A rush of nostalgia and melancholy flood Betsy Watt Koch every time she drive by Opry Mills Mall, the behemoth shopping center standing on top of what once known as Opryland USA, a 120-acre family theme park filled with rides, rollercoasters and music.
Opryland USA opened May 27, 1972, on Memorial Day weekend, six months after Disney World. It closed Dec. 31 1997. For Koch, and other theme park enthusiasts, it’s a reminder of a better time in life where they could get dropped off at the front gate by their parents, wonder from their group and still feel safe.
Opryland USA still lives on, more than a 1,000 miles from her Nashville home, where one of the remnants of her childhood remains at a theme park in New York where post riders are unaware of the sentimental ride they now call Canyon Coaster.
In awe of the lush trees, the bustling rides and the sensory overload of music, Koch’s first trip came in 1972, the park’s inaugural season when she was 11. It didn’t take long for her to fall in love with the family friendly environment.
Koch enjoyed her time so much, she and her friend got season passes and went once a week.
More: Nashville history: 5 reasons we all still miss Opryland USA
“I don’t know why, but when we got there, we’d always go left,” Koch said.
Left meant a trip to one of her favorite rides, Flume Zoom, featuring large logs carrying guests down a spiraling water slide barreling around twists and turns and splashing passengers.
Between 1977-79, Koch worked at the park restaurant Country Kettle, serving up cornbread, barbecue pork, white beans and ham and cobbler. She loved eating there when she wasn’t working.
“I really thought it was good, I still think it was good,” Koch said of the food.
And it was a full-time job for her, even as a 16-year-old, who worked around 48 hours a week.
From theme park to mall: The fall of Opryland
What once stood as a iconic theme park now houses chain eateries, stores and plenty of traffic at what is now called Opry Mills Mall.
To Koch, now 63, the transition to shopping mall represents a transition of the traditional South built on family and knowing your neighbors and a loss of the city’s innocence, to the economic, tourism and commercialized explosion of Nashville’s country music scene is known for today.
The park wasn’t built on towering mega rollercoasters, like you see at Six Flags, Cedar Point and other theme parks across the country. Instead, the park tapped into its Music City roots and the park’s slogan as the “Home of American Music” by featuring theater and musical venues with plenty of guitar strums, catchy tunes that would rival a trip to Lower Broadway honky-tonks.
Across from Koch’s Country Kettle job was an open air concert venue that featured bluegrass music, which became Koch’s introduction to country music, leading her to fall in love with the genre.
“I was sad and disappointed and kind of hurt in a way,” Koch said of the park’s closure. “People mourn it.”
Happiness overcame Koch when she took her son Henry, now 29, as a child to the park to see the same smiles on his face that once came over her. The park was a community gathering for Koch and many families that would take a day to get fresh air.
For those still lamenting the park’s closure, now 27 years later, they can use Opryland VR, a 3D recreation of the park from the time it opened in 1972.
Opryland reaches far beyond a tourist destination, it remains a sentimental memory for many in Nashville, including Colony House, a Nashville rock band who released “The Cannonballers,” named after the band’s front man Caleb Chapman’s favorite ride at the park, Wabash Cannonball.
Though the famed park closed 27 years ago, some wonder what became of the rides Koch and others grew up riding.
Purgatory in an Indiana parking lot
It’s unclear where some structures remain after Gaylord Entertainment sold 13 Opryland rides to Premier Parks.
A November 1997 Tennessean story said several rides, including favorites like the corkscrew rollercoaster Wabash Cannonball, the suspended swirling roller coaster Hangman and the Rock N’ Roller Coaster were among the rides sold. Dulcimer Splash, Opryland Trains, Little Deuce Coupe were also part of the sale.
The rides were expected to have new life at a project call Old Indiana Fun-N-Water Park in Thorntown, Ind.,. But the rides never had their second act, as the project was scrapped in 2002 and the property was sold and the rides were dismantled, according to a 2018 IndyStar story.
Gaylord Entertainment kept the carousel, some children’s rides and the gondolas for use, but the company declined to comment on if the theme park parts and ride are still used today.
“The resort does not have any information about the location of former Opryland USA rides or parts,” Gaylord Entertainment spokesperson Stefanie Ball said in an email response.
Ball said she believes former theme park parts are not currently used by the resort and hotel.
Nostalgia a 1,000 miles away
Though most of the rides were turned to scrap or faded into an unknown history, some rides live on.
Formerly known as Timber Topper in 1972 and eventually renamed, the Rock ‘N’ Roller Coaster is now Canyon Blaster, 1,009 miles from Nashville at Six Flags Great Escape in Lake George, N.Y., according to a story from the Columbia Daily Herald.
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Hangman is now Kong at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, Calif, 2,304 miles from Nashville.
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Old Mill Scream is now Lumberjack Falls and 2,396 miles from Nashville at Wild Waves in Federal Way, Wash.
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The train for Chaos was auctioned and the track was scrapped.
Reach reporter Craig Shoup by email at [email protected] and on X @Craig_Shoup. To support his work, sign up for a digital subscription to www.tennessean.com.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Opryland USA: Where are the rides today?
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