Places Welcoming You
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Greenbrier Campground Gatlinburg, Tennessee |
Gatlinburg
Get a hearty dose of fun and nature in the gateway to the Smokies
Within easy reach of the nation’s most-visited national park, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Gatlinburg rolls out the welcome mat with quirky and compelling fun. A crop of humanmade attractions line the parkway that leads to the national park and provides families with a mix of old-school classics and tech-oriented fun in the form of theme parks, carousels, live shows, miniature golf courses, arcade games, scenic cable car rides, go-karts and Tennessee’s only ski resort.
Ober Gatlinburg
A rite of passage for visitors to the region, the Ober Gatlinburg aerial tramway departs frequently from downtown Gatlinburg and transports visitors up a scenic 2.1-mile ride to the Ober Gatlinburg Amusement Park & Ski Area at 11,088 feet, with exhilarating mountain views en route. At the top, there’s a mountain roller coaster, alpine slides, a wildlife encounter area, arcade games, an ice skating rink, water slides and chairlifts. Gatlinburg is the only ski resort in Tennessee and features 10 ski trails, three chair lifts, snowboarding, tubing, indoor ice skating, wildlife encounters and water rides (in warm weather).
The Parkway
Before the beauty of the Smoky Mountains holds visitors in its clutches, the main drag that leads to the park can quickly steer families off course. The city’s iconic Space Needle was built in 1970 and transports visitors 407 feet up in the air for open-air, 360-degree views of Gatlinburg and the Great Smokies.
The observation tower features viewfinders and Higher Learning exhibits. At the foot of the tower, kids of all ages can cut loose in Arcadia, a 25,000 square-foot, two-story playground with video games.
At Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum, there are shrunken heads, a haunted house, a 12-foot-tall scrap car parts robot sculpture, an authentic vampire-killing kit, a 5-D Moving Theater, a Marvelous Mirror Maze, a Guinness World Records Adventure and two mini-golf courses. Best of all, Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies is an exciting interactive saltwater aquarium featuring a cast of penguins, stingrays, jellyfish and sharks.
For More Information
Gatlinburg Convention and Visitors Bureau
800-588-1817
Tennessee Department of Tourism Development
615-741-2159