Pigeon Forge Aims to Take Back the Family Vacation

Do you have a friend you’d like to help with $100 in gas money? How about utilities for a year? Or 12 car payments? Or perhaps a year of mortgage payments?

The vacation destination of Pigeon Forge, Tenn., can help you accomplish exactly that.

The method is Pigeon Forge’s “Taking Back Vacation” campaign, which continues through July, when one family will win $15,000 for mortgage or rent payments.

Pigeon Forge, a major family vacation destination and a gateway to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, is conducting the campaign in reaction to the nation’s economic troubles of the past two years.

“We believe in the family vacation, and we feel family vacationers are our guests. Our whole community feels this way, and ‘Taking Back Vacation’ is our way to demonstrate that. It’s unusual for a whole destination to do this, but its our way to support a lot of families,” said Leon Downey, executive director of the Pigeon Forge Department of Tourism.

All winners – and the people who nominate them – also will receive three-day vacations in Pigeon Forge.

The nomination process requires two clicks at Pigeon Forge’s Web site, www.MyPigeonForge.com, and composition of a 100-word essay. Visitors to the Web site will choose the winners from the posted essays.

“Too many people have had to curtail family time recently, and we want to draw attention to how important family vacations are. Those times together are vital, and places such as Pigeon Forge can be the glue that binds families,” Downey said.

The “Taking Back Vacation” campaign grows from April through July.

In May, 10 families will win $2,100 for utility payments.
In June, five families will win $6,600 for car payments.
In July, one family will win $15,000 for mortgage or rent payments.

Pigeon Forge made a similar outreach in 2006, a year of unexpected jumps in gasoline prices, by giving away a tanker truckload of gas.

“Our ‘Great Gas Giveaway’ was load of fun,” Downey recalled, “and we want the ‘Taking Back Vacation’ idea to be the same. Our goal in Pigeon Forge is making people happy and creating good memories.”

Pigeon Forge has a resident population of about 5,800, but it attracts more than 10 million visitors a year. It is home to Tennessee’s most visited tourist attraction, Dollywood, as well as more than a dozen theaters, scores of family attractions and more than 250 outlet, craft and specialty stores.

Its next-door neighbor, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, is the most visited national park in the U.S.

“We’re in a great location and have tons of fun to offer. We hope parents will see us as a destination for family fun – before their kids outgrow childhood,” Downey said.

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Nation’s Best Christmas Event Begins Nov. 7 with Dollywood’s Smoky Mountain Christmas Presented by Humana

(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dollywood unwraps its 20th anniversary holiday season on Nov. 7 with the opening of its award-winning festival Smoky Mountain Christmas presented by Humana, which continues through Jan. 2, 2010.

Dollywood’s Smoky Mountain Christmas festival recently won its second consecutive Golden Ticket Award for Best Christmas Event. The awards are presented annually to the “best of the best” in the amusement industry by Amusement Today magazine from an international poll.

“I just love spending the holidays with family and friends, so I hope my Smoky Mountain Christmas festival brings families closer together this time of year,” Dolly Parton said. “My wish is for everyone to be wrapped in warm holiday memories, just like the ones of my family that I cherish and hold so dear.”

The Golden Tickets also honored Dollywood for Best Shows, which includes the park’s lineup of holiday entertainment. Dollywood’s live stage shows feature Dollywood’s Babes in Toyland, Christmas in the Smokies, O’ Holy Night, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, Christmas with the Kingdom Heirs, and An Appalachian Christmas. Multiple performances are featured each day, and all shows are included with park admission.

Set amid a colorful display of four million holiday lights, Dollywood also offers guests more than 20 rides and attractions, including The Polar Express 4-D Experience™ which takes guests on a magical journey to the North Pole. Guests can enjoy the world-renowned Thunderhead and Mystery Mine coasters, as well as the Dollywood Express, a 110-ton steam engine that takes a nostalgic railroad journey into the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.

