The Hidden Life of Dollywood During the Off-Season
When Dollywood is closed during January, February and early March, the park falls silent. No rides are in motion, no music plays from the speakers, and the familiar scent of cinnamon bread doesn’t linger in the air. However, even when it’s closed, the park is anything but quiet.
Dollywood in the off-season is a hive of activity as workers prepare the Pigeon Forge theme park for another exciting season. The sounds of drills and jackhammers echo through the park. Trucks and golf carts move quickly back and forth. Crews transport lumber to replace woodwork. Workers meticulously shine light posts. Fresh paint dries on walls and walkways.
“It’s not for the faint of heart, let me just tell you,” said Barry Stiltner, maintenance and construction director. “The pace and pressure to get the park ready for a new season within a limited timeframe is intense.”
While Dollywood fans eagerly await the March 13 opening day, multiple departments work together to execute a plan that has been months in the making. “We’re all climbing up the same mountain. We’re just going up a different side of it,” explained Roger White, entertainment manager.
Preparations Begin Before the Season Ends
One of the biggest misconceptions about Dollywood is that operations slow down or stop when the park closes during the winter. In reality, the off-season is when things really get busy. There’s construction, repairs, hiring and training, redecorating, and much more.
Way before the season ends, preparations for the next one begin. Planning starts about a year out, and earlier than that is even better. “If we didn’t do that, it’s a mess,” said Eric Barlow, culinary operations manager.
This planning spans across every department in the park, including food services, entertainment, engineering, maintenance, and special events. Each department quickly gets to work once the last guest leaves Dollywood in early January.
“This year we closed on Sunday,” Stiltner said. “The following Monday morning after closing, there were probably buildings already demolished by the end of the next day that we are going to remove, or we’ve already got shovels in the ground, so to speak.”
While Christmas decorations come down, buildings are refurbished, and rides are deconstructed and inspected. Chefs are testing new menu items, auditions are being held, and springtime decorations are going up.
“I think we’re kind of used to it by now. We know what to expect, and we know we’re just going to have to deal with it because March 13 is going to be here whether we want it to be or not. So, we got to be ready,” White said.
The Dollywood Orchestra
Dollywood operates like a mini city within Pigeon Forge. There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes, overnight, and even underground, all in the pursuit of the park’s goal to create memories worth repeating for guests. It might seem chaotic to an outsider, especially with multiple departments simultaneously at work, but they pull it off.
“It’s a big orchestra that we’re having to play with here,” Stiltner said, a fitting metaphor for Parton’s theme park.
In February, just over a month out from opening for its 41st season, crews were widening the walkway to Celebrity Theater to increase traffic flow, updating drainage systems to reduce flooding issues, expanding restrooms in the Timber Canyon area, enclosing the new NightFlight Expedition ride, and upgrading Blazing Fury and Mystery Mine.
The team responsible for decorating the seasonal festivals not only assesses needs for the year but also coordinates with other departments to make their new elements pop through specific color schemes, banners, graphics, and other elements.
Setting Dollywood’s Stages
With the legendary Dolly Parton as the park’s Dreamer-in-Chief, Dollywood’s entertainment team might have one of the hardest tasks each year. “We don’t live up to it. We kind of shoot for it, I suppose,” White said. “There’s only one Dolly, and she sets a mighty high bar for all of us.”
Ahead of the 2026 opening, Dollywood redid seating in theaters, replaced audio cables, and repaired outside speakers that are exposed to the elements all year. Main shows such as “From the Heart: The Life and Music of Dolly Parton” and popular acts like Gazillion Bubble Show and Perondi’s Stunt Dog Experience are already booked. Auditions for smaller acts and shows planned for the Harvest and Christmas festivals continue during the off-season.
“You have to have people that plan, you have to have people that execute, you have to have people that support, you have to have creative people. And all of us work together very well as a team to get stuff done because we all understand the goal,” White said.
