INTRODUCTION

The Ryman Auditorium, constructed in 1892, is often referred to as the “Mother Church of Country Music,” but by the late 1960s, after hundreds of nights of performances of the Grand Ole Opry, the weekly radio show had beaten the building into what its owners called “the mother of all firetraps.” Without air-conditioning, the inside temperature could rise up to 120 degrees on summer nights. Some of the world-famous pews were supported by Coke crates. The outside of the auditorium was worse; adult theaters, panhandlers, and massage parlors lined the streets outside the Ryman. The thousands of families coming in to Nashville every weekend to see the Grand Ole Opry were appalled.

The Ryman would either have to be renovated, or a new facility would have to be built. Improvements to the theater did not seem practical since the attendance for the weekly shows continued to climb. The National Life and Accident Insurance Company was the corporate owner of the Grand Ole Opry, as well as WSM, the 50,000-watt AM radio station that broadcast the show each week. The final answer came when Irving Waugh, the president of WSM and the Opry, visited Houston, Texas, on a golf trip. There, he saw Judge Roy Hofheinz’s Astrodome. It was the centerpiece of the Astrodomain complex, a property that not only included the Astrodome arena, but also the AstroWorld theme park, hotels, and more. Waugh had an epiphany. If the castle was Disney’s icon at Disneyland on the West Coast and the Astrodome was the focal point for the Astro World resort, then a new Opry House could be a centerpiece for a similar venture.

No one had a theme park focused on music, and the Grand Ole Opry still had 325,000 people coming to Nashville each year to see the show and Opry House with nothing else to do. WSM veteran programmer Elmer Alley presented Irving Waugh a memo outlining his vision for the proposed Opryland resort. The new Opry House would have a theme park and a commercial district, mainly composed of hotels, motels, and apartments, that would complete the complex. On June 30, 1970, ground was broken for the Opryland USA theme park and future home of the Grand Ole Opry. The property encompassed 369 acres; 110 for the theme park, 105 for the future Opry Town, and the remaining acreage for parking and future development. Over the years, additional land around the property was purchased, and by 1997, the complex had grown to 750 acres.

One of the keys to Opryland’s success was its location. Built just as Briley Parkway was extended past Interstate 40, the proposed land bordered the Cumberland River and was previously the site of Rudy’s Farm, a sausage and bacon operation. Most of the land was undeveloped, full of trees, streams, and natural foundation. Randall Duell, the architect for the park, aimed to keep nature intact. His design for the park followed natural trails and preserved as much of the existing trees and nature as possible.

With an emphasis on live performances, nature, and the spirit of America, the $28 million Opryland USA theme park opened to the public on May 27, 1972. Only 8,000 people attended the first day; the second day, attendance dropped to just 3,500. However, by the end of the first year, Opryland topped its initial projection with an attendance of 1.4 million. By 1973, the park had found its footing, with the right blend of music, rides, and nature.

By 1974, the new Grand Ole Opry House was complete and the complex was almost intact. But as attendance at the Opryland USA theme park increased and the new Grand Ole Opry House regularly filled all 4,000 of its new seats, it became evident that the next phase of the Opryland master plan might need to be revised.

On November 27, 1977, the $25 million Opryland Hotel officially opened. Instead of solely catering to park and Opry guests, the Opryland Hotel became Tennessee’s largest convention hotel with 600 rooms. An ingenious concept was developed by the Opryland Hotel general manager Jack Vaughn. On average, theme park and Opry travelers would stay at the hotel during the weekend, and conference and convention guests booked rooms during the week. It was a perfect formula, and when the hotel opened, it had already booked 600,000 room nights.

During the late 1970s, the park continued to grow, adding attractions and shows. Existing shows were updated each year to keep them fresh. A new area, State Fair, was built after the 1975 flood. But by the early 1980s, Opryland would experience a thrill ride of a different kind. The resort’s corporate owners had been bought by American General, and the entire complex was put up for sale, either for whole or for parts.

After several companies expressed interest in the Opryland business units, a sale was finalized on September 1, 1983. The buyer was Gaylord Broadcasting of Dallas, a subsidiary of Oklahoma Publishing Company, a large publishing and multimedia conglomerate owned by Edward L. Gaylord. Opryland USA theme park, Opryland Productions, the Grand Ole Opry, Opryland Hotel, WSM-AM, WSM-FM, and the newly launched Nashville Network (TNN) were reorganized under a new umbrella subsidiary named Opryland USA, Inc.

The new Gaylord ownership left all existing management in place, with E.W. “Bud” Wendell remaining as president of Opryland USA, Inc. He was able to keep his job as top boss over the Opryland properties and stay in his office above the Roy Acuff Music Hall in the theme park.

Even though the ownership of the park was changing hands, the park had no intention of slowing down. Major attractions were being added every few years, such as the Screamin’ Delta Demon and Grizzly River Rampage. After each new ride was built, attendance records would break. New shows were debuted every year. In addition, The Nashville Network started to produce daily talk shows, cooking shows, game shows, and concerts on the Opryland grounds, allowing park guests to watch or participate. In 1985, the General Jackson was launched, with even more shows and activities for guests to discover. Later, the Opryland Hotel began a long series of expansions and upgrades that brought new restaurants, shops, and more live music to the complex. In 1983, a total of 467 rooms were added along with a two-acre indoor Conservatory. Following Jack Vaughn’s proven formula, along with the addition of the festive “A Country Christmas,” the Opryland Hotel was an unqualified success. With the need for more hotel rooms and additional convention space, the resort quickly fast-tracked further expansion plans. In 1988, the hotel’s Cascades expansion opened with 824 more rooms and two additional acres of indoor gardens under glass.

