Mystery Mine

Dollywood announced Mystery Mine in July 2006 as the single largest investment in the park's history to that point, a $17.5 million attraction built around a fictional 1943 mining disaster at the "Mystery Mine" coal operation. Rather than treating the story as backdrop, Dollywood built an extensive queue through mine offices and equipment rooms, with audio and lighting cues establishing the tale of workers who vanished underground before the ride even begins.

Gerstlauer supplied the coaster hardware, a Eurofighter model that was the first of its kind built in North America and the first anywhere to feature two separate vertical lift hills rather than one. Riders climb the first 85-foot lift, drop through a beyond-vertical 95-degree plunge, then climb a second vertical lift before a series of inversions and high-speed turns that wind partly through darkened indoor sections meant to evoke the mine's underground tunnels.

Mystery Mine opened April 13, 2007, giving Dollywood one of the most heavily story-driven coasters built anywhere in the Southeast at the time, and quickly became a benchmark for how much narrative theming a mid-sized steel coaster could carry.

The ride's layout was slightly reconfigured during the 2020–21 offseason, trimming part of the outdoor circuit, but the mine-disaster storyline and indoor show scenes remain the coaster's defining feature nearly two decades after it opened.