9 Insider Tips for Planning the Ultimate Family Vacation to Gatlinburg
- smokymountainexplorer
- Jan 31
- 9 min read
Updated: Apr 7
I began planning for our trip to Gatlinburg at least four months in advanced but somethings you really can't plan for and it's really about trial and error. So I decided to compile my biggest first hand tips for your family trip to Gatlinburg and The Great Smoky Mountain National Forest so you can have the best vacation and worry-less.
Always Leave Extra Time
Look I understand feeling conflicted because I hate to sit around and do nothing for 20 minutes on a normal day HOWEVER this isn't a normal day this is a vacation and you will be much happier enjoying your time, not staring at your clock rushing around hungry and stressed out trying to get across town during rush hour.
Gatlinburg traffic gets crazy in the busy season not to mention Sevierville and the drive up to The Kuwohi Bypass. Most of the activities we planned were located in Sevierville which is roughly a 25 minute drive from Gatlinburg so you may find yourself doing a lot of back and forth if you aren't careful. Add time for traffic and food breaks or you will be running late the whole vacation, I swear one day we literally lost a whole hour even though I had scheduled the whole trip down to a T. We ended up running through Anakeesta and missing a lot of the things we wanted to see from lack of time.
Anytime you go into the Smoky Mountain National Forest I would recommend adding an extra 30-45 minutes with kids. This way you will always have extra time to enjoy the view and never have to rush. We spent our last hike literally sprinting thinking we would have time to make it to the top of Andrews Bald and back in order to drop by my cousins in Nashville on the way home. Needless to say we didn't and I regret not taking in those last moments before getting in the car for nine hours.
2. Get The Kids to Bed Early if You Plan to Hike Early
As the most visited national park in the United States, The Smoky Mountains becomes quiet crowded in peak seasons. It is adviced to arrive to the forest by 8am in order to find parking. Meaning you will have to wake your family up around 7am to get ready and eat before hand.
That being said I don't think anything could have prepared me for just how exhausted I would be on this vacation. I basically raised two children on my own and still it was an all new level of exhaustion for me. It was also an all new level of exhaustion for my kids.I planned our vacation so everyday we were waking up bright and early to go into the national forest before 730am (because i'm always late everywhere), but never planned for us to go to bed before 9pm. So when I went to wake them up on the third day no one even acknowledged my existence and they defineatly didn't wake up. So needless to say we didn't hike that day.
Trust and believe I planned ahead so much for this trip, I had almost every activity and food choice picked out months in advanced. But I didn't plan nine hours of sleep.
Consider Spending a Day in The National Forest Instead of Going Back and Forth
Our Itenerary generally had us waking up and going to the national forest bright and early everyday then we would have our lunch and head to whatever activity I had planned. We stayed in a hotel right off the Gatlinburg strip and still spent 30+ minutes driving to most hiking trails and then another 30 minutes driving back out. Most of the mid-day activites were located in Sevierville (Soaky Mountain, Dollywood, Jayell Animal Encounter, Go-karts and The Exotic Deer Farm) so after driving out of the park we still had another 30 minutes to drive until we made it to our destination. All that driving adds up to 2 hours of the day wasted driving before 2pm.
So the best alternative to the back and forth with young children might be to spend a full day in the park and Gatlinburg and another day at attractions in Sevierville. Consider beginning at The Clingmans Dome Trailhead as these are some of the most incredible views that you won't want to miss and are further away than a lot of the other popular trails from Gatlinburg. To view a list of the best Smoky Mountain trails with kids press here. After your hike enjoy a picnic lunch at the creek on a warm summer day let the kids play while you just relax for awhile. Or if you prefer the luxuries of air conditioning head back to Gatlinburg for some lunch and a walk down the strip. On the downtown strip you will find a never ending list of things to do including; zip-linning, mini golf, mountain coasters, shopping, shows and adventure parks high off the ground like Anakeesta and Ober Mountain.
After exploring the strip head back into the park for one last trail but consider adding a little magic for the kids. Send the kids off on a fairy investigation with a top secret letter, an all about fairies page and a map of the trail suspected of fairy activity. They may even come across a 'real' fairyhouse (an old spring house covered in moss)! The Smoky Mountain Explorer Guide comes with everything you need to know along with plenty of hiking games including photo hunts, scavenger hunts and trail maps for kids. To learn more about The Smoky Mountain Jr. Explorer Guide press here.
Snacks Could Save Your Trip
We live in Missouri so we drove roughly 8 1/2 hours to Gatlinburg and the snack box was my actual life saver. I packed one bag chalk full of snacks from the pantry like individually bagged chips, crackers, gram crackers, fruit rollups, muffins and even some cans of ravioli and tuna. I also packed a cooler of snacks and drinks from the fridge like fruit, lunch meat, jello and lunchables. We drove to Nashville the first day and had a picnic lunch at a park from the cooler. We stayed the night in Cookeville and by the time we arrived in Gatlinburg the next day any perishable food left in the cooler needed to be thrown away (partically because I didnt buy more ice but there wasn't much food left anyway). I kept the other snack bag for the duration of the trip and it was so handy to have snacks in the hotel instead of needing to go get a snack when you're completely exhausted.
