Hooray for Dollywood!

Today was Dollywood day! I love theme parks and I love Dolly, so today was always going to be a fun day. Up bright and early again, we saw the crowds at Rockefeller Center on NBC’s morning show, and looked forward to getting morning coffee at Dean and Deluca’s in a couple of weeks’ time. Then we snapped out of it and jumped in the car because we knew Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge were bound to be busy on a summer weekend and we wanted as much time in the park as we could get. If I’d known quite how bad Pigeon Forge was going to be (traffic-wise, we’ll get onto the tourist tat in a minute…), I think we’d have parked the car in Gatlinburg and hopped on the Dolly Trolley. We ended up bumper to bumper and even the sat nav lady was confused by the road layout of the tackiest place on earth. It was like as if a giant sat down for a meal of Blackpool, the “attractions” at Niagara Falls, the cheap end of the Vegas strip and that rancid shopping mall where the DMV is in Herald Square then sicked it all back up again.

And yes, we did kind of realise it was going to be like that, but we didn’t bank on the sheer scale of it all. The Gatlinburg sky ride, which we’d also planned to do, was a bit too vertiginous for our liking, as well – some things you just can’t get the scale of from the internet. So by the time we got to Dollywood, we were settled into just the right kind of tacky, and ready to have some serious fun. Everything from the uniforms of the staff down to the architecture of the buildings was lots of fun, and of course, Dolly’s butterflies were on everything! We started off enjoying the thrill rides, and the wet rides, and wandering around getting a feel for the place. We saw the eagle enclosure and took in part of a bird show, then wandered around the showcases of traditional local crafts and business. By far my favourite part of the day, however, was (and this won’t come as a surprise to many people) was lunch! I’d seen some great reviews of Aunt Granny’s, a traditional meat-and-three cafeteria onsite, and we weren’t disappointed. The aircon meant that even while it was 90 degrees outside, inside there was plenty of sweet tea and down home cooking, give me roast chicken, spuds, cabbage and gravy, and I’m more than happy. We didn’t even have room for dessert.

After lunch we took in a few more rides, did a bit of shopping and saw a magic show, before taking the steam train for one last look around the grounds. I would recommend a day out at Dollywood to everyone, even if you hate country or traditional music, there’ll be something you like here. The gift shop is an experience in itself, we came away with Dolly t-shirts, postcards, a few Dolly emery boards, a cookbook, the ubiquitous pencil (I’m a collector), some fragranced potholders and all kinds of other stuff. Fantastic!

Then it was back to the cabin for a good rest after what turned out to be a long day – we only just made it back before it turned dark. And we didn’t want to be out in that!