Was so thoroughly impressed by the entire experience. Wanna be just like this guy when i grow up
We (45m, 40f, 10m, 7m) just wrapped up a week long family vacation in the Smokies. We were on the fence about doing DW, mostly because my wife doesn't really love crowded places and I absolutely hate them.
Either way we decided the boys would probably have fun and we had spent the majority of the last 5 days in nature. So i started doing research found this thread and read some posts. Friday morning everyone is sleeping, I'm drinking my coffee and get a reddit notification for this post
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dollywood/s/ndBzcC5PTc
I start panicking... thursdays are supposed to be slower days and the experience was that bad? My wife wakes up and i convince her we have to upgrade to the premium timesaver pass. She doesn't want to but i convince her spending that money will be worth me not losing my mind all day.
What an absolute waste of money. Maybe we got really really lucky and it was absolutely dead on a beautiful Friday during peak season, but the timesaver was comlletely unneccesary and Dollywood was a fantastic experience for all of us.
If their was something to complain about besides wasting money on the timesaver it would be it took us like an hour to get our meals at the Front Porch Cafe. But that was even great, it took so long because we came in at 3, after the lunch rush and they ran out of the freshly hand batterred chicken breasts (me, my wife and apparently at least one person at every other table ordered and they had to bread more). The heat index was over 90 at the time so we really didn't mind sitting in the AC and sipping ice cold drinks. Our server was also amazing. Super nice and friendly (just like every other employee we interacted with). Plus everything we got was delicious. Hands down the best amusement park meal i will ever have, it was as good or better than every restaurant meal we had this week.
And the rides were great, not the biggest or scariest coasters but amazing for a family park. Plenty of rides to jump on with the little guy between coasters and he would at least try some of the faster family ones that were fun for all of us... my oldest also realized he actually loves big drops, loops and cork screws. Wild Eagle is the best coaster i've been on in a very long time. I rode it 3 times (once solo, twice more after my son decided to try it). I might have waited in line for a total of 30 minutes and that was every line after 4:30. Between 11:30 - 3 they were definitely longer but not more than 30 minutes without the pass (i missed that entrance the first time we got in a few lines).
Sorry for the super long post. Hoping someone who is on the fence finds when they are searching... especially if they read the awful post from the day before my visit.
Definitely go Don't spend money on the timesaver stuff until after you get to the park to see if you need it. I can't speak to the horror stories of the parking lot the poster who had a bad day described, we took the trolley from patriot park. We saved money on parking, and even though we had to wait quitea while for the trolly after the fireworks our boys made short term friends with a bunch of boys around there age so it was fine.