The Smoky Mountain Christmas Festival at the Dollywood amusement park in East Tennessee offers a variety of holiday celebrations, light displays, parades, music and family activities from early November through New Year’s Day.
Country singer Dolly Parton’s eponymous amusement park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, hangs about 4 million holiday lights around its 150 acres of activities and amusements in a grand finale to each year’s operations. Shows and events throughout the park celebrate Christmas with themes ranging from religion to Hollywood, according to the Dollywood website. The amusement park near the Great Smoky Mountain National Park and tourist town of Gatlinburg drew 2.5 million visitors in 2009 with its 10 differently themed sections, five roller coasters, four water rides and emphasis on the music and crafts of the mountain of the southeast. In 2009, "Amusement Today" magazine gave Dollywood the "Golden Ticket" award for “Best Shows,” according to the magazine website. Dollywood is about an hour’s drive from Knoxville, Tennessee and within a day’s drive of most of the eastern half of the United States.
Dollywood’s Smoky Mountain Christmas Festival consists of several different shows and events, including "Christmas in the Smokies," in which a 12-person cast and 7-piece band perform carols and other holiday musical favorites with a mountain history emphasis, according to the park’s website. The "Appalachian Christmas" event at Dollywood’s Back Porch Theater recalls the area’s history in an acoustic musical show. Dollywood’s most elaborate stage show features a full orchestra and 20-person cast recreating the family holiday classic “Babes in Toyland.” Another musical offering performs a timeless classic, “Twas the Night Before Christmas." The "Polar Express 4-D Experience" lets visitors relive the popular animated movie in which a skeptical boy rides a magical train to the North Pole on Christmas Eve.
"Christmas with the Kingdom Heirs" presents a Southern gospel celebration through song while the "O Holy Night" show features a girl searching for an angel and three shepherds following a star, according to the amusement park website. Dollywood’s Robert F. Thomas Chapel hosts worship services every Sunday evening through the Smoky Mountain Christmas Festival.
Oversized toys, including a wall-sized Viewmaster, attract children to the Dollywood Santa’s Workshop. This feature of the Smoky Mountain Christmas Festival closes on Dec. 23. The amusement park’s Rivertown Lake section sparkles every night during the Christmas Festival when thousands of lights flicker with synchronized music. More lights adorn floats in the daily Dollywood Parade of Lights.
In 1986, Parton created Dollywood out of an existing small amusement park she had purchased, according to the Dollywood website. In 25 years, the park has doubled in size and remained Tennessee’s most popular ticketed entertainment and the second-most visited attraction after Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Parton told the Associated Press in 2010 that she wanted to continue to add new activities and events to the amusement park each year and “eventually have Dollywoods in other parts of the country.”
Dollywood opens Thursdays through Sundays in November and December. It closes for Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. In 2010, one-day adult tickets sell for $50.90 and children’s for $44.70.
