Opening Weekend At Dollywood

Yesterday we decided to go to the opening of the Dollywood season. It's the parks 25th anniversary. I can't believe that! Mike says he remembers going to the park on a fifth grade trip and it had just changed from Silver Dollar City to Dollywood. He's old.

Anyway, It was VERY, no, it was VERY VERY cold Saturday morning. It was in the lower 30's. And it was windy. So when we first got there we were pretty cold. The kids stayed pretty warm since they had warm gloves and coats. Mike and I weren't smart enough to grab our gloves so our hands froze for a couple of hours.

We noticed pretty quickly that some rides were not running. I don't know if it was because of the temp. Out of the 4 major rides (roller coasters) only 1 was running at the beginning of the day. While we were there, one more ride opened. So that was a little disappointing. Since we have season passes, it's easy for us to go back. If we had been someone from out of town who was visiting for the day, I think I would have been pretty disappointed.

The kids rode quite a few rides. Alex rode a new ride this time. He rode the bumper cars. He's tall enough to drive himself but he asked me to drive. He kept telling me to bump people. It was a fun ride. We also all rode the Scrambler and about froze to death! We also rode the "race cars" and all the little kid rides.

After the rides, we headed to our favorite eating spot: The Lumber Camp. They serve chicken tenders, fries, and a roll. It is so good! The service wasn't great though. Don't get me wrong. The people were very friendly but it took forever to get our food. Plus, the people working there were confused about what time they opened. That part I didn't quite understand. But we got good food in the end so all was forgiven.

It was around this time that we discovered that Dollywood has new refillable mugs to commemorate their 25th anniversary. They're nice looking. They should be. They're $15.00 a piece. Before we knew this we had decided to buy new mugs this year. We spent a good amount of time deciding if we wanted to get it. What helped us make the decision was that old mug refills are now $2.79. They had been a dollar something. With the new anniversary mugs you get $0.99 refills. Between our trips to Dollywood and Splash Country it's worth it to just buy the new mugs (although Mike did do some mumbling about it).

After lunch, we went to the playground near Thunderhead (also closed). The kids love this playground. We then went to a new playground (kind of like an obstacle course) in the new Wilderness Pass area. That was fun too.

After that, we started making our way to the exit. We stopped in some stores on the way out and I found a great wallet in a new store. I wanted to buy everything in there but decided on the wallet, this time.

All in all, it was a fun trip and it was nice to finally be able to go back to Dollywood again. Can't wait to go back again!