A totally interactive, themed water raft ride, River Battle is equipped with powerful soaker guns. Nine rafts, each with room for eight passengers, follow a 500-foot channel. As the rafts navigate the waters, the battle begins as passengers, each armed with a soaker gun, take aim at each other and more than 100 targets along the way such as “talking animals” - beavers, skunks, otters, bears and more. Some of the targets shoot back while others display a variety of special effects, creating surprises at every turn and ensuring that no two rides are ever exactly the same.
In the official press release for the new Dollywood attraction, Dolly Parton comments, “When I was a kid, me and my brothers and sisters used to sneak away and start up a river battle of our own, but I never dreamed that kind of childhood fun would end up creating a great ride like my new River Battle.”
With an hourly ride capacity of 800 passengers, River Battle is located just beyond Dollywood’s Mystery Mine steel coaster. The River Battle project also includes a new 750-foot walkway that provides a direct route to the theme park’s Craftsman’s Valley area from Timber Canyon. The new connector represents the largest earthworks project since the Dollywood Express train’s track bed was completed in 1960. The connector project entails moving 170,000 cubic yards of soil and rocks – the equivalent of 8,500 truck loads.