So here is my list of snacks we packed all individually bagged;
-chips
-crackers
-candy
-cheeseballs
-bananas, apples and strawberries
-popcorn
-grahm crackers
-donuts
-cereal (we bought milk at the gas station)
-lunch meat
-tuna
-canned ravioli and chicken noodle soup (in case they were starving)
-jello
-cheese sticks
-fruit snacks
-granola bars
-cookies
Placement of your Hotel Matters
Where you decide to stay makes a huge difference, if you are looking for an exciting and bustling vacation centered around the forest you should stay in Gatlinburg. If you would prefer to center your trip around the forest but don't want to deal with traffic, tourist traps and spending large sums of money on attractions, you might want to consider staying in Townsend. And if you prefer to center your vacation around attractions with just a hint of the national forest then your best bet is going to be Sevierville.
If you decide to stay in Gatlinburg you will have every opportunity to explore the most popular trails in the national forest every single day. If you pick a hotel directly on the strip you can easily walk down and explore all the kid friendly attractions, shops, restaurants and entertainment.
While Gatlinburg is a five minute drive into the forest Severiville is roughly a 25 minute drive meaning you will have to wake up even earlier to beat the crowd. Although Seveirville has most of the big attractions that people come for like animal encounters, amusement parks and water parks. Even if you don't stay at a hotel in Sevierville you can bet you will find yourself driving in to town to do atleast one activity.
Townsend will give you a much more peaceful mountain experience, while it is only a five minute drive from the forest it is a 45 minute drive from Gatlinburg so you will be closer to different trails then all the famous Gatlinburg trails and will most likely skip out on some of the traffic as well. Townsend is also known as "The Gateway to Cades Cove" and while it still isn't that short of a drive it will only take you 45 minutes compared to the hour and 15 minutes it takes from Gatlinburg. You will get all the views with a fraction of the mess.
Double Check Days/Hours of Operation and Distance
Even with all the hours that I spent planning this trip I still made the mistake of forgetting to check the hours that restaurants or attractions were open and we ended up standing outside of a closed restaraunt after driving twenty minutes through traffic to get there. So make sure to always double check the operational days and hours of each activity or restaurant you plan to visit.
It will also be helpful for you to keep track of the amount of time it takes to travel from one place to another as you will probably do alot of criss-cross if you don't plan ahead. You will notice a lot of things in the area that are only a couple miles away take longer to reach because you are traveling around mountains. Each trail in the forest can take anywhere from ten minutes all the way to an hour to reach and you don't want to be speeding down the mountain trying to make it to your next attraction on time.
Plan Ahead
I really love procrastinating and I'm also great at it, so although I spent hours planning and packing I didn't actually buy many of our tickets ahead of time. A lot of the attractions we planned on attending had specials that were only available a couple of days in advance online. And although I knew what things we wanted to do I didn't realize how often you would pay more the day of than you would have paid the day before. We also found that some attractions sold out quickly the day before and the day of, so if you aren't careful you could potentially miss your opportunity to do something or have to pick out of inconvenient times (I guess there are a lot of unprepared people). I definitely don't recommend procrastinating on purchasing your tickets, it will save you money and you will spend less of your vacation staring at your phone.
Be Prepared to Entertain your Children
In Gatlinburg you will find your children waiting a lot, waiting in line to do things, waiting for a table, waiting for your food and waiting to get out of the car. Don't expect them to all of a sudden entertain themselves. Be prepared to hand them something, anything to entertain them so they don't start complaining. At restaruants I had dominos, coloring books, activity books and ipads. I really did not care what anyone else thought I was in survival mode and if they were happy I was going to be happy.
Now as I mentioned previously we drove almost nine hours to Gatlinburg and I never could have believed that our first extremely long road trip would be such a success. This is by far the best tip I have for you if you have dedicated yourself to making the drive and all you need is paper bags and to stock up on some dollar tree toys. Every single hour of driving you gift your children a mystery bag (or when they need some entertainment throughout the trip). I filled their bags with mini activity books, legos and little magnet men. My kids were asking every twenty minutes when they would recieve their next bags with pure delight. I really don't think either one of them complained one time the whole drive to Gatlinburg. The trip back was not nearly as smooth for me but we made time to stop and get their energy out and they caught up on a lot of the sleep they had been missing.
Don't Over Book Yourself
I am a major busy body if I go on vacation I try to squeeze everything I can into each day, I spend most vacations running around chasing my own tail, and as much as I love looking back on all my photos of the amazing places we've gone and things we've done this was one trip that I should have relaxed more on. The mountains are aww inspiring and while we hiked almost everyday I don't think I relaxed once. Give yourself just a couple hours to slow down and take a break instead of frantically running from one attraction to another, remember it's your vacation too.
I hope these tips help you to have an incredible vacation, feel free to leave a comment with your favorite tips and tricks and remember to enjoy the view and breathe.
Other related content:
Comments