Gatlinburg Trip 6/18- 6/25 DAY 1
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Mitzi&Kevin · 06-28-2005, 10:18 AM

<font color="blue">Day 4 June 21
Dollywood and Kidfest
As every other day on this vacation I awoke before everyone else around 6:30 am. I had decided that I would make a nice breakfast for everyone so they wouldn't really want to snack at Dollywood. I made pancakes and sausage. Damon woke up shortly before breakfast was ready so he was in charge of waking everyone else up. We ate breakfast and Kevin checked out the weather. They were calling for high in the upper 80's with a 30% chance of thunderstorms. We decided to go for it because except for the other day, when it did rain it didn't last long. Thankfully it didn't rain at all while we were there and it was HOT!!!
After we had had our showers we pile into the van and head to Pigeon Forge. For those that don't know, there are 2 ways to the parking lot to Dollywood. The first one is clearly the way everyone who has never been there uses. We used the back entrance, which is only labeled for Dollywood Splashn' Country. We pay the $5 parking fee and find a spot right away. There is a tram already there so we pile in. The driver told us that from this point we are a mile from the entrance to Dollywood, we decide that at the end of the day we will take a tram rather than walking it. We had purchased tickets for the 3 older kids from AAA before we left Indiana, and Damon got in free because kevin and I had bought season passes and they sent us a coupon to get a kid in free during kidfest. I take a picture of the kids in front of the Dollywood sign and we head in. We grab maps and the first stop was Thunderhead, the wooden coaster. Hardly ever a line since it was off in the back by itself. We talked Damon into going on it. He is finally 48 inches so he can start riding BIG coasters. He wasn't real sure about it so he decided to ride with Kevin. Kevin informed me after the ride that Damon held onto his arm and squeezed the heck out of his hand. We headed over to find a smoking area and while we were there Damon decided he wanted to go on the Spongebob motion ride. This is the same one they had at Kings Island the last time we were there but Damon wasn't tall enough for the motion seats. He loved it. We had decided after that to just walk around a bit. When we were there in April we had stopped by the jewelry store to find out that the jewelers last name was Stinson, which from working on our family trees, Stinson was a surname on Kevin's side. So we decide to stop in there to see if he was in. He was and from the 2 of them talking they figured out that their grandfather's were cousins. We just kept saying "what a small world". The next stop was Tennessee Tornado, 3 loop rollercoaster, we couldn't talk Damon into riding this one, and we REALLY tried, but he said nope, he wasn't ready for the loops yet. I did get my 17 yr old daughter to ride it, and she is definitely not a coaster fanatic, but by the end of the day she had decided it was as much fun as we had been telling her. She even went back on it by herself. We then decided it was time for lunch and head to Red's Diner. All had hamburgers with fries. Damon and I got milkshakes. The total for the meal was about $60.00. After lunch the boys wanted to ride the raft ride. I got soaked, the boys hardly got wet at all. Funny how that always seems to work out, huh. I can't remember all we did and we hadn't figured on spending all day there, but we were there until they closed at 8. We head out to the parking lot. I do have a suggestion for Miss Dolly though. She should really rethink about the way her exit is set up. Everyone has to walk out through the Emporium, her gift shop and there is really only 1 straight way out, so instead of standing like a herd of cattle I went ALL the way around to get out. Then we notice the line for the trams. I know that we decided to ride the mile back to the van BUT after seeing the lines we decided a mile walk wasn't that bad after all. We all split up because the kids are still looking for license plates. Found a couple of new ones. We make it back to the van and out of the parking lot in no time. We get back to the chalet and grab and bite to eat and hit the hot tub and play some pool before calling it a night.
Next up: Clingman's Dome

Mitzi
The link for pictures are in another post.</font>