Pigeon Forge, Tennessee

After a couple of days in Nashville, we drove about 4 hours outside of the city to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Being just 5 miles outside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Pigeon Forge is a tourist mountain down, with multiple attractions, dinner shows, museums, hotels and restaurants. Pigeon Forge is in Sevierville County, the home of Dolly Parton. After the famous singer had become well known and loved, she wanted to give back to her beloved mountain home, so she created several jobs and attractions to build up the economy of her home town, such as Dollywood, Dixie stampede and Dolly's Mountain Adventure. She also created Dolly's Imagination Library to promote reading and education for the youth.

Driving down the main street of Pigeon Forge reminds me a lot of driving down Las Vegas Boulevard, there are lots of eye catching buildings, a few of which are pictured below, and plenty of bright, colored lights at night.

Wonderworks is an indoor amusement park with hands on science exhibits, laser tag, a ropes course etc.

The Titanic Museum is a two story museum shaped like the Titanic itself. It is built half-scale to the original ship.

The Alcatraz East Crime Museum gives a behind-the-scenes look at forensic science and American crime history.

The Hollywood Wax Museum is probably one of the most iconic buildings you will see as you drive through Pigeon Forge. The larger than life King Kong Scaling the New York Skyscrapers, and the reimagined Mount Rushmore are hard to miss.

Pigeon Forge is also well known for it's dinner shows and Country music entertainment. We passed by several dinner show buildings as we drove through town.

I would have loved the opportunity to go to Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede, but we ran out of time. I'll make sure to see it next time.

We went to either a dinner show or country music show every night. One of the nights we attended the musical spectacular at the Smoky Mountain Opry. 

There was lots of music, lots of costume changes, lots of glitz, and lots of glamour. They put on a very high energy show!

My favorite evening show we attended was Dolly Parton's Smoky Mountain Adventure dinner show. This show had previously been known as the Lumberjack Adventure but had recently been completely redone, and we had front row tickets to opening night!

Guests are seated at long tables set up in stadium seating all around the stage. Our cute sever brought out our amazing southern meal, one item at a time. The food was really good!

The premise of the show is two waring families who compete in a variety of challenges to see which family is the strongest, fastest and bestest. The family our section cheered for was the yellow clad family, they had names but I have forgotten them.

We got peach turn overs for dessert!

The family dogs even competed in some of the challenges!

Our family won! If you are ever in Pigeon Forge, I highly recommend Dolly's Smoky Mountain Adventure dinner show, it was fabulous.