In March I had gotten an email from Wilderness of the Smokies offering a great deal on booking a hotel stay. After giving it some thought I decided that we were going to go as a family over Labor day weekend.
In planning out our trip I really wanted to go to Ober Gatlinburg and do the alpine slides. In thinking about Gatlinburg and Labor day weekend I figured it would be packed, so I thought we should do Ober Gatlinburg first thing Saturday morning to try and beat some traffic, this was a great decision!
We used credit card points and got a free hotel stay right outside of Knoxville and then had a short drive into Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg and got to Ober Gatlinburg right at opening.
We decided to drive up the mountain instead of paying for the tram and I don't do well with twists and turns or steep drops...but we made it and it was beautiful!
For $20 each Thomas and I could get an arm band and the kids would get to play on everything for free! The way their aging works its 6 and older to pay and since the boys are only 5, they play for free! This is a great deal since one alpine slide ride is $7 alone! The only trouble is we were out numbered, with 3 kids one of us stayed back with 2 while the other went with one. Tapanga got to do a majority of the activities also, she wasn't restricted because of her height!
They do have a playground for kids, so this worked out nicely.
Thomas and I took turns riding the ski lift to the alpine slide with one child, so the person on the ground took the pictures!
Along with the playground they have a couple kid rides, which the kids enjoyed playing on while they waited their turn for the slide!
With our arm band we got free putt putt, this is one of the things Thomas loves to do in the Pigeon Forge area!
We had gotten to Ober Gatlinburg right when it had opened and were the first to buy arm bands from the ticket booth outside. Anyway, I guess someone had stolen some arm bands recently and they sold us the wrong ones and so they were on the hunt for people with the wrong bands, when they found us they were like "We need you to come to guest services with us, we need to trade out your wrist bands. We're sorry, so we will upgrade your wrist band and you will get to do everything here today." When we had bought our wrist bands we could have bought a more expensive one that allowed you to ice skate and visit the bear habitat maybe a couple other things, but we didn't want to spend the extra money for things that we didn't really want to do. Plus we weren't planning on spending the whole day here, but since it was now included we decided to give ice skating a try!
Of course Thomas was a natural and took all the kids around the rink! The boys really enjoyed it although they did say it was cold! Tapanga didn't care for it much...she was cold, I do think she liked it when Thomas took her around!
After ice skating we visited the bear habitat where we saw some lounging bears and other critters. Then right as we were leaving we also got to see the zoo keeper feed the otters!
We had a great day at Ober Gatlinburg! We all enjoyed the alpine slides and other activities and just by luck got to experience new activities together!
After leaving we were hungry so we headed to the Old Mill for lunch. The Old Mill is one of our favorite restaurants in Pigeon Forge and has a great corn chowder and fritters! We couldn't leave before visiting the ducks right outside by the water, which we always feed our left over bread.
Finally it was time to go to the hotel and check in and of course we went straight to the water and played!
On Sunday, we played all morning in the water and then got ready to head out early afternoon. Thomas' request for our trip was to eat at Dixie Stampede, which does have great food! On the way there we stopped to speed around a race track. The boys were tall enough to ride along also and they had a blast...poor Tapanga was sad because she didn't get to participate.
With 3 different waterparks inside and out, the Wilderness is a great hotel! We had a blast and I would love to make this a ritual trip for our family. The kids keep get taller and the boys are already tall enough to ride many of the slides which just makes it even better! What great fun, close enough to enjoy a great long weekend!
At Tylers class, Ms. Randolph had taken Tylers answers to the questionnaire she had us to and put them together in a story along with a picture of himself that he drew.
