You do not need a crowd-prediction service to know when Dollywood will be busiest this Christmas. The park publishes the forecast itself, disguised as a list of operating hours.
Smoky Mountain Christmas runs November 6 through January 3. Across November and December, the park opens at 10 a.m. and closes at 9 p.m. on all but eight days. On those eight it opens an hour earlier and stays open an hour later. They are the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving, and every day from December 26 through New Year's Eve. No park pays for two extra hours of staffing unless it expects the gate to cover them.
That makes the quiet stretch easy to find. Every day from the November 6 opening through November 25 runs the standard schedule, and so does December 1 through 23. The six million lights are already up. The shows are running. The parking lot is not full.
It also helps to know when the gates do not open at all. Dollywood is dark November 1 through 5 while crews change the park over from the Harvest Festival, and closed on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Open November 6 through January 3 is not the same as open every day. Hours can shift, and the park posts the current calendar at dollywood.com.
This is the first Smoky Mountain Christmas since Dolly Parton's death in August, and a memorial to her now stands in the park's welcome plaza. For anyone who would rather not buy a ticket, there is also the bronze statue of her on the Sevierville courthouse lawn, a few miles up the road, which has never charged admission.
Rick Good spent ten years in the newspaper business, including with The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) and The Greenville News (Greenville, SC). He co-wrote, with Melinda Coleman, Rutledge to Riley: Governors of South Carolina, 1776–Present (Published by The Greenville News), and is the author of Mind Games Trivia #1 (Amazon). He has recently spent 15 years creating original trivia content through Sounds Good Mobile Entertainment and continues that with his new company, SGME Software. He edits The Smart Reader’s money, real estate, and business coverage.
