Attractions Expert Q&A: Pete Owens initially didn’t want to work at Dollywood, but he’s been there for 25 years (and counting).

Dollywood, the family adventure park in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains owned by Dolly Parton, focuses on world-class entertainment, family rides, and attractions and preserving the heritage of the Smoky Mountains region through music, traditional food, and Master Craftsmen.

Pete Owens is responsible for Dollywood’s brand and identity development, crisis management and communications, media relations, strategic planning, and consumer insights and analytics. He also provides public relations direction for Dollywood’s Splash Country, Dollywood’s DreamMore Resort and Smoky Mountain Cabins, Dolly Parton’s Stampede, Dolly Parton’s Pirates Voyage, Hatfield McCoy Dinner Feud, and Comedy Barn.

What theme park souvenir might we be surprised to find on your shelf, and what’s its story?

How about a Star Wars lightsaber? And I have every one of the kyber crystals that goes with it. There are different versions of the lightsabers that you can get at Galaxy’s Edge, and I have one in every one of the crystals so that I can change to any color.

I actually saw Star Wars on opening night in 1977. I saw it 11 times in the theater that summer and I’ve been a fan ever since.

What theme park have you always wanted to visit but have never been to? 

Tokyo DisneySea. That’s been a park that I’ve always wanted to go to. Not that Tokyo Disneyland wouldn’t be great, but I think DisneySea is the one that I would really like to visit.

One of the gentlemen we use as a producer on some of our attractions is a former Disney Imagineer, and that was one of his projects. I started doing a lot of research on DisneySea after he worked with us on Mystery Mine. The variety of attractions and the high-quality theming are super cool.

The guy is now a contractor for Dollywood – he lives in the Asheville area and has an art studio on the mountain there – and does small projects for us. For example, when we built the Big Bear Mountain coaster last year, he did all the rock work on the waterfall and around the ride where the water interacts with it. He went to a quarry and selected rock to match everything else in the area. I mean, he’s the real deal.

Was there a theme park or attraction that made you want to be in this industry, and how did it inspire you?

My journey is strange and circuitous. I started as a journalist, and I was in the television industry for 15 years before I came to work for Dollywood, but I always loved theme parks as a kid, and as a matter of fact, when I got married 35 years ago, we had our honeymoon at Disney World.

I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and there was a small amusement park there called Peony Park; I went there a lot as a kid. They had a crystal beach, a big pool, and the Royal Terrace Ballroom. It had a kind of ’40s and ’50s aesthetic. They had a few rides, and I tried my first coaster there, which was Galaxi.

Then I graduated to Worlds of Fun and Silver Dollar City in Branson, and those were my home parks growing up. When I went to college and became a journalist, that was put on hold because I worked in television all through my 20s and early 30s.

At the time, the publicist for Dollywood and I were friends because she would work with me on some of our TV shows or morning news, and one day, she told me she was leaving to work in Community Relations at the Children’s Hospital, and her job was open. She said she thought I’d be great to work at Dollywood, and I said thanks, but no. And we didn’t talk again for a few months. But when she called to get Children’s Hospital on the news, she said they were still looking for somebody at Dollywood and told me I should talk to their Vice President of Marketing.

I told her I wasn’t interested, but she said we should just go to lunch. So I went to lunch, and then, after a series of meetings and conversations, my wife and I decided that was probably the best option for us. Also, we had a young daughter, so we thought it would be a really good opportunity. I went to work for Dollywood in May of 2000 and said I would try it for a couple of years. That was 25 years ago.

At that time, Dollywood was a small regional metro theme park in East Tennessee. It probably still did close to 2 million guests a year, but it was very small. They had one major roller coaster and an indoor coaster, and it was really known more as a show park. And then, through the 2000s and the last decade, we have built up the park to what it is now.

We put on five festivals a year, and we’ve added a lot of world-class attractions. We now have nine coasters, so it’s certainly a different family experience. And we also draw from a completely different area. Our main guests now come from 250 miles plus away. Knoxville is still our number one market because we’re less than 40 minutes away. But we have other markets, including Chicago, DC, Philadelphia, Nashville, Atlanta, and Orlando. We’ll do about three and a half million guests this year.

What was your favorite ride or attraction as a child, and why?

My favorite ride as a kid does not exist anymore. It was at Silver Dollar City and was called Rube Dugan’s Diving Bell. It was a take on one of the most familiar attractions at Disneyland, the old 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Submarine Voyage.

