Who remembers weekends spent riding the Wabash Cannonball, Little Deuce Coupe, or the Old Mill Scream at Opryland USA as child? From school field trips to family vacations, if you grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, a short drive towards Nashville down Briley Parkway meant a day full of fun and memories. Sadly in 1997, the 120-acre amusement park nestled near the Cumberland River shuttered and got replaced with a shopping mall — leaving a hole in not only local life but also the country music world. A 2025 film, A Circle Broken, examine the unexpected loss of Opryland and tries to answer the question: “Why was Opryland closed and replaced with a shopping mall?”

In September, you can see the Nashville Film Festival award winner at the Franklin Theatre and Portland Theater for a limited time.

THE PARK THAT SAVED THE OPRY

Opryland USA opened on May 27, 1972, built by WSM Inc. to complement the newly constructed Grand Ole Opry House. The pairing wasn’t incidental — the theme park was designed to be the financial engine that kept the Opry itself viable, drawing visitors to Nashville with roller coasters and river rides, then sending them into the Opry House for a night of music. It worked. Opryland became Nashville’s top tourist draw almost every year of its 25-season run, pulling in an average of 2.5 million visitors annually and putting the city on the map for family tourism a decade before “Music City” became a national brand.

The park closed abruptly after the 1997 season. Gaylord Entertainment had promised the community that part of Opryland would remain intact even as plans for redevelopment moved forward — a promise that didn’t hold. There was no farewell tour, no final season built around saying goodbye; the announcement came, and then the rides were gone. Opry Mills, an outlet shopping mall, opened on the site in 2000. Many of Opryland’s rides were later sold off to a company planning a new park in Indiana that was never built; most were eventually scrapped.

THE QUESTION THE FILM TRIES TO ANSWER

Director Brandon Vestal spent more than four years collecting home movies, photographs, and interviews with former Opryland employees and performers before A Circle Broken premiered at the Nashville Film Festival in 2025 — a project he’s described as growing out of his own childhood memories of the park. The film features interviews with former general manager Bob Whitaker and longtime Opryland performers, piecing together not just what the park meant to Nashville and the rest of the state, but why it disappeared so suddenly.

Vestal has said he sees the film as more than nostalgia. He’s called it a cautionary tale about people moving to a place and not knowing what they have — a warning aimed as much at other small towns and cities as it is a eulogy for Opryland itself. For Vestal, the park’s closure marks the moment Nashville stopped feeling like a hidden local secret and started becoming the tourist brand it is today.

Opryland USA: A Circle Broken screens twice at each venue over the next two weekends. It will screen this weekend at The Franklin Theatre in Franklin, Tennessee on Saturday, September 5 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, September 6 at 3 p.m. You can purchase advanced ticket at franklintheatre.com. It will also screen next weekend at The Temple Theatre in Portland, Tennessee on Saturday, September 12 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, September 13 at 3 p.m.. You can purchase advanced ticket at templetheatretn.com.•

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