In regard to the behind the scenes stuff, January’s sudden and unexpected death of former Silverwood magician Isaiah Daniels put the exposé of those stories on the back burner, in large part because Isaiah’s experiences were kind of the impetus for that. Those aren’t my stories to tell (broadcast and amplify when they come out, for sure though) since I was not directly involved. That does not in the least affect the truth, the depth, or the effects of those experiences, however.

But with the Herschend acquisition of Silverwood*, it deserves a second chance. A clean(ish) slate. A new beginning, if you will.

I’ll still point out issues if experienced this season, because the issues deserve to be highlighted so that they can–hopefully–be addressed.

–S.

*Last season would have been our last as season pass holders had it not been for the Herschend acquisition, because of the issues experienced.

Additionally, my thoughts on the structure of the contract–relying on just experiences with my own clients–is that the 2026 season is likely to be a transitional season, meaning Herschend is likely to be mostly observing this season and planning out changes. But that’s just my personal thoughts. So I’ll probably be slightly more forgiving in criticism this season. As I wrote last season, I fully expect that the changes brought in by Herschend will be good ones, based on the rankings of Dollywood and on the experiences of previous Silverwood cast members that went on to work at Dollywood.

The post Silverwood 2026: To New Beginnings appeared first on A Dad First.

Then someone quickly ID’d the owner as some local ‘influencer’ by the name of Jake Schnatter. I’d never heard of him before…but decided to do a little social experiment of sorts. I posted the below on IG, initially with only the first line.

The experiment was to see the reactions. I posted nothing offensive, nothing personally attacking the guy, just a funny little comment.

The internet did not disappoint, though because of the vitriol of the first two comments, I quickly deleted them, blocked those two commenters, then turned off commenting for a while. But the gist of the comments can be found in almost all threads online about it. And to me, the responses are fascinating.

The first and the ones with the most vitriol were defending him in a way that was WAY overboard, as if my comment was somehow smearing him or saying something offensive. Even had one send me a FB message like he was trying to intimidate…and over this comment?! [As an aside, Cody Gervais, formerly of CDA, now living in Bozeman, or Evan Nicholson, realtor in CDA…it’d take a whole lot more than that. I’d be more than happy to meet over coffee sometime to discuss your…concerns.]

The second set of comments I found repeated throughout local FB threads about this were comments that basically said: Jake has worked hard to be where he is/get what he has. My first thoughts were, “Ok, but what does that have to do with anything?” Conversely, if someone works hard for something, they tend to be more protective and careful with it, no?

The other comment was along the lines of “he’s a good kid” and usually combined with the second category of comments above. But does that bear out? Publicly-available records show past cases all involving…you guessed it…driving. Not necessarily extensive, but enough to question the claim, especially when a car crash is involved.

Like the original IG post, the point isn’t anything against Jake himself. Like I wrote, above, I’d never heard of him before, nor does his status matter to me in the least. But the responses…those tell a story.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Scott Kuhn (@scotters2k1)

The post Social media is…weird. appeared first on A Dad First.

But…I have resolved to not post anything that is or could be considered either hearsay or gossip, so have decided that until some of this breaks publicly and people are more willing to relay their own personal experiences, I’m not going to post any more about it. Rest assured though that once it does break, and once other people feel more free to talk, it will be covered in depth. Trust me in this: I *wish* I could go public with what I know at this point, but without being able to cover what I write with third-party, authentic, authoritative documentation, I’d be almost begging for legal action against me. Even if 100% true. Not worth that risk.

PS: If you happen to be a previous cast member at Silverwood and have firsthand experience or information [about, shall we say, inappropriate or unprofessional behavior…by anyone…] and are willing to share, please use the About area to contact, or reach out via IG DM. Your info will remain confidential unless or until you say otherwise.

The post Silverwood: the season is over, but the drama continues appeared first on A Dad First.

One of the stranger things since resurrecting the blog has been the hits from the past week. Flooded with ones like this image, from Singapore, and more importantly, from Tencent., which is a Chinese multinational technology conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen.

The hits aren’t really concerning in and of themselves. But they are crawling what looks to be all of the pages from the blog prior to me taking it offline years ago.

Digging up the past, so to speak.

So let me return the favor. Tiananmen Square, June 4, 1989. Known in China as the June Fourth Incident. Read more here.

The post Hello China appeared first on A Dad First.

Frankly it was because our incident just felt like more of the same of what we’ve experienced at Silverwood this season (here, here, here, and here–though not in chronological order–and it felt like anything else I posted would just be beating the metaphorical dead horse. My intent is not to dump on Silverwood, but make them–and the public when Silverwood doesn’t respond–aware of the issues. From my perspective, over the course of the entire season, it seems to be either a focus or training change related to accessibility.

This one was more dangerous though. By a lot.

After a couple seasons of talking about the Log Flume, Evanna decided she wanted to try it.

The pictures I took don’t show it well, but the layout of the loading/unloading area inside is this: the waterway splits into two areas to alternate loading and unloading. The normal area for loading and unloading is in front of us in the picture a bit, with the right lane loading/unloading from the right side, and the left one from the area between the two lanes. This detail is important in a bit.

The handicap loading/unloading area is on the right side, back a bit from the regular line, with a gate that opens to allow access, and an area that allows a rider to stash their wheelchair or other devices. Note of high importance: the handicap area is ONLY on the right, and can only load/unload from the right lane.

