Construction that began last winter for one of summer’s hottest new attractions—Dollywood’s Splash Country’s Big Bear Plunge—is nearing completion.
Big Bear Plunge is the water park’s new $1.4 million white water rafting experience that takes passengers on a 548-foot-long ride through dark caverns featuring winding bends and steep drops reminiscent of challenging river expeditions.
Open 10-foot-wide channel sections send the five-passenger rafts downriver banking through the tree tops—reaching a peak elevation of 70 feet—before plunging into total darkness in a nine-foot-diameter tunnel that winds through an “S” curve. Accompanied only by the sounds of gushing water and echoing screams, the rafts are then dropped into a 12-foot-diameter tunnel featuring extreme banking, propelling the rafts upward around a seemingly never-ending sweeping curve. Finally, the rafts re-emerge into daylight where they unexpectedly plunge down multi-bump cliff drops into a 21- by 70-foot splash pool.
According to
Roger Walters ,
Dollywood ’s Vice President of Maintenance and Construction, Big Bear Plunge is 60 percent complete and well on track for its scheduled June opening. The ride’s underground plumbing is installed. In addition, approximately 90 percent of the concrete footings that support the slide have been poured and more than 175 feet of the ride’s fiberglass slide is in place. Off-site, 80 percent of the steel fabrication has been completed. Once the steel supports are erected, work will begin on the ride’s 50-foot-tall start tower.
Among the unique features Big Bear Plunge offers is a “water curtain.”
"The water curtain actually cycles water through the top and drops it on the riders,” Walters said. “While the rafts are racing through water, the water curtain offers another element of surprise for Big Bear Plunge passengers.”
Carefully situated in the natural terrain of
Dollywood ’s Splash Country’s 25-acre mountain “hollow,” Big Bear Plunge anchors Big Bear Ridge, a new themed area reminiscent of the
Smoky
Mountain ’s turn-of-the-century logging industry. Taking its name from the Smoky Mountains’ popular American Black Bear, Big Bear Plunge will be located adjacent to the Downbound Float Trip—the water park’s lazy river—and the Mountain Waves wave pool.
Dollywood ’s Splash Country’s begins its 2004 season May 29. For more information, call 1-800-DOLLYWOOD.
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Media: Contact Dollywood Public Relations Manager Pete Owens at 865-428-9486 or by email at powens@dollywood.com.