The Best Christmas Theme Park Event Isn’t Where You Think!

What’s the best theme park Christmas? Disney? Knott’s Berry Farm? Universal? For our author, Julie Tremaine, the answer is Dollywood.

For people who regularly visit Disney parks, the appeal of Dollywood might not be immediately obvious. It’s a relatively small park, just 160 acres compared to Disneyland Resort’s 500, tucked away in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.But then, consider who owns it: Dolly Parton, the park’s “Dreamer in Chief.” Take everything wonderful about the musician-actress-philanthropist that is Dolly, multiply it by roller coasters and incredibly good food, and then add the Smoky Mountains. Then you’ll start to understand what makes Dollywood such a special place. 

I’m not alone in this thinking. Just this year, Dollywood was named best theme park by both Newsweek and the National Amusement Park Historical Association, and took home six Golden Ticket Awards from Amusement Today. 

I grew up going to Dollywood, long before visiting the mouse (let alone having a job as a theme park journalist) was anything more than a distant dream. Though I barely knew anything about Dolly, I was instantly taken with the park. There was (and still is) live music around every corner. The food is so good it’s drawn the attention of national food journalists many times over. And more than that, there’s just a lovely sense of Southern hospitality in the air.

The rides are also great. Some of the roller coasters are next level in intensity, like the Wild Eagle, where each ride car is a giant eagle, and you’re suspended underneath its wings in hanging seats. Mystery Mine combines a serious thrill ride with incredible dark ride abandoned mine theming. 

The park is lovely in the spring during the Flower and Food Festival, similar to EPCOT’s Flower and Garden Festival…

…and during the fall’s Harvest Festival and Great Pumpkin LumiNights, when the park adds a 40-foot “pumpkin tree.” 

There’s something particularly magical about Dollywood during the holiday season, though. 

During Dollywood’s Smoky Mountain Christmas, the park adds six million twinkling lights to every surface imaginable. For comparison, Disneyland uses just under a million lights in their holiday displays. There are lights covering every roof, illuminating trees and plants, hanging overhead and cascading down all around. You might think you’ve seen spectacular holiday lights before. You haven’t seen these. 

My birthday is New Year’s Eve, and I’ve celebrated a couple of them at Dollywood — but this most recent time, it felt even more special. Maybe the effort and expense that it took to get there amplified the feeling. Maybe, and just spitballing here, it was being with my lifelong best friend and showing her daughters the park for the first time. (“She was so poor when she was born that her parents paid the doctor with a sack of oatmeal, not money,” I said to the eight-year-old as we were walking into the Tennessee Mountain Home, the replica of the Parton family’s two-room “homeplace” in the park. “Look at what she built. Imagine the kind of person who could come from nothing and create this.”) 

During Smoky Mountain Christmas, which this year runs from Nov. 1 through Jan. 5, Dollywood adds festive entertainment and attractions throughout the park. It’s so beloved that Dollywood won “Best Christmas Event” at the Golden Tickets every year for 15 straight years. This year, the award was retired, and Dollywood received a Golden Ticket Legend Award for the event. Not only can you visit Santa, you can visit him in his Smoky Mountain cabin during “Santa’s List … Naughty or Nice?,” a meet-and-greet show. 

There are festival kitchens throughout the park, serving fun holiday fare like a chicken pot pie bread cone, loaded smoked turkey nachos, Santa’s skillet potatoes, chocolate peppermint ice cream sandwiches and hot cocoa cupcakes. (Although if you skip the fried chicken and biscuits at Aunt Granny’s, you didn’t really experience Dollywood.)

As you might expect from a theme park based on a musician, there are a lot of live shows, including performances of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.

“Christmas in the Smokies,” a stage show that’s been running since 1990, is a singing and dancing spectacular with a live band. “Heidi Parton’s A Christmas to Remember” is new this year, with Dolly’s niece sharing Parton family stories and songs. On weekends, there’s a Merry & Bright fireworks show set to holiday standards. 

The park is also adding falling “snow” to Wildwood Grove this year, an area that’s especially full of glowing Christmas trees. It was my favorite part of the park on my last visit. The glow radiating off every surface made the entire atmosphere feel surreal.

As the sun set and the mist that gives the Smoky Mountains their name settled into the hollows of the park, wrapping around pink and blue and green trees, I felt like I was in a technicolor dream. It’s a feeling I haven’t stopped thinking about since I left, and one I can’t wait to revisit.