AHHH! We started this week out by doing something I had been wanting to do for a very long time – we visited Dollywood!
The Dollywood theme park, located in Pigeon Forge, is just about an hour and 15 minute drive from our current campsite and I absolutely could not be this close without going. We checked online and, although it is a little pricey, we decided to go ahead and splurge and get our tickets. We also discovered that our visit would fall during the first weekend of the Food and Flower Festival! For this event, the park is decorated with plants and flowers made into sculptures and has special food offerings in addition to the amazing regular selection in the park. We wanted to be able to spend all day at the park without worrying about rushing home to get Harley out so we booked a full day pet sitter through Rover.com, did a meet and greet with her on Friday night, and dropped Harley off for the day on Sunday morning around 9:30. It cost us about $50 for the day but it was such a great price to be sure that our girl was well cared for and wouldn’t be stressing about us being gone. We even got a few text updates during the day to let us know that things were going well which was a HUGE relief for us.
I do want to mention that Dollywood does have kennels called Doggywood where you can board your dog for the day. Instead of staff walking them, however, you are responsible for making your way back to the facility throughout the day to walk your dog. We considered this option but ultimately decided an in home daycare through Rover would be less stressful for all of us as Harley gets really anxious in cages-especially in strange places.
We got to the park shortly after opening (around 10:30) and were able to park in lot C (for Cotton Candy as we were reminded several times to help us remember what lot to return to at the end of the day). We caught a tram from the parking lot to the park entrance and were soon inside and ready to begin our adventure. Our fist stop was to pick up our Food Tasting passes. We had added these on for around $36 per person when we bought our tickets. These passes allowed us each 5 different items from the Food and Flower Fest menu at various stands throughout the park. We had a little confusion and frustration trying to find the right place to pick these up (our email confirmation said to go to the Sweet Shoppe, the Sweet Shoppe employee directed us to the ice cream counter, and the ice cream counter employees directed us to a kiosk outside) but we eventually got our passes and were ready to eat.
The park has a main street that takes you back away from the entrance that is lined with shops, a bakery, a candy and ice cream shop, souvenir stands, and plenty of photo ops. To one side is a 1950’s era setup with fake storefronts, a few shops, a retro diner, and one of Dolly’s tour buses that guests can walk through. This is the bus that Dolly bought in 1994 and used through 2009. I included a photo of the sign below – be sure to read some of the impressive facts about this vehicle!
In the back right corner of the park is an area that has a County Fair theme. There are carnival type rides, games, food stands, the Heartsong theater, and the train depot for the Dollywood Express-an actual coal fueled train that guests can ride through a portion of the park and a small distance up the mountainside and back. The train was loud and kind of stinky but did provide a neat experience for riders of all ages.
A corridor of shops and attractions leads guests off to the left hand side of the park to many of the larger rollercoasters. This shop, known as Craftsman’s Valley, has some amazing shops for various trades and offers live demonstrations throughout the day at the glass blower, blacksmith, and leatherworking shops. This area is also where you will find the Grist Mill – one of the locations in the park where you can find the famous Cinnamon Bread. This bread was hands down the best food we ate all day. It is $10.99 per loaf and you can add on a cup of icing or apple butter for dipping. When we first got our loaf I thought “there is no way we can eat this entire thing”. It was gone within 10 minutes. So freaking delicious. There are also several souvenir shops and food venues in this area. With a small stream running through the area, it is the perfect place for a leisurely stroll.
This area of the park is also where you will find the Bald Eagle sanctuary. Dollywood is home to several birds that have been injured and are not able to survive in the wild. They also have other birds including vultures, Desert Eagle Owls, Red Tailed Hawks, and African Pied Crows that appear in shows at the Wings of American theater.
At the end of Craftsman’s Valley, you will find the Wilderness Pass, Wildwood Grove, and Timber Canyon areas of the park which loop back around to the entrance. As with the rest of the park, there are lots of food and beverage options here in addition to several rides and even some games.
The entire park was well laid out with tons of seating areas, live music, food and shopping. As I am still having some issues with nerve pain in my leg, we take a lot of breaks and we never struggled to find a place to sit. Each time we would get something to eat using our festival food passes we were easily able to find a table or bench where we could enjoy our food, listen to live performers, and people watch. It also seemed like there was a bathroom around every corner and we found all of the restrooms we visited to be clean and well stocked and we never had to wait in line. We didn’t ride too many rides (I get super motion sick and John is afraid of losing his glasses) but we were impressed with the way that the big roller coasters were mixed in with rides for smaller kids – it seemed like a good setup for families with children of mixed ages.
With our Tasting passes, we were able to try the Garlic Shrimp Mac & Cheese, the Blue Woog (a blue lemonade drink), Strawberry Lemonade, Bulgogi Nachos, Loaded Potato Tornado, Pretzel Crab Melt, Street Corn Salad, and the Berry Funnel Cake. We also got a cookie and a cupcake from the bakery to take home.
All in all, we spent about 6 hours at the park. We were pretty worn out when we finally got back to the car (thank goodness for that parking lot tram!) and started the drive back to Knoxville to pick up Harley. I was absolutely shocked when I pulled up my pedometer on my phone and it said we did over 13,500 steps for a distance of about 5.25 miles. Hopefully it balances out some of the junk we ate during the day! All I know is that we were both relieved that this was the only thing we had planned during our stay here at Rocky Top and we could look forward to another week of relaxation. We sure needed it to recover from this adventure!
