Dolly Parton unveils Dollywood’s newest attraction

Attractions

If there’s one thing about Dolly Parton’s 60-plus years career, it’s that she can put her sassy trademark stamp on anything and make it distinctively “Dolly.”

Last November, she released her first rock (and 49th solo) album, Rockstar, to prove she deserved her spot in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. And now, almost four decades after she started welcoming guests to Dollywood Parks & Resorts in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee (and only a year after Dollywood opened its new roller coaster, Big Bear Mountain), the country legend opened a sleek new immersive museum-like attraction called the Dolly Parton Experience on Friday.

“Well, I think you need to freshen up everything every now and then,” the 78-year-old, 10-time Grammy winner told Lonely Planet during the opening festivities. “We felt like my whole career had grown so much more than what we had in the old museum.”

A new chapter for Dollywood

Replacing the more traditional Chasing Rainbows Museum, closed in 2019, the Dolly Parton Experience goes big, tripling the size of the original museum, with four distinct spaces. “I really love the fact that the fans can really see who I am, where I came from, what I’ve done,” she said. “You can’t do that with a few items here and there. You can tell that story, but this just makes it a bigger picture all over, the way my life has been.”

The heart of the experience is Songteller: Dolly’s Journey, following Parton’s path, starting from her modest Tennessee Smoky Mountain roots in Sevier County, including a replica of the “Coat of Many Colors,” hand-sewn by her mom (the original was discarded), which inspired the 1971 hit song of that name. Along the way, visitors can sit on the swing from the Dolly variety show from the mid-1970s, and pose behind the desk of the late Dabney Coleman’s character from her 1980 movie 9 to 5.

Across the way is Behind the Seams: Dolly’s Life in Rhinestones, which is like stepping into a sparkly world that is Dolly’s closet. Inside are dazzling displays with butterfly jewelry, heels of every color and a mega-bag of pearls that’s been part of Parton’s creative director Steven Summers’s longtime secret stash.

“What’s funny is you’ve seen those pearls for 20 years – you just don’t know it because I’m still using them,” he said, chuckling over the fact that originally a dozen gross were ordered instead of just 12. “A lot of it’s trial and error – you don’t know what works until you try it.”