Santa’s Workshop is Santa’s home-away-from-home at Dollywood where a larger-than-life-sized display of toys awaits visitors. Santa also appears twice each evening in the Parade of Lights, joined by a cast of fun characters and brightly colored floats. Breakfast with Santa is featured from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. each Saturday during the festival. Seating is first-come, first-served for the meal which includes bacon, sausage, eggs, sausage gravy and grits. Prices are $15.99 for adults, $7.99 for children ages 4-11. Dollywood admission is required.

Seasonal favorites and special recipes from Dollywood’s best chefs are on the menu at the park’s many restaurants. Endless buffets featuring oven-roasted turkey and dressing with all of the trimmings are holiday favorites. Each year welcomes new additions, like this year’s chicken pot pie served at Backstage restaurant, all sure to become classic dishes offered for years to come.

Dollywood is a 150-acre family adventure park in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. For more information, call 1-800-DOLLYWOOD or visit dollywood.com. Operating days and hours vary.

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Mapping Out An Off-Season Getaway

(NAPSI)-Whether you enjoy trips off the beaten path or prefer mainstream vacation spots, off-season travel can be a delightful and affordable way to get away.

The trips can be an opportunity to discover that a destination-perhaps even one of your favorites-has a personality that changes with the seasons. Enjoying a ski resort in summer is a ready example. It's both weird and wonderful to hike on a cross-country trail or ride a mountain bike down a ski slope when your only memory of these locations is snow covered. Plus, many traditional warm-weather destinations offer incentives and activities to help save off-season travelers some cool cash.

Each year, for example, a four-month-long event called Pigeon Forge Winterfest attracts vacationers to the Great Smoky Mountains in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., an area once strictly thought of as a place for summertime fun. Now in its 20th year, the festival welcomes thousands.

The hallmark of the celebration is an unforgettably dazzling show of millions of decorative lights. The city even mounts lighted snowflakes on utility poles and erects gigantic storytelling displays-a popular one depicts a blacksmith pounding on an anvil producing snowflakes, not sparks, in the Tennessee night.

Complementing the city's efforts-which you can view on narrated trolley tours-are displays created by businesses throughout town. The Dollywood theme park adds millions more lights for its holiday event called Smoky Mountain Christmas, as well.

There's also the popular Wilderness Wildlife Week that offers eight days of free classes, seminars, photo shows and activities, most of which focus on Great Smoky Mountains National Park, located next to Pigeon Forge.

Additionally, travelers can enjoy hikes in the Smokies-where winter produces vistas that don't exist when summer's leaves are on the trees. Indeed, each year, Wilderness Wildlife Week hikers collectively cover about 5,000 miles on dozens of National Park trails.

For those looking for what may be a surprisingly authentic Western experience, Winterfest stirs things up with its popular celebration of cowboy poetry and Western music. Even though the city is east of the Mississippi, American Cowboy magazine still calls the experience one of its Top 101 Western Events.

For more information and tips on planning a trip, visit www.MyPigeonForge.com or call (800) 251-9100.

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All-Star Southern Gospel Concerts Headline Dollywood’s National Gospel & Harvest Celebration Presented by Humana

(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nowhere does fall make its arrival so abundantly known as in the Smoky Mountains, and Dollywood’s annual National Gospel & Harvest Celebration presented by Humana (Oct. 2-31; closed Tuesdays & Thursdays) honors the season with special music, crafts and food.

Southern gospel music takes top billing during the monthlong festival with more than 200 free concerts. Some of the artists appearing include Mike & Kelly Bowling (Oct. 2 & 3), Gold City (Oct. 4 & 5), The McKameys (Oct. 9 & 10), The Ball Brothers (Oct. 9 & 10), Brian Free & Assurance (Oct. 11 & 12), Michael Combs (Oct. 12), Legacy Five (Oct. 11 & 12), The Kingsmen (Oct. 16 & 17), Mark Bishop (Oct. 16 & 17), The Crist Family (Oct. 18 & 19), The Greenes (Oct. 18 & 19), The Inspirations (Oct. 23 & 24), The Whisnants (Oct. 23 & 24), Mark Trammell Trio (Oct. 25 & 26), The Isaacs (Oct. 25 & 26), Karen Peck & New River (Oct. 30 & 31) and The Perrys (Oct. 30 & 31). Plus, Dollywood’s own award-winning Kingdom Heirs quartet performs daily.

