Park Throughput & Capital Planning Strategy — Dollywood & Silver Dollar City
Focus Areas
- Attraction throughput analysis
- Operational benchmarking
- Data automation
- Forecasting
- Capital planning
- Strategic recommendations
Overview
As Dollywood and Silver Dollar City prepared for major growth, leadership needed a clear view of how their parks were performing at a systems level. The core question was:
"Do our attractions provide the capacity required for our attendance today, and the attendance we expect tomorrow?"
I was responsible for turning seasonal operations data into a strategic tool that would guide the parks' next major investments. My work informed a multi-year capital plan used by Herschend's Chief Creative Officer, VP of Attractions Development, and park Presidents to determine expansion priorities, new hotels, and long-term attraction strategies.
My Contribution
Building the Data Platform
Enhanced the park's existing throughput database by validating formulas, improving chart accuracy, and interpreting the data to reveal operational patterns across the full operating year.
Automated the data-import process. Partnered with a programming consultant to replace a slow, manual input workflow with a scraping tool that uploaded the data automatically. A process that previously took months now completed in under a day, allowing teams to focus immediately on analysis and decision-making.
Calculated seasonal averages, peak patterns, downtime trends, and operational variability to show how each attraction performed across different times of the year.
Mapped throughput against attendance to assess how effectively the parks moved guests through rides during peak and off-peak periods.
Created dashboards that gave leadership a clear view of:
- Hourly and seasonal throughput
- Downtime vs. uptime
- Dispatch efficiency
- Bottleneck attractions
- Attractions failing to meet capacity expectations
Operational & Financial Analysis
Evaluating which attractions carried their weight
Identified attractions that consistently met or exceeded the minimum capacity standards necessary to justify ticket prices.
Flagged underperforming attractions with:
- Low guest throughput
- Higher operational variability
- Notable downtime patterns
- Rising maintenance cost pressures
Mapping replacement and refurbishment candidates
Highlighted rides unlikely to scale with attendance growth or increasing guest expectations.
Recommended which attractions should be replaced, re-themed, or reconfigured based on capacity needs and ROI potential.
Forecasting & Capital Planning
Attendance-based forecasting
Built models estimating how much additional attraction capacity the parks would need as attendance continued to rise year over year, identifying pressure points and capacity deficits.
Five-year capital strategy
Mapped current capacity constraints against projected attendance to determine:
- When expansions were necessary
- Which investments had the greatest operational impact
- How to time new rides, shows, or hotels for maximum guest benefit
Direct business impact
This work contributed to the justification for:
- ✅ New resort hotels
- ✅ Major land expansions
- ✅ Additional entertainment capacity
- ✅ Operational hour extensions
- ✅ Future high-capacity attractions
What Decisions I Made
- Determined which throughput metrics were most meaningful for operational and financial planning.
- Identified which attractions required further investigation due to throughput inconsistencies or downtime trends.
- Prioritized insights to present to the Chief Creative Officer, VP of Attractions Development, and park Presidents.
- Helped shape a clear narrative for leadership that connected operational data to long-term investment decisions.
What Problems I Solved
- Replaced intuition-based decision-making with data-driven capital planning.
- Revealed bottlenecks affecting guest satisfaction and capacity.
- Identified operational inefficiencies that strained staffing and maintenance budgets.
- Flagged rides that could not scale with projected attendance growth.
- Provided leadership a cohesive, quantifiable roadmap for where to invest, when to expand, and how to prioritize resources.
Who I Worked With
- Chief Creative Officer
- VP of Attractions Development
- Park Operations Leadership
- Presidents of Dollywood & Silver Dollar City
- Creative, engineering, and operations teams
My Hero Moment
A turning point in the project came when I helped automate the ride-throughput data pipeline. The parks had been relying on a manual process that made it difficult to analyze trends at scale or in a timely way.
By working with a programming consultant to automate the data import, we unlocked rapid access to a full year of performance metrics in a single day. That breakthrough made it possible to build the dashboards, forecasts, and insights that ultimately shaped the parks' multi-year capital strategy.
What This Project Taught Me
This project taught me how powerful data can be in shaping creative and operational strategy. I learned how throughput, guest flow, and downtime trends reveal the story of both guest experience and park performance.
More importantly, I saw how data can bridge creative goals and business needs. By translating raw numbers into insights, I helped leadership understand when to expand, where to invest, and how to plan for growth.
It showed me that great themed experiences rely on imagination, operational discipline, and the systems that connect them.