You entered a vehicle with portholes, and a captain was on your diving bell, and you would travel under Lake Silver at Silver Dollar City. It was a very innovative and interactive ride for the mid-1970s.

It used reverse projection so that you could see under the sea or under Lake Silver. They had rubber walls that would bow in, and water would spray like you were going to sink. And as long as you have a good captain who is funny and engaging – the same way it is when you ride the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland or Magic Kingdom – it’s a tremendous ride experience. As a kid, that was a spectacular attraction for me.

Was there a ride, attraction, or character that frightened you as a child?

There are attractions I wouldn’t ride. I’m not a big rotor fan. Worlds of Fun in Kansas City had a ride called the Finnish Fling, and it was basically a Barrel of Fun ride where you would get in, it would spin around, and you’d stick to the wall. I was never a big fan of spinning, but no attractions really frighten me now – I still will pretty much get on anything. Even the coasters don’t bother me.

What was the oddest or coolest job you’ve had in your career?

It has been an awfully cool ride at Dollywood. I’ve been able to do a lot of different things.

In the last 10 years, we’ve produced five feature films that have had segments at Dollywood, including Mountain Magic Christmas, which will air on NBC on December 26th at 8 p.m. And I have been able to serve as a producer on those films, so that’s been really cool.

I have also opened every attraction and festival at Dollywood or Splash Country or the two resorts we’ve built since 2000. In addition to that, I have been blessed to be the one who opened our dinner theater attractions. I opened one in Orlando, one in Myrtle Beach, and two in Pigeon Forge, and we’re going to open another in Panama City in June of next year, which is a Pirates Voyage. And all of that is super cool stuff and work I would never thought that I would have done.

But I am proudest that in 2016, when we had the fires in the Smoky Mountains, many folks in this area lost their homes. Dolly decided that we needed to take care of those folks because they were her people, so we set up the My People Fund through the Dollywood Foundation.

And because of my background in television and because I work very closely with Dolly’s team, we produced a telethon that involved a pretty large galaxy of stars. It was on multiple networks and some local affiliates around the region and the country. We raised $13 million in three hours, and over the next six months, we distributed that money to the people in the region here. We gave them $1,000 monthly for the first five months and told them they could spend it on anything they wanted. Then, we gave them a check for $5,000 more in the sixth month.

As Dolly said, we allowed them a hand-up, not a hand-out, so they could get what they needed to do whatever they needed. We ended up winning an Emmy for the telethon, and that’s probably the proudest thing that I’ve done – and one of the coolest.

What ride or attraction do you think everyone needs to experience and why?

That’s a hard question. The growth of the coaster business in our industry has become bigger, taller, faster. And it’s amazing to see from an engineering perspective what we’ve been able to do, but we’ve gotten to the edge of what the average family, which is our core customer, can experience.

Our target for most attractions we build is a 48-inch height requirement (or less if we can). We would love to have a 42-inch height requirement, and we were able to do that with Big Bear Mountain, which we added in 2023. It’s a triple-launched terrain coaster – a family coaster – but there are two halves of it. The first half is basically fun, and the second has intense twists and turns. But it also tells a story.  

I like rides focused on the whole family so they can ride it together. Because our business is about having fun and making memories together as a family, whatever your family is – it could be a group of friends, or it could be a couple, or, as it is often at our place, a multi-generational group of people where it’s mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, and extended family with kids and grandkids. It’s great when you can have them all ride together.

So, not to be too cheeky, but I would say the ride that everybody should experience is the ride we’re building for 2026, but we’re not announcing it until next year. It will be an indoor attraction, but it will do things that no other indoor attraction in the world does.

If you were tasked with creating a new theme park food, what would it be?

I like traditional foods, and I like the fact that Dollywood focuses on real Southern food, and parks like Silver Dollar City focus on Midwestern food. But I’m a sucker for anything on a stick – and meat is always good. So, if you put something savory on a stick that gets my attention, and maybe if it’s a little hot, I’m apt to eat it.

You’re a walk-around character for a day; who do you choose?

I’d like to be Benjamin Bear, a character we have as part of our Wildwood Grove. Benjamin is integrated into the story in that part of our park, and the amount of love from families that have the opportunity to see Benjamin is really cool.

We tell Smoky Mountain stories and “Dolly stories,” which are also Smoky Mountain stories. Wildwood Grove opened in 2019, and the idea was that it was about a hidden holler that a girl discovered. Benjamin Bear is one of the characters living in that area – but he’s just the tip of the iceberg. We have a ranger named Ned Oakley, and we’re introducing some new characters to the 2026 project. We hope to expand the IP of that area as we continue to grow.

