ThrillRide! Special Features

We glide right through the first loop, 110 feet high, and it's delightful, with nothing above, in front, or below us.

But it's not until the track twists start whipping the trains over side-to-side that Wild Eagle really beats its wings hard. Those three inversions after the first loop – the zero-G roll, Immelmann, and corkscrew – they put the "wild" into this bird.

Dollywood asked for, and got, a roller coaster that is as all-ages-friendly as a roller coaster of this size and configuration can be. It's a rush, but never too aggressive or forceful. To be fair, though, there are some strong forces at play here. At the end of each ride, no matter where I sat, I was a bit woozy. Totally stoked for another ride, but woozy.

Deanna gives Wild Eagle two thumbs way up, as we all did. Darrell loved it so much, he doesn't want to put his arms down even on the brake run.

But the steel coaster here that caught me completely off guard?

That would be the Arrow loop coaster, which KICKS ASS LIKE A MOFO. You will very probably never hear me say that about an Arrow loop coaster ever again.

I love Arrow, grew up riding their loopers, had a religious experience riding Knott's Corkscrew for the first time. And Nessie, at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, still holds an important place in my heart. But wow, did most of those Corkscrews and Shockwaves and Great American Scream Machines and their ilk age horribly, and one by one, they are going away. It's quite sad.

Tennessee Tornado, though, the last of the Arrow loopers, and the only one designed with modern CAD software (and designed by Alan Schilke, the genius now doing genius work at Rocky Mountain Coasters), what an anomaly... It is SO GOOD.

The whole ramshackle, boarded-up barn station, totally sweet.