Southern gospel and bluegrass music share a common ground with great songs deeply rooted in beautiful vocal harmonies and a powerful message. In addition to a lineup of gospel music’s most popular acts, the festival welcomes special gospel performances by Riders in the Sky (Oct. 2 & 3), Chris Hillman & Herb Pedersen (Oct. 4 & 5), Dailey & Vincent (Oct. 18 & 19), and The Gibson Brothers (Oct. 14 & 21).

All concerts are included with Dollywood admission. A complete concert lineup is available at dollywood.com.

The country’s most talented crafters visit Dollywood throughout the festival, showcasing a one-of-a-kind display of beautiful and unique artistry as well as up-close demonstrations as they create their works of art. Craft demonstrations include woodturning, spinning, dyeing, basket weaving, wool rug hooking, papermaking, and weaving. Crafters also will make hats, sorghum, fiddles, Windsor chairs, rugs, woodworking tools, and rope. Other featured crafters’ booths will showcase stained glass, handmade jewelry, woodcarvings, glassworks, dulcimers, harps, oil and acrylic artwork, games, toys and more.

Dollywood’s 18th annual Woodcarving Showcase and Competition, one of the Southeast’s top woodcarving events, takes place Oct. 2-4 with daily demonstrations by master carvers who showcase this unique art form through a variety of carving styles. This year’s competition features a special competition honoring Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s 75th anniversary. The exhibit will be displayed throughout the event. Each day also features a special carving competition. The Team Carving Championship is slated for Oct. 2 (2 p.m.) The Whittling Competition takes place Oct. 3 (1:30-3:30 p.m.) and the always-fun Pumpkin Carving Competition wraps things up on Oct. 4 (1:30-3 p.m.)

Rusty’s Trailblazing Chuckwagon returns to this year’s festival, bringing with him the nostalgia of the Western frontier as Rusty shares stories of feeding hungry cowboys from his completely restored 1901 John Deere wagon. From “tongue to tailgate,” Rusty’s working wagon is an accurate model of chuck wagons that date back to the 1860s. His trusty Dutch oven is the vessel through which Rusty prepares a variety of campfire dishes that are slow-cooked over an open fire. And don’t miss Rusty as he shares the secrets behind the age-old technique of cowboy coffee.

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75 Years Of Smoky Mountains Beauty

(NAPSI)-Just about everybody loves birthdays and anniversaries, and one of America's treasures marks a big one throughout 2009. It's the 75th anniversary of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, America's most visited national park.

Many people assume that one of the legendary national parks out West gets the highest visitation, but the annual 9 million visits to the Smokies far outpace the 4.4 million of second-place Grand Canyon National Park.

The park's next-door neighbor, Pigeon Forge, Tenn., is a great home base for a national park vacation because it combines the joys of nature with the delights of a family vacation destination.

It was in 1934 when a big piece of Appalachian backcountry--eventually 800 square miles--became the national park. Today, it's the biggest piece of wilderness in the Eastern U.S. and a magnet for hikes, wildflower treks, photography expeditions and driving tours.

Indeed, it was the desire for a scenic location for driving tours that helped establish the national park. The movement began in the 1890s, but it was motorists' clubs--early branches of the AAA in the mid-1920s--that pushed the effort into high gear.

Unlike in the West, where the federal government could carve out national parks from land it already controlled, land for Great Smoky Mountains National Park had to be acquired privately and then donated to the U.S. That also meant that about 1,200 people moved away when the park's boundaries were set.

What was acquired was not necessarily prime land. Most of what we see today as forested wilderness was logged over by timber companies and was in terrible shape. Mother Nature has healed a lot of wounds in the last 75 years.

The park's Mt. LeConte rises to the sky south of Pigeon Forge and provides a breathtaking backdrop for the tourist community that claims Dollywood, 13 theaters, WonderWorks, scores of restaurants and dozens of family attractions among its attributes.

