The old section is comparable to SDC. There are some nice stores and crafts and beautiful scenery, especially around the chapel. However, that is only one area. The park is more of a mixed bag of themes and areas, loosely based around Tennessee and Dolly. It's mostly all well done, but it's not like the cohesive city theme of SDC.
Personally I'm a fan of Dolly, so I loved the area near the front of the park that is themed to a town in the 50's/60's with a big Dolly Parton museum at the heart of it.
The county fair area is kind of a nicer GE.
The Timber Canyon area (or whatever it is called) on the North side looks nice, but it is all rides.
The only area I didn't care much for was the back of the park called "Wilderness Pass" or something similar. It just seemed cartoonish and sloppy at the time. The theming on their version of Riverblast is well below HFEC's usual standard. For some reason they just didn't put a lot of effort in this area yet, but that may be due to the costs of actually digging it out.
In general, the park seems to be even more ride oriented than SDC. Unfortunately though, in my opinion they have put less care into some of the rides. Wild Eagle was a disappointment in how bland the whole experience was. The station is pretty much bare wood and concrete with some video screens - it didn't feel like something HFEC had built. On the other hand they have Mystery Mine which is the most heavily themed coaster HFEC has built (outside of FITH/BF). Blazing Fury is excellent as well, of course. SDC just seems to know how to get a better bang for their buck when they build any new rides.
So all in all, it's a very nice park that I think most people here would enjoy almost as much as SDC, but it harder to get your money's worth there unless you want to ride stuff.
I think most of us would agree that SDC still has the best overall "package". The street actors, the shows, the old-timer citizens, the details like the train robbery, and even the ride package at SDC are things I'd take any day over what DW has with their growing selection of rides. Then again, this is an SDC fan site so we are only slightly biased.