As the early 1990s dawned, the Opryland theme park was only one piece the company’s fast-growing “country lifestyle” empire. In 1991, the Gaylord family decided to take the Opryland division public. Opryland USA, Inc. became the Gaylord Entertainment Company and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The company continued to aggressively expand with the purchase of Country Music Television (CMT) to compliment The Nashville Network’s programming. On March 14, 1992, a second theme park, Fiesta Texas, described as a “destination market, musical show park,” opened in San Antonio. Even though the park’s ownership was mostly held by USAA, a diversified financial services group, Gaylord Entertainment designed, programmed, and managed the park and held minority ownership. In June 1994, after a $8.5 million renovation, Gaylord Entertainment reopened the Ryman Auditorium as a museum and performance hall. A few blocks away, the Wildhorse Saloon country music dance club opened, with three floors, sophisticated production facilities that regularly produced TNN series and specials, and the largest dance floor in the city. Sleek, new river taxis were added to the Opryland river fleet, ready to carry visitors and conventioneers from the resort all the way down to the new Opryland Dock, conveniently situated at Nashville’s Riverfront Park, just steps away from the company’s newly opened downtown properties.

By the 1990s, as Gaylord’s entertainment portfolio continued to diversify, the Opryland Themepark (as it came to be known) began to seem more like a mere seasonal draw on the books rather than the crown jewel it once was. Although the park continued to be comfortably profitable, even through its last year, the park was only open 9 to 10 months out of a year. As the success of Opryland Hotel began to overshadow the profitability of the park that spawned it, Gaylord Entertainment began to look at year-round recreational alternatives that would greater benefit the convention business of the hotel. Park attendance gradually dropped as the budget was spent on signing current and popular country acts to perform their touring shows in a new amphitheater specifically built for popular country acts. This expensive concert series, known as “Nashville On-Stage,” came at the expense of new rides or shows that would have been an investment in the park’s entertainment roster and provided future enjoyment year after year. In early 1997, E.W. “Bud” Wendell retried and left the company in the hands of Terry London, Gaylord Entertainment’s former CFO. By early summer, London was negotiating with the Mills Corporation on a proposed retail makeover of the theme park. The project, then known as Opryland Mills, would greatly affect the future of the Opryland USA theme park.

In the late 1990s, the Mills Corporation was a shopping center developer that had pioneered the concept of hybrid malls—indoor centers that combined off-price stores with traditional retailers, as well as a few select entertainment offerings. Marketing materials for theses shopping destinations stressed the “shoppertainent” experience that Mills visitors enjoyed at its malls. The initial plans for the Mills project appeared to resemble Universal CityWalk or DowntownDisney. When it was announced, the Opry Mills retail portion of the project was only one element of the entire complex’s redevelopment and rebranding as Destination Opryland. The mall would be built on the existing parking lot for Opryland Themepark. In order to handle the increased attendance for the new development, one-third of the Opryland park would be cleared and converted into supplemental parking and access roads for the mall and other attractions around the resort. Encompassing the perimeter of the mall, large parking decks were to be constructed to handle the thousands of cars that would come to the complex every day to shop, eat, learn, and be entertained. The original plan for Opry Mills would connect the remaining two-thirds of the Opryland Themepark; a drastically renovated Grand Ole Opry with the addition of a portico designed for award show red carpet arrivals; a studio tour (similar to CNN’s tour in Atlanta) at the TNN and CMT Broadcast Center beside the Opry House; and the new Cumberland Landing nighttime club district and dock for the General Jackson. In its original proposal, the Mills Corporation suggested to Gaylord Entertainment that as many existing theme park attractions as possible be kept.

However, when Opry Mills opened in 2000, no attractions were left from the former Opryland Themepark, no Broadcast Center, and no Cumberland Landing—the only thing remaining was the northern area of the park, once home to the State Fair and Grizzly Country, reserved for future attractions. Meanwhile, 110 acres of land across from the Opryland Hotel on Briley Parkway, once slated as the location of Nashville’s Bass Pro Shop, was quietly annexed and rezoned. Both the former State Fair/Grizzly Country areas and the former Bass Pro Shop have been slated for attraction development since the park closed in 1997. In several instances, Gaylord Entertainment attempted to partner with various theme park operators to bring a theme park back to Nashville. Herschend Family Entertainment, the operators of Silver Dollar City and Dollywood, developed several themed concepts, including a new redeveloped Opryland park, complete with musical themed lands, exciting rides, and uplifting shows. Just as the project was about to be announced, the 2008 recession hit. Herschend and Gaylord tried to partner again in 2012—this time with Herschend’s star ambassador, Dolly Parton. The two companies were pairing up to build the largest water park in the United States, complete with non-water attractions, shows, and winter activities to avoid the seasonality problem that plagued the original park. Herschend would manage the new park, and Gaylord Entertainment would provide the land, a large percentage of the construction and development costs, and the name Opryland. Unfortunately, that project fell apart, too, with Gaylord’s decision to sell its hotel brand and partner with Marriott to manage the hotels.

In 2012, Gaylord Entertainment converted itself into a real estate company and changed its name to Ryman Hospitality. The company still owns the resort once known as the Opryland Hotel, as well as its four sister resorts. However, day-to-day operations for the hotels are now managed by Marriott International. Ryman Hospitality’s entertainment brands are managed by its Opry Entertainment subsidiary. Those business units include the Grand Ole Opry, WSM-AM, the Ryman Auditorium, the Opry City Stage bar/restaurant in Times Square, and the company’s percentage of the former Nashville television series on ABC. Since Ryman Hospitality is now primarily a real estate trust, it cannot hold on to these type of assets indefinitely. As of spring 2016, Ryman Hospitality is attempting to grow the entertainment division before spinning them off into its own company.