Six Pigeon Forge festivals scattered throughout the year are on the national park's official 75th anniversary calendar, and there's a special show at Dollywood that's helping to celebrate the occasion.

That show is "Sha-Kon-O-Hey! Land of Blue Smoke," which pays tribute to the music, heritage and traditions of the mountains. "Sha-Kon-O-Hey" is the phonetic spelling of the Cherokee word for this lovely mountain region.

To plan a Pigeon Forge/Great Smoky Mountains visit, go to MyPigeonForge.com or call toll-free (800) 251-9100.

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All Aboard! The Polar Express 4-D Experience Joins Dollywood’s Smoky Mountain Christmas Festival Lineup

BUSINESS WIRE --The Polar Express 4-D Experience pulls into Dollywood’s 19^th annual Smoky Mountain Christmas festival Nov. 8, 2008 through Jan. 3, 2009, in the theme park’s Imagination Cinema.

“This Christmas, I’m inviting families to take a spectacular holiday journey where dreams become real, and everybody knows I dream bigger than just about anybody else,” Dolly Parton said. “On The Polar Express 4-D Experience, all you have to do is believe, and I sure do!”

This holiday season…What if there is a place beyond your imagination and to get there all you have to do is BELIEVE! Dollywood guests are invited to come journey to the North Pole where dreams become real and all of their senses come alive in this magical 4-D Experience. When a doubting young boy takes an extraordinary train ride to the North Pole, he embarks on an epic journey of self-discovery that shows him that the wonder of life never fades for those who believe. The Polar Express 4-D Experience is based on the film from Warner Bros. Pictures and Shangri-La Entertainment, inspired by the beloved Caldecott Medal children's book by Chris Van Allsburg, and includes 3-D and 4-D effects that will make you BELIEVE.

SimEx-Iwerks is the worldwide exclusive distributor of The Polar Express 4-D Experience.

“The Polar Express is by far the finest magical cinematic experience of our lifetime,” Mark Cornell, SimEx-Iwerks Vice President, Attraction Development said. “This iconic film is further brought to life with the perfected use of our own 4-D Special FX technology, and makes for an unforgettable multi-sensory adventure, leaving all who see with hair-raising goose-bumps! Upon your arrival at the North Pole…it actually begins to snow inside the 4-D Special FX Theater and when the conductor sings “Hot Chocolate” and the dancing waiters begin to pour, the audience can smell the delightful aroma of every cocoa cup!! The state-of-the-art 3-D Digital projection system allows you to see images virtually leap off the screen and when combined with 4-D FX, a blend of realism and fantasy unlike anything seen before is impeccably delivered. A must see for the whole family!!”

In addition to a winter wonderland of more than four million holiday lights, Dollywood’s Smoky Mountain Christmas festival includes a lineup of award-winning entertainment. Dollywood’s Babes in Toyland, highlighted by the march of the 21 toy soldiers and a spectacular surprise finale, won the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions Honorable Mention for 2007 Best Overall Production. Rounding out the Christmastime entertainment lineup are Christmas in the Smokies, ’Twas the Night Before Christmas, An Appalachian Christmas, Christmas with the Kingdom Heirs, The Victorian Melodies, O’ Holy Night, Carol of the Trees plus the nightly Lighted Christmas Parade. All shows are included with park admission.

Families also can explore Santa’s Workshop, a magnificent 500-square-foot home away from home featuring larger-than-life-sized toys including “Jumbo the Elephant,” which measures nine-feet-tall; a seven-foot-tall sailboat; a five-foot-tall tricycle; an eight-foot-tall dollhouse; a six-foot-tall View·Master^® that displays a variety of holiday images and more. Dollywood is a 130-acre family adventure park in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., and operates mid-March through Jan. 3, 2009. Dollywood offers more than 40 rides and attractions; award-winning live entertainment featuring country, bluegrass, gospel and mountain music; and a dozen crafters authentic to the East Tennessee region. For more information, call 1-800-DOLLYWOOD or visit dollywood.com. Operating days and hours vary.