When we opened Big Bear Mountain, we introduced Big Bear, who is Benjamin’s grandfather, and it really fleshed out Ned’s role as the one who’s searching for Big Bear, so it’s all been part of that story. We also have two characters named Flit and Flutter, who are butterfly fairies. So,  Benjamin, Flit, and Flutter are always in the Wildwood Grove area at Dollywood. It would be a great opportunity to see all the families if I was Benjamin Bear.

What types of attractions would you like to see more of and why?

Experiences that the whole family can do together are really important. But just as important is ensuring that the total experience is immersive from the time you enter the park. Instead of a concrete jungle where you’ve got steel rides dropped in, the whole park needs to tell a story, and family attractions are key to that success.

Absolutely family and absolutely friendly – those are two cornerstones of who we are. The whole idea of hospitality is inherent to Dollywood – our secret sauce is our hosts and how they treat our guests. We want a welcoming, non-judgmental experience for families that allows them to have their best day of the year. That’s how we coach our hosts, and that’s how we hope they treat everybody. I’m really proud of the experience that we’ve been able to build. It’s what Dolly expects.

Was there any challenge or surprise in your career?

There are always challenges, but the biggest surprise was leaving television and moving into a brand-new industry. PR and media relations are not all that separate from being a journalist – we’re talking to the same people, and we’re talking about storytelling. But absolutely, it was a change.

Dollywood is a golden rule company; we treat others how we want to be treated, and it’s a servant leadership culture. So, I’m always worried about the folks who are on my team, how they are doing, how they’re delivering the day, and all those things that are much different than being a journalist.

In most newsrooms (especially large newsrooms), the rule is more do unto others before they do it unto you, so that’s a much different situation than what we foster – and quite honestly, that’s part of why the move out of journalism into what I’m doing now, has become such a wonderful decision and the right choice for my family and me. I believe in it because I wouldn’t have been around for 25 years if I didn’t.

Can you talk about what you are working on these days?

Next year is Dollywood’s 40th Anniversary Season, so we’re working on that. It’s based on “40 years of loving every moment.” We’re also working on the 2026 project and planning for the opening of the dinner theater attraction in Panama City.

Also, how we will play out for the next three years because businesses in our industry are often focused on season to season. When I took over as Vice President of Marketing in 2018, I challenged the team to examine our business in two-year increments. But then Covid happened, and I said we needed to start looking at our business in three-year increments and how those three years fit into our 10-year plan. And so right now, we’re looking at 2025, 2026, and 2027 as far as what’s next. Then, in 2025, it will become 2026, 2027, and 2028.

We’re working on the business within the park space and the event space but also what our hospitality business looks like, and where is that going?

We’re building a hotel in Nashville that will open as part of the Dolly portfolio toward the end of next year called the Songteller Hotel. We’re figuring out how all these pieces fit together as we work through the next 10 years.

Dolly also has a nonprofit organization called the Imagination Library, which provides a book a month to kids under the age of five in every state in the U.S. and all the provinces of Canada. It’s also available in the UK and Australia. We mail four million books a month.

In the park, we have the Imagination Playhouse. We’ve brought three books to life through the run of that show in what has traditionally been Summer. Next year, it will start when we open the park and run through October, so it’ll be an entire season, and we’ll probably end up doing five books. My daughter Farron was a performer in that show for three years. Then, she stage-managed it for a couple of years, and now she’s a swing stage manager. So, she has to know all the shows we do in the park. We do seven shows at Christmas, and she swing manages all of those. It’s a lot, but I’m proud that she works for the park, and it’s great for me, as one of the senior leaders, to hear directly from somebody on the front line – she is very honest.

A lot of our giving program utilizes money that’s a percentage of our revenue, and we can distribute it as we see fit. We do a lot with CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates for foster children) and other private organizations that help foster kids. Other than the Imagination Library, the number one charity we work with is Smoky Mountain Food Ministries. We are their number one donor. Even though they get food donated from Second Harvest, they can use the money we raise to buy food they wouldn’t be able to get purely on their regular distribution.

It all keeps me pretty busy.

You are going to your favorite theme park; which industry people (dead or alive) are you taking with you?

I’m taking my family with me. My mom passed away in 2016, so I’d love to have her with us – and maybe my parents would be in their 50s instead of in their late 80s so they could actually enjoy the theme park experience. And maybe my kids are younger than they are now, and it’s back to what that experience was when I was young, and we were taking the kids to the parks. Just to live that again would be great.