All went relatively well. We boarded and rode. But at the end of the ride, our car was directed to the LEFT lane. So we did the only thing we could do at the time: we unloaded, and waited in that center area between lanes for the attendant. And waited…and waited, holding Evanna, since her wheelchair was across a water lane from where we were, with no way of crossing. He gave no direction, provided no solution…just kept going, leaving us stranded.

After several sets of riders had gone through, a boat was stopped at the handicap area, so I yelled out to him, exasperated, if I could walk across the boat to get to her wheelchair. He opened the gate to allow, and we did, nearly losing my balance doing so.

This incident kinda sums up our Silverwood season. I don’t know what exactly changed or who directed the changes, but I do know that there were changes, and those changes had an impact on Evanna and her desire to visit…and I’m not sure she even picked up on a lot of the changes, or the words that were insensitive or uncaring, or Silverwood’s social media choosing instead of responding to one of the first incidences that I posted about on IG to just block me from tagging them. But I did.

And I can say that unless something major changes, we will not be getting season passes for the 2026 season (after having them the previous four seasons).

The post Silverwood: Log Flume and Accessibility appeared first on A Dad First.

Came across Ugreen this summer, and ended up picking up a DXP4800 Plus. The story of obtaining it is long and convoluted, fraught with attempted fraud via Aliexpress sellers (yes, plural). Perhaps for another time. But got one.

The thing is a beast, especially once I added in a couple NVMe drives for caching. More storage, faster storage, and running several apps in Docker. And even a Windows 2000 Pro VM for nostaglia, and because I could. Has run flawlessly.

Development continues to expand apps and capabilities of the Ugreen OS, but it is very similar to Synology without the cost, or the now price-inflated, Synology-branded drives required in many models.

Comparison of specs between the units for kicks:

DS215j: 800MHz Marvell Armada 375 dual-core CPU, 512MB of DDR3 RAM. 2 bays.

DXP4800 Plus (with upgrades): 12th Gen Intel Pentium Gold 8505 CPU (5-core, 6 threads, 3.3GHz with turbo up to 4.4GHz, 8MB cache), 16GB of DDR5 RAM, a 128GB SSD for OS. 4 bays.

Don’t do what I did (attempt to order from Aliexpress to save a few bucks). Unless you use PayPal + American Express, and have local USPS on your side when the tracking sent isn’t your unit (AND hope USPS gets a picture of hte label in their system!), or addressed to you or to your address, and are exceedingly patient. Order from link at Amazon instead.

The post The Ugreen DXP4800 Plus NAS Review appeared first on A Dad First.

First, despite the site being offline for a lot of years (from about 2018 until 2022, it was unmaintained; then from 2022 until recently was offline), it is still receiving traffic to old posts that have been offline for years.

Second, I had an Amazon Associate account that used to be associated with the site. That account was closed by Amazon in 2017 for supposedly violating terms of the agreement. Also part of the reason I discontinued using the site much. Lo and behold, I discovered the account is apparently re-activated, and receiving a tiny trickle of commissions since Q4 of 2024…despite the site being offline, and despite me not at all promoting. Amazon can’t tell me–or doesn’t log–where the traffic is coming from, only that it is using valid referral links.

The post Surprising discoveries appeared first on A Dad First.

But then things changed. For the record, these are my personal thoughts, feelings, opinions, and reflections…

At then conclusion of the 2023 season–their second season, Luke and Wendi Yellin (Silverwood’s Entertainment Creative Management team) left. They’d been heralded both externally and internally, and for good reason. They were fantastic. Equally as important, and I wrote this repeatedly online during both the 2022 and 2023 seasons, they had the knack to not hire not only talented cast members, but really good people. In fact, we’ve stay in contact with the vast majority of the former cast members since. Their departure left a gaping hole on the Entertainment side that Silverwood attempted to fill with inexperienced non-professionals, and the quality of the shows, the quality of the interactions, all suffered accordingly.

But then during the 2024 season, more disruption: Stephanie Sampson, the former PR manager, also left before the season completed. (Under Silverwood’s organization, both the Entertainment and PR/Marketing are under the same umbrella, which is a discussion for another time, perhaps). But this is also notable because Stephanie is a part of the Norton family.

This season? Long-time resident magician Nick Norton (and son of owner) was suddenly removed and replaced without any explanation. More on that will be coming out in the future, and I’ll link here when it does…but in the meantime, that is all I will write because the information is not mine to tell. But there is a LOT to tell.

To top off the disruptions, there’s the accessibility issues we’ve dealt with this season that hadn’t been an issue in any previous seasons. Scroll through my IG to find more, but one particular post on that, among several.

The aftermath of all this? This season we went maybe a third of the number of times last season, which was down from the 2023 season. And it’s very unlikely we’ll be doing season passes for next season…unless someone wants to sponsor to be able to continue reviewing.

The theme song for this post, that sums it up best, would be BB King’s The Thrill is Gone.

Update 11/29, to add to the tumultuous 2025 season: there was an unreported death at Silverwood.

The post Silverwood: how quickly things change appeared first on A Dad First.

1. Paying for it, so should use it, right?
2. May be counterintuitive, but working on reducing social media footprint, and going back (in part) to this.
3. A separate place from Evanna’s site or social media to discuss certain things, like Silverwood (because there’s going to be a lot to discuss in the near future).

The post Bringing back the blog: reasons appeared first on A Dad First.

Stay tuned. It’ll change over time.

The post Resurrecting the site appeared first on A Dad First.