Weekend Trip to the Smokies

Considering how close Smokies is to us, we really don’t go there too often. The girls have no school this Monday so we decided to take a quick trip to check out the area and visit Teddy’s sister TT.

February 17, 2024

After a quick stop at TT’s house, we headed to Wilderness at the Smokies in Sevierville, Tennessee. This is also where we are going to spend the night. We have been to its other location in Wisconsin Dells and had a blast there, so this was a no brainer. The girls LOVED the waterpark once again.

After the waterpark, we all did the Ropes Course. I’ll admit, I didn’t last long.

Ropes Course

We followed that with Laser Maze and Mini Golf, kids also did the climbing wall.

Mini Golf

This is what’s great about Wilderness Resorts. You can go to multiple waterparks and enjoy other activities all without leaving your resort. Also, your hotel stay automatically includes the cost of the waterparks. The other activities come with a cost but it’s only $25 per person to do all of the activities once. Then it was time to get ready for the dinner show we already bought tickets for – the Hatfield & McCoy Show. The show includes dinner and it was $75 a person. Quite pricy for this area, especially considering the fact I couldn’t find any discounts anywhere and my kids were charged as adults. Fortunately, my kids LOVED the show. I bought the tickets last second and didn’t have much time to read the fine prints. I saw it said gates open at 8pm, so I planned on being there right before, but apparently the fine print said to be there “at least” 45 minutes before hand. Oops. By the time I was parking, they were calling me to ask me if we were coming.

It all worked out fine, although we didn’t have a lot of time to eat – I had assumed we would get to eat DURING the show, but no. The show was about as country as you could imagine. The food was typical southern fare. I liked the fact the story is based on some real history. Kids enjoyed the corny jokes.

Hatfield & McCoy Dinner & Show

I should probably mention that our $75/person ticket was pretty good seats. I scanned the way the seating was done after arrival and noted that there really wasn’t any bad seats in the whole place. So buying some cheaper seats probably would have been more worth it.

Hatfield & McCoy dinner & show
Impressive production – floor is now a swimming pool!

We had a good night’s rest at Wilderness Resort’s River Lodge Suites. Our room was the Bunk Suite, the cost was $229 before tax.

February 18, 2024

This morning, kids wanted to hit the waterpark again. Alice also somehow convinced Teddy to try one of the waterslides. Bad idea, but we survived. We also played bowling and laser tag. Then we checked out of the hotel and got on our way home. We stopped at Burro Flojo in Knoxville for lunch.

Lunch @ Burro Flojo

Conclusion

This was a short trip but we created some lasting memories. We didn’t get to see much of the mountains but spending two days at the waterpark was a great deal for the cost of a one night stay. Especially considering we didn’t need to fly anywhere and it was just a 3 hour drive. The Wilderness Resort at Wisconsin Dells is nicer and bigger but it’s also so much further. We are already talking about going back.

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