Ride review: Dollywood's NightFlight Expedition

August 15, 2026, 1:44 AM · Let’s start with the most important part: NightFlight Expedition is an amazing family ride. High-tech, multi-featured, innovative, and an important addition to Dollywood for a variety of reasons.

That being said, I think it’s important to frame where the ride is in the park and what its ultimate purpose is. NightFlight Expedition extends the park's award-winning Wildwood Grove land, which is what fans get when you design a kiddie land for grown-ups, or perhaps more to the point, a grown-up land for the kids.

With Big Bear Mountain, the land's triple-launch Vekoma family coaster, Dollywood kicked off the industry's current wave of story-driven family coasters. Now the park is looking to top that with another path-blazing attraction that further develops the lore of Wildwood Grove.

But Dollywood had another problem that it looked to solve with this new attraction. During our visit, we witnessed every ride close and the entire park shut down for at least 20 minutes after lightning struck nearby. There are a number of theaters that could remain open during a storm, but Dollywood had no indoor rides... until now.

So those were the requirements - a new attraction that could operate in inclement weather while advancing the mythology built up in the rest of Wildwood Grove.

Mack Rides stepped up to the plate with a refreshingly original ride, delivering all of the family thrills they could fit into a three-story building the size of a football field. NightFlight Expedition is the second installation of Mack Rides’ Rocking Boat hybrid coaster and the first one that is fully indoors, following the outdoor installation of Mission Bermudes at France’s Parc du Futuroscope.

How does this new ride system work? Magnetic-based controls installed between the rails of the track propel the vehicle forward or backward at a set speed and can lock it in place firmly enough to allow it to navigate an elevator. There is also a flexible connection that allows the vehicle to float and roll in the waves. I’ll be honest - I’m not certain whether the vehicle is actually floating in the waves or just simulated rocking in them; either way, the effect is pulled off well enough to be convincing.

Since this ride is indoors and space-constrained, I am shocked that they were able to fit nearly a quarter of a mile of track and a five-and-a-half-minute ride time from load to unload. I can only imagine that the path of the ride looks like a spaghetti mess trying to fit something into every available inch of the ride building.

The path the vehicle takes is often tight, and the ceiling is often low, but the set design leans into these limitations, using forced perspective to make areas seem as large as possible. I sat in the front row, and because the tracks were sometimes submerged and the lights were regularly dim, if not completely dark, I often didn’t know where we were going.

There is a storyline as well. Two siblings, Cora and Jasper, have somehow rigged up a boat to fly and are using it, along with a device that can help them trace the glowing roots of the Wildwood Tree back to the hidden lake that feeds them. Is the story clear? Not really. Is the advertising with human actors playing Cora and Jasper misleading? Absolutely, since they are animated characters on the ride. What is the purpose of finding the hidden lake? I haven’t a clue, and the ride ends shortly after you find it, missing an opportunity on the final lift hill to offer a resolution and explainer of some sort.

Does the onboard audio help make the story clear? Not really, but it is much better than the usual screaming and jumping to the next scene. Is the story scary? Not really; there are some lightning effects early on that could upset someone of a delicate nature, but the ride moves on from those fairly quickly. It is relatively dark through most of the ride, but there is never a sense of danger in the darkness.

The park was extremely adamant about not filming on the ride, so let me test my memory and see how much I can remember after a single ride-through. Spoilers ahead.

The ride vehicle left the station and made a right, then a quick left on the coaster tracks, going at a taxiing pace. After a bit of a long corridor, you take a left and then stop in a dead end with a wrap-around screen. You see the animated Cora and Jasper for the first time as they take off in their own boat, with your vehicle flying close behind them. The vehicle motion during this section is provided by a motion base platform connected to an elevator. Interestingly, I think the screen was connected to the elevator because we never seemed to get any closer to the top of the screen as the elevator rose.

To get out of the screen, the car rolls backward down a small dip, then back up, before hitting a turntable, quickly ending the only part of the coaster that went backward (and for a completely utilitarian reason). Once going forward again, the coaster dunks you into a rapids channel. You follow this around for a bit before exiting the water for some roller coaster sections, then back into the water for the finale. It didn’t feel like a five-minute ride, but it felt like it was enough.

So, obviously, my takeaway from the ride was the monumental and impressive Tetris-like engineering that went into it, which, in my book, makes it a must-ride for everyone. I would have loved to ride it another four or five times just to figure out how it worked in full. The story was okay for what it was, though it was confusing on my first ride. The sets were deliberately flat to mimic a storybook, but that rationale was never made clear during the ride.

The scariest thing about the ride occurred to us as we waited in line on the ground floor, realizing there were over half a million gallons of water directly above us. At 7 lbs per gallon.. and some quick math... that's 1,750 tons of water suspended above our heads. Sure, that sounds super safe - no problems at all. A number of horror movies featuring people drowning in confined spaces doesn’t instantly pop into my mind. Not at all.

If there is a major complaint about the ride, it is that the vehicles do not stop in the station and remain in motion as you are trying to disembark and board. I think this will need to be fixed in the future. A wet vehicle, along with people - particularly those in the front seat who got their shoes wet - are then trying to get out of a vehicle onto a platform that does not move. When you factor in that this is a ride designed for kids, this feels like a mishap waiting to happen.

If there is a minor complaint, it is that the person in the front row on the right is the only person who is going to get wet, at least in the boat we were in, and that the shoes of the people in the front row were doused in water both times the boat was splashed into the water.

My overall thoughts are that this impressive ride is exactly what the park needed and where it needed to go. Adults need to temper their expectations that this is a thrill ride meant to thrill them, and accept that this is a super-sized family ride designed to be one thing left running during a storm. The kid I brought along really enjoyed the ride without all the baggage I brought.

And that is probably the most important thing. The kids are going to love this.

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