Not gonna beat around the bush on this one. Outside of Friday night the trip was a bit of a disaster. It was honestly a tonal whiplash because I still stand by Friday being one of the ALL TIME GREAT theme park evenings I've ever had. After that, it all pretty much went down hill. I already described Gatlinburg on Saturday, so let's go day by day from then.
Sunday - We decided to do Dolly's Stampede this day which was honestly a pretty major mistake. I started the day doing the trampoline park since it's something I've never done and it was right down the street from the hotel. Problems started coming up via trying to get my grandma to Stampede which was just far enough for her to have trouble walking to it from the hotel but just short enough to not make it worth the while for an Uber/Lyft pickup. This was pretty much a problem for ANYTHING on the main Pigeon Forge parkway and is why I couldn't get around to stuff like Professor Hacker's in spite of it being pretty much within walking distance for me personally. If I was traveling alone I'd happily just walk the three mile parkway, but having my grandma with me made it a completely different story.
Dolly's Stampede was a bit of a mess. DEFINITELY the most paranoid I was the whole trip re: Covid, relatively unorganized seating, Google advertising a pre-show and there not being one, the food besides the AWESOME vegetable soup being subpar at best. The stunt performers at the show were impressive, but the rest definitely didn't measure up to the epic rockwork backdrop of the theater. After that I did some solo time at Dollywood but the crowds were super intense so I only got one ride on Blazing Fury, Mystery Mine, and Thunderhead a piece. I did discover Thunderhead has EXCELLENT night-rides though, so that was a plus.
Monday - Oh the joys of booking a trip for Columbus Day without realizing it. I made this mistake with Magic Mountain a decade ago, and here we go again. Park was PACKED. Grandma REFUSED to go to the park anywhere close to rope-drop.
@D Hulk knows this story, but I had straight up the worst luck I've ever had at a park with both Tennessee Tornado and Mystery Mine breaking down RIGHT when I got to the gates after an hour wait back to back. So yea, that wasted a TON of time!! It was double stressful since I knew it was the last day. Managed to get solid final rides on Blazing Fury (hands down my favorite attraction in the park), Firechaser (after a 90 minute wait), Tenessee Tornado x2 (OF COURSE the line died down to nothing AFTER I waited an hour for it earlier in the day...Oh and thanks Dollywood for putting a second train on literal hours before the end of my time there haha) and Thunderhead (surprisingly weaker towards the back than towards the front as far as air-time went). By this point my grandma WOULD. NOT. SHUT. UP about how paranoid she was with getting a Lyft back even though the entire time I'd been able to get Lyfts to and from the park no problem and couldn't get it through her head that shorter rides were the issue we were having. So yea, sacrificed almost a solid HOUR of night rides just so the two of us wouldn't get in a huge fight over it. That was definitely a low point and I was pretty much DONE with the trip after that.
Tuesday - Gatlinburg probably won't be as crowded on Tuesday than on Saturday right, RIGHT?!?!?! Well...yes and no. The place was still an ABSOLUTE ZOO and I have zero motivation to ever go back. We managed to find a hole in the wall cafe with the best Frito pie I've ever had so that was a plus after a whole trip's worth of waiting in long lines to join long waitlists for dining. I bought tickets for Anakeesta and people...this was the SINGLE WORST RUN LINE I'VE EVER SEEN FOR ANYTHING. We get there and there's a METRIC TON OF SWITCHBACKS. People are CONSTANTLY going in and out of the line which drives my OCD and anxiety up the wall. After an hour in the line we realize it was only for wristbands and after we got wristbands we'd have to wait an additional hour plus for the chairlift and god knows how long for the chairlift back down. We then decided to straight up bail and call the money spent on it a wash. MY GOD there's got to be a better way to do this. There was NOBODY directing the lines, no clear signs, the woman at the ticket booth pretty much snapped at me that I had to go to the back of the wristband line. Terrible, TERRIBLE operations. I really couldn't believe how bad it was considering how hyped up and award winning this park is.
So after bailing on that, we went for one of my must dos that I didn't get around to on Saturday. Ripley's Haunted Adventure. Uggghhh. ty opperations strikes again. Hey geniuses, were in the middle of a PANDEMIC. Maybe, oh I don't know, MAYBE figure out a way to run your ****ing maze WITHOUT the need to have a conga line of ten people FORCED to hold on to each others shoulders as they walked through. I was trying to kind of half tap the guy in front of me and sure enough the first (and one of the only) scare actors pretty much yelled at me "IF YOU DON'T TOUCH THE PERSON IN FRONT OF YOU YOU'RE GONNA GET KICKED OUT!!!". Meanwhile I've got my poor grandma in back of me struggling to keep up so after that fun little encounter I spent the ENTIRE time being afraid of getting kicked out for struggling to keep up with the group and being TERRIFIED that my grandma was going to fall and break her neck on one of the funhouse moving floors.
I really CURSE the dude at Hollywood Stars and Cars who convinced her to do it with me when I was already in line to do it solo. That was honestly pretty RECKLESS to sent a woman her age into that freaking thing with uneven floors and a demand to keep up with the group. Seriously the WORST thing we did the whole trip. Barely any actors except the one who yelled at us, it was mostly dark hallways and cheap funhouse stuff to throw you off balance. Even the often-praised final jump scare was COMPLETELY ruined for me by a jackass in the elevator straight up PROJECTING when it would happen to their friends. MISERABLE experience all around. I straight up skipped Mysterious Manor because of that (mostly out of fear that the shoulder-touching factor would be in play. I CAN'T STAND having to physically touch strangers even outside of a pandemic.
Ended the day out with a trip up to Skylift Park which was the ONE positive thing of the day besides lunch. Really loved the skylift itself and the bridge was easily the most intense thing I did the whole trip by a country mile. Things continued to go wrong yesterday and ended up being one of the most stressful return flights I've ever had. I will take a crying baby ANY DAY over an entitled toddler who's SCREAMING at his mother for the ENTIRE. FIVE. HOURS. Oh my god, this kid threw a fit over every little thing and even over my nice padded headphones I could here him the...whole...time. At a certain point the brat throws his mom's phone on the ground and the mother without ANY sort of consent gets right in our face and shines a flashlight in our row trying to find it. Oh yea, and someone straight up VOMITED a couple rows behind us. FUN!!! As one last layer of suck, the cab driver bringing us back to Petaluma nearly got a fit of roadrage when he missed the exit and had to loop back around the airport.
Sweet baby Jesus. I'm done with travel for a while.
@D Hulk the trip was bad enough that I'm legit questioning if I even want to do the KI/Cedar Point trip so soon. We'll have to plan out a good time because MY GOD my patience was stretched to the absolute limit. It really is a shame that one of the best theme park nights of my life ocured smack dab in the middle, but it's safe to say this is the first trip I've ever been on where by the end I was MORE excited to get home than I was to leave in the first place. It was truly a nightmare and makes me second guess staying ANYWHERE outside of a park-specific resort ever again (gotta save up the $$ to splurge on Breakers, Doug
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And that concludes the trip. Photos to come.
! Perfectly suited to your theme park tastes. And from your descriptions, sounds like an extremely well-rounded coaster lineup. Continue to enjoy your time there.
