrass and gospel festival in the spring, can-can dancers in the saloon and the Harlem Globetrotters regularly dropping by for basketball skills showcases. The Herschend-operated Dolly Parton’s Stampede dinner attraction and Showboat Branson Belle riverboat show can be found a few miles away.
Silver Dollar City visitors love to travel around the park on their stomachs.
The new Rivertown Smokehouse serves fall-off-the-bone baby back ribs, tender brisket and juicy pulled pork. The Tater Twist spiral-cut potato chips on a stick are a fan favorite — in part because you can shake all the spicy buffalo, garlic parmesan or salt and vinegar seasoning on them that you want. The five-foot-wide iron skillets are showstoppers — serving everything from sausage and potatoes to jambalaya to succotash.
The first ride I went on at Silver Dollar City was also the oldest. The 1958 funicular cable train that lifts visitors out of the Marvel Cave at the end of their tour was as thrilling and enjoyable as any ride I would hop on at Silver Dollar City. The installation of the underground train instantly boosted the number of visitors to Marvel Cave and led to the birth of the theme park in 1960.
There would be no Silver Dollar City without Marvel Cave. The park is built on top of the 500-foot-deep cavern — which was the original tourist attraction in the area when it opened in 1894.
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The birth of Silver Dollar City parallels the birth of Knott’s in many ways. The 1880s Ozarks town at the entrance of what is today Silver Dollar City was built to give Marvel Cave visitors more to do while they waited their turn to descend into the sinkhole — much like the 1880s Calico Ghost Town was created to keep hungry diners busy while they waited to eat at Mrs. Knott’s chicken dinner restaurant.
Walking down into Marvel Cave will take your breath away. The cavern is stunning for both its size and beauty. My favorite story during the tour involved early cavern visitors who repelled more than 100 feet down a rope only to be handed a pair of overalls with leather sewn into the backside — so they could slide on their bottoms down the debris pile further into the cave in nearly pitch darkness. Now that sounds like a thrill ride I’d like to try.
I absolutely love classic amusement park attractions and Silver Dollar City has three of them — Grandfather’s Mansion, Flooded Mine and Fire in the Hole.
The 1960 Grandfather’s Mansion is an anti-gravity house with slanting floors and upside-down rooms. For its 100th anniversary celebration, Knott’s has brought back a tribute to the old Haunted Shack that employed many of the same gags.
Silver Dollar City’s 1968 Flooded Mine travels through a prison mine where the inmates are trying to escape. The charming throwback boat ride is filled with animatronic prisoners caught in water-logged comic scenes.
The 1972 Fire in the Hole passes through a town set ablaze by the local Baldknobbers vigilante group from the 1880s. The old ride is definitely showing its age. Don’t be surprised if you see the dark ride-roller coaster combo attraction get some TLC at SDC in the coming years. A similar version of the ride called Blazing Fury can be found at Dollywood.
Another classic SDC ride is the Frisco Silver Dollar Line steam train. The 20-minute journey through the Ozark countryside is interrupted by a train robbery that turns into an extended comedy routine. Knott’s mines much of the same terrain with its great train robbery skits.
Today’s Silver Dollar City is known for an increasingly outstanding lineup of world-class rides. The biggest attractions rim the perimeter of the park and push up against a lush forest that seemingly stretches through the mountains as far as the eye can see.
The $10 million Outlaw Run really put Silver Dollar City on the map nearly a decade ago. Rocky Mountain Construction’s first wooden coaster with three inversions shocked ride enthusiasts and started a revolution in the amusement industry that is still reverberating today. There would be no Twisted Colossus at Magic Mountain or Railblazer at California’s Great America without Silver Dollar City blazing the trail in 2013 with Outlaw Run. The great debate ignited by Outlaw Run still rages today: Is it a wooden or hybrid coaster? But ultimately who cares. It’s a rip-roaring good ride that leaves you wondering which way is up.
The $26 million Time Traveller from Germany’s Mack Rides is Silver Dollar City’s newest coaster. The 2018 spinning coaster debuted as the tallest and fastest ride of its kind and the world’s first to have three inversions. The spinning cars mean you never know which way you’re going to enter or exit any loop, twist or turn.
The $23 million Mystic River Falls is the newest and wettest ride at Silver Dollar City. The 2020 river rapids ride is propelled by 200,000 gallons per minute of gushing, churning and swirling water over a half-mile journey that lasts more than 5 minutes. That was 5 minutes too long for me. I’m not a big fan of getting wet in a theme park — that’s what water parks are for. Mystic River Falls left me as wet as I could possibly get. Three cycles in the nearby body dryers could not get me dry.
The $10 million PowderKeg coaster has one of the most unusual lift hills you will ever experience. The 2005 coaster travels one train length out of the station onto a track segment that then rises diagonally up an incline — a leftover feature from the former Buzzsaw Falls water coaster that was reused for PowderKeg. The rest of the ride offers a high-speed trip over the treetops with plenty of floater hills powered by an initial air launch and a more traditional mid-ride chain lift hill.
The $14 million WildFire B&M steel beast with an 1880s Ozarks flying machine theme whips through an Immelmann loop, cobra roll and corkscrew at a top speed of 66 mph. You can see for miles from the top of the lift hill — including other coaster tracks snaking in and out of the trees.
The TNT-themed Thunderation coaster is a classic Arrow Dynamics mine train ride that immediately dips into a gravity-propelled drop with a mid-run lift hill and a pair of tunnels. The 1993 coaster gets started right away and doesn’t let up as it rambles through the woods.
As you can see, the park isn’t afraid to spend big bucks on top-of-the-line thrill rides. Silver Dollar City has dropped $100 million on new attractions over the past decade — including the Outlaw Run coaster (2013), Fireman’s Landing themed land (2015), Time Traveller coaster (2018) and Mystic River Falls rapids ride (2020).
The next decade looks just as promising for Silver Dollar City. Hopefully, it won’t take me another 20 years to get back to the park.
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Which brings me to the biggest question of all: Is Silver Dollar City really America’s best theme park?
I’d go with Disneyland as America’s best in a theoretical debate — the Anaheim pop culture institution gave birth to the modern theme park, has an unparalleled collection of attractions and is my home team pick. My favorite American theme park is still Knoebels in Pennsylvania because I love the charming remote location of the old-school ride collection.
Silver Dollar City lived up to the hype, anticipation and even my high expectations — something that rarely ever happens for me. The shady park steeped in Ozarks history with fun food, creative craftspeople and world-class rides is right where it belongs on any top 10 list of America’s best theme parks.
