Opryland USA

A large, resort-style hotel was also built, and the Opryland Hotel is now the largest non-casino hotel in the United States. After the takeover of National Life by Texas-based insurer American General (now part of the American International Group), management deemed the Opryland to be too peripheral to the operation of the company and sought to sell it, along with the Opry itself and the broadcast operations. These operations were sold to the Gaylord Company of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, whose then-controlling figure, Ed Gaylord, was a huge fan of the Opry. Annual changes were made to the park to continue to attact local Nashvillians as well as out-of-town visitors. Package deals including rooms at the hotel, tickets to Opryland, and admission to the Grand Ole Opry were made. In the early 1990s, "Trickets" (three-day admission tickets for one price) were introduced, large numbers of season passes were sold to residents of the Nashville area, and Opryland became the "official destination of NASCAR" (as in, "I'm going to Opryland!").

However, Opryland was handicapped by the fact that it was built in the Pennington Bend of the Cumberland River. This meant that not only was the site subject to occasional flooding but also that the park, bounded on the other side by a freeway, could not grow, and that for changes to be made an attraction had to be removed for each one added. Also, the Nashville climate made year-round operations almost impossible; seasons were largely limited to weekends in the late fall and early spring and daily in the summer. Seasonal workers became hard to find, and Gaylord found itself with a labor shortage. They began to employ many immigrants from Latin America and elsewhere. Attendance plateaued, and, by 1997, management decided that the property would no longer make a rate of return on investment equal to that desired for its properties and was unlikely ever to return to doing so. Management decided the park should be replaced by a property which made year-round usage of the site. The rides were sold and the park demolished; the site is now occupied by the Opry Mills mall, which now has no connection to Gaylord other than the licensed "Opry" name.

In the park's later years, the official name was changed to "Opryland Themepark". The "Opryland USA" name was designated as the destination's name, to include all of Gaylord Entertainment's Nashville properties. For example: Opryland Hotel, Opryland Themepark, and the Grand Ole Opry were all components of Opryland USA, as were the Ryman Auditorium and Wildhorse Saloon, which are located a few miles away in downtown Nashville.

The "Opryland USA" name disappeared permanently in 2001 when Gaylord repositioned itself, and all the Nashville properties were bundled into the newly renamed "Gaylord Opryland Resort".

Nashville's tourist ecomomy is yet to recover fully from this blow as there has not been a comparable property opened (as of 2004) to in any way replace Opryland; a small, child-oriented park nearby on Music Valley Drive has a few child-scale rides. Several developers have floated plans for a new Nashville-area theme park; to date none have come to fruition.

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