Shug decided last year that instead of having a birthday party (for some reason, he’s now ‘so old’ that having big class parties is passe) he’d like to be one of the first guests at the new Dollywood DreamMore Resort, and when he found they had bunk beds for kids, he was even more excited. So keeping our promise, we checked in on the first day they opened.
We spent the first evening in the pool, which was nice, and viewed fireworks from the water. There’s an interior pool that we swam around in as well.
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The room was comfortable and even though it was the first night they were open, there was nothing missing or any missteps that we saw.
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The boys felt like kings getting to sleep in a bunk bed.
There were perks of staying at the hotel — a shuttle bus to both the Dollywood Park and the Water Park, and a TimeSaver pass (nothing as good as the Disney FastPass app, but still…) to skip the lines at Dollywood.
We’ve had season passes to Dollywood the last two years, and decided to switch things up this year and get annual passes to Six Flags Atlanta instead — we purchased them in December when annual passes were only slightly more than a 1x pass in the first place. Mistake. The boys don’t care much for Six Flags anywhere near as much as Dollywood (for Shug, because of the Wild Eagle coaster, and Shugie likes the cheesy Blazing Fury ride). The new coaster at Dollywood this year is the wooden coaster, Lightning Rod, and it has been closed a lot, so I didn’t feel that badly about us passing this year on it.
Of course, their favorite park is DisneyWorld, but Shug says that Six Flags falls far behind Dollywood and Carowinds (at Carowinds, Shug loves the Fury 325, and I just noticed that’s rated #1 at a coaster rating site). Agreed.
When we decide to get Dollywood annual passes again, I think we’ll definitely consider staying here, but but we’ll also consider staying in Knoxville as it’s just a :45 drive from the park, and there are so many fun things (and good hotels) up there.