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NightFlight Expedition Takes Shape

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Jan 20, 2026

On September 17th, 2025 Dollywood announced NightFlight Expedition, the single most ambitious attraction in the park’s history. While the park unveiled the ride type, manufacturer, and a few facts and figures, it kept most of the ride surrounded in mystery. No POV video or overhead diagram was released which I actually love. It’s much more fun to look at construction pictures and try to piece together the layout and how the ride works. So let’s check out the latest construction images and see if we can figure anything out.

NightFlight Expedition Construction Status

The Coaster Spot posted one of the last construction update videos of the 2025 season from a visit in the beginning of January 2026 before the park closed for their short offseason. The 44,000 square foot building is quickly filling up.

An empty space with a bunch of spaced out columns under the station area could be for indoor queue.

The front portion of the building is smaller in height than where the station and roller coaster drop are located. I bet this is where we find the secret lake with the relaxing boat ride segment.

At American Coaster Enthusiast’s No Coaster Con event held January 17, Dollywood representatives shared a few recent construction images, posted online by Marcus Leshock. I believe the top left photo is showing the river rapids portion of the ride. Altogether it will hold 500,000 gallons of water!

NightFlight Expedition is the next generation of the Mack Rides Rockin Boat. Dollywood reps rode the prototype in May 2023 and they’ve promised their version will do things the first installation doesn’t.

Dollywood president Eugene Naughton shared some photos on Facebook via Jonny Amusement and others from inside of the building. Most of Mission Bermudes is powered by LIMs and I thought NightFlight Expedition would be the same, so it’s interesting to see a segment with drive tires.

The top speed is 29 miles per hour which requires around a 28 foot drop to hit that speed. The track between the stairs and the water channel confuses me – is it a drop down or a hill up? Is this towards the beginning, middle, or end of the ride? And what is that steel structure in the back corner of the building?

Another mystery are the two side-by-side pieces of track next to the station. Typically you would think a track segment like this is to transfer vehicles to a maintenance spur but I don’t see any other track nearby.

Perhaps it is a separate loading area for guests who need a little more time to get on and off the ride? I’ve seen several dark rides like Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway and the LEGO Factory Ride have separate stations for this purpose.

We know there is at least one turntable in the ride thanks to a construction tour in November but I don’t see it installed yet.

NightFlight Expedition is advertised as four rides in one. So far, I’d say three of those elements (roller coaster, rapids, scenic boat ride) you can see taking shape, the fourth one (flight) remains a complete mystery.

NightFlight Expedition Layout Guess

Here’s a crude sketch at my best guess what the NightFlight Expedition layout looks like so far.

nightflight expedition layout diagram blueprint

Update 1-30-2026: Putting the “Flight” in NightFlight

In a fantastic video interview with Adventure Is Out There, Dollywood President Eugene Naughton dropped some interesting tidbits that have us even more excited for NightFlight Expedition:
“So now that the game of hiding and playing hide-and-seek with everyone who’s trying to guess what we’re doing, now we’re able to sort of move into really starting to focus on what Nightflight Expedition actually is. And it’s a really really interesting conveyance system called the rocking boat. And the thing that I really like about what Mack did with that, for us specifically, was to really create a way for us to make Nightflight like no other experience that’s ever been tried before. Everyone always guessed, are you doing another Soarin’ ride? Well, yep. The first part of Nightflight Expedition will be Soarin’ like…
We actually have a room that you’re going to go into while you’re on Nightflight and it’s actually three different rooms. And it’s a media-driven experience. I think the best way that I can describe it and how I would share it today would be it’s like having a VR experience without wearing VR glasses. So, that that’s going to be really really fun for people. It’s going to really feel unique because you’ll feel like you’re actually in the media video.
The thing that I don’t like about Soarin’ is the fact that you can see people’s feet. And you can see the edge of what’s going on in terms of the floor, right? I don’t really like that. So, Nightflight, our media area in Nightflight is actually overhead. So, you’ll not really be able to know where the start and stop is, on the media experience, which I think people are really going to really enjoy because everyone sort of was guessing. Are they building Soarin’? Well, kind of. Kind of kind of not.
So, and after, you know, after the media experience, that’s when we’re going to get an opportunity to really take advantage of that word coaster because you’ll leave the media area and then you’re going to start to experience a bit of our coaster ride. And what better way to create a new experience than to have a hybrid water coaster.”
Eugene also confirmed the majority of the queue is indoors but there will be an outdoor overflow queue area.
Here’s a screenshot from the video and it appears to be the motion bases for the mysterious flying portion of the attraction.

Update February 2026

Check out the latest construction pictures and layout prediction here.

Dollywood’s official opening day for the 2026 season is Friday, March 13, 2026 and NightFlight Expedition will not be ready yet. I also would expect the building to be fully enclosed by then, so if you’re able to ride the Dollywood Express I don’t think you’ll catch a glimpse of anything inside. Dollywood is advertising the ride as opening Spring 2026 and the first day of summer is June 21st.

Which element of NightFlight Expedition are you most excited for? Let us know in the comments below.

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Nick Weisenberger

Nick Weisenberger has been writing about theme parks and roller coasters since 2007. His fascination for how roller coasters work led to researching and self-publishing Coasters 101: An Engineers Guide to Roller Coaster Design.

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