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Rain, snow, drones, and other challenges
Winter work at Dollywood has its challenges beyond the tight timeframe. Weather in the Great Smoky Mountains is one of the main culprits. “We have to do it regardless of the weather. If it’s raining, you know what, we’re just going to get wet,” said Kris Houser, who oversees the decorations and seasonal festivals.
Stiltner hates when snow is in the forecast. When East Tennessee had multiple winter storms in January and February, preparation for the 2026 season was halted, and crucial scheduled hiring events were canceled. Luckily for on-site work, Dollywood has a snow and ice removal crew. Stiltner is responsible for organizing the team to treat the company’s two resorts – which, unlike the park, continue to operate during the winter season – as well as Dollywood’s streets. For the late-January snowstorm, Stiltner arranged for crew members to stay at a Dollywood resort so they wouldn’t have to drive to work in the snow.
Sometimes, when it’s crunch time and opening day continues to approach, they’ll shift to a seven-day work schedule – or even overnight hours.
“We all love the challenge. That’s what wakes us up in the morning, you know – what is in store for me today or what do I have to do?” Barlow said. He heads Dollywood’s large culinary team, cooking up creative seasonal menu items while balancing crowd favorites and Southern classics.
For White, creating a diverse lineup of shows and specialty acts is the easy part. But elevating entertainment offerings and being innovative with fireworks, drones, and other technology are the yearly challenges he faces.
“Drones are still pretty cool, but they’re kind of not as cool as they were when we first started doing it. So every year we add different stuff to it,” White explained.
White only adds new technology or spectacles if they can be utilized in meaningful ways. Storytelling is a key part of Dollywood, whether it’s Parton’s story or honoring the Smokies. That’s how he gauges how to incorporate new technology, not just because it’s the “cool” thing to do.
“It’s just like a tree,” White said. “If you have a tree that has really strong roots and the trunk is really strong, you want to be able to keep it growing and add different limbs and different leaves and different branches.”
It’s All in the Details
It’s easy to see all the big things Dollywood does behind the scenes for a new season. But pull the curtain back even more, and even loyal season passholders might be surprised at what it takes to keep Dollywood running throughout the season.
For instance, 800 people work in Dollywood’s culinary department during the season, and they manage over 40 stations. Hundreds of people per day (or night) help transition the park into seasonal festivals. If closed for a few days, the park sometimes shifts to 24-hour operations to get the festivals ready.
And those 6 million lights for Smoky Mountains Christmas? In a very Dolly way, they start to go up little by little in the summer and throughout fall, just in time for the winter-themed festival to begin.
“There’s a certain way you twist the light strands to make sure it’s tight and it’s going to hold. A lot of people don’t do that,” Houser said, adding that bulbs face and are spaced a specific way, too.
“A lot of people just staple them up and they’re all going every which way. And there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just that this is the path we’ve chosen,” he said.
Guests rushing from coaster to coaster might not realize the level of detail and care that goes into preparing the park.
“We care about what we do day in and day out and I think that’s what the culture has been at Dollywood,” Barlow said. “I think people would like to know that we truly do live by (our motto) and we do care about every single person that comes in a park and their experience with us while they’re here.”
‘Everybody Needs a Little Dab of Dolly’
The off-season version of Dollywood isn’t all rhinestones and glitter like the regular season. It becomes a work zone with paint, tools, construction equipment, and a team of employees working quickly and efficiently. Obstacles arise. But planning, experience, and collaboration across departments keep Dolly Parton’s dream alive for another year.
“It’s crazy out right now. It’s just nuts. Everybody needs a little dab of Dolly. And we’re happy to bring it, when people come to visit us,” White said.
Most guests will never see the construction work or the overnight shifts. But the payoff for the hard work during the two-and-a-half-month-long off-season is even more special when they walk through the park during the regular season.
“It’s great to see the guests smile and laugh and having a great family time,” Stiltner said, “But when you hear them say stuff (about things) that you have done that you didn’t think no one would ever notice, (you feel appreciated).”
