Once we settled on a few days in the Pigeon Forge area and decided on a day in Dollywood, I knew I wanted to stay at the DreamMore Resort. It looked like the nicest place in the area and I liked the idea of a resort where the boys would have access to a nice pool and other amenities after our day of activities.
We stayed in a king room with a bunk bed and I loved the arrangement. The boys are old enough and big enough now that we try to get them their own beds whenever possible. A room with bunk beds allows us to do that while still staying in a single room. The rooms were clean and pretty spacious and I liked that the bathroom had a separate water closet so the main bathroom was still accessible when someone was using the toilet.
The resort has both an indoor and outdoor pool. The outdoor pool is relatively large and is definitely little kid friendly, with its zero-depth entry on one end and a splash pad area. The pool also has complimentary life jacks and life guards are on duty. There is a hot tub but it is reserved for guests 16 years and older. While the pool looked fairly impressive in pictures, we were a little underwhelmed by it in person. The hot tub was large and nice and I liked how it was separated from the pool by a rock wall, but our boys were too young to use it. Overall, the boys were much less interested in the pool than I had anticipated, which was a little bit of a disappointment.
The resort has some other fun amenities around the pool area, including a playground, corn hole boards, and a fire pit where they roasted marshmallows each night. There is also a game room inside that has several arcade games, as well as board games.
For dining, the resort lists 5 separate options, but in reality it is just three. Song & Hearth is their main restaurant. It serves brunch and a buffet dinner. The brunch menu looked great but the dinner buffet didn’t appeal to us at all. Since both were super expensive, we decided to skip it. The Lounge is another restaurant option, but there were no signs for it and we had a hard time figuring out where it was. Turns out that it is really just the bar area outside the entrance to Song & Hearth. With only a handful of tables and a small menu, it was disappointing that this was the only other sit-down option at the resort besides the expensive buffet. And the menu for The Lounge is the same menu that they offer at two of their other dining options – poolside dining and in-room dining. We ate there twice and the food was pretty good but the menu was really limited. The last dining option was the DM Pantry and we found this to be a great place for breakfast, snacks, and ice cream. They had a few grab-and-go drink and food options, as well as a bakery, coffee bar, and ice cream area. They also sell fresh baked pizza to go. The only problem is that all of those options funnel through a single counter with two registers (only one of which was manned most of the time) so the line got ridiculously long, especially in the morning. Still, this was our favorite of the dining options. The bakery items, lattes and ice cream were all delicious. If only we could have eaten those for all of our meals!
The park perks for guests staying at the resort are great. Guests get priority park entry and Saturday early entry. There is a complimentary shuttle from the resort to the park, which saves you parking fees ($25 per day) and drops you off right at the entrance to the park. But the biggest perk is probably the free TimeSaver passes. Worth $60 per person per day, these passes allow you to take the shorter line on your choice of 5 rides throughout the day. This made a big difference in our park experience and definitely made our stay at the resort worth it.
Overall, I was a little disappointed in the DreamMore. It’s not that it wasn’t a nice resort. It was! The hotel and rooms were well designed and nicely decorated. The resort was clean and the staff exceptionally friendly. But the pool was not what we had hoped for and the dining options were so limited. In fairness I think we missed our window for peak enjoyment of this resort. Five years ago the boys probably would have loved it. But for young teens, it wasn’t all that interesting. Regardless, it was still the right choice for this trip – the bunk room was great and the park perks saved us money and improved our Dollywood experience. I’ll be curious to see if the new resort opening this fall, HeartSong, offers nicer pools and better dining options.
