Dolly Parton stayed home in Nashville on doctor’s orders, but still found a very Dolly way to show up
It seems the world has a vested interest in Dolly Parton being okay. Maybe that’s because, in some small but important way, she feels like one of the people keeping the whole thing in balance, generous, funny, kind, and somehow still remarkably normal.
So when Dolly misses an event because she isn’t feeling well, people worry.
The 80-year-old was due at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, on Friday for the dedication of NightFlight Expedition, the park’s enormous new attraction, but stayed home in Nashville after her doctor advised her against travelling while she deals with dehydration and occasional dizziness
She did, however, appear via video. And because this is Dolly Parton we’re talking about, she did it wearing giant butterfly wings.
“My Nashville doctor kind of clipped my wings,” she told the crowd, explaining that she’d been told she wasn’t travelling that week.
When you’re Dolly Parton, you’ve probably earned the right to listen to your doctor.
The event itself marked the arrival of a fairly ridiculous, in the best possible way, new piece of Dollywood engineering.
NightFlight Expedition represents an investment of more than US$50 million, making it the largest single attraction investment in Dollywood history.
The indoor ride combines a family coaster with a white-water river ride, sending passengers through a Smoky Mountains-inspired world of bioluminescent water, projections and some 500,000 gallons of the real stuff.
Public rides officially begin on August 19, following several days of season-passholder previews.
Parton’s absence comes amid a longer period of taking things a little easier. In May, she cancelled her previously postponed Dolly: Live in Las Vegas residency, explaining that ongoing issues with her immune and digestive systems were responding well to treatment, but that some medications were still leaving her feeling what her grandmother would have called “swimmy-headed.”
Importantly, she isn’t talking like someone disappearing from public life. Parton told the Dollywood crowd that things were going well medically, and she’s continuing to work from Nashville on projects including her Broadway musical and the planned Songteller Hotel and Life of Many Colors Museum.
Which is probably why there’s something reassuring about the whole thing. Dolly got told to stay home, so she stayed home. But she still showed up in the Dolly-est way possible, in butterfly wings, with a message for everyone who had turned up.
She signed off by promising she’d see them “down the road.”
We’ll take that.
