... The Island at Pigeon Forge

 ....

This morning we woke up a little later, but refreshed and ready for a nice breakfast downstairs at the hotel.  This is always a highlight, a huge buffet with all kinds of food like the items you see above - I made a Santa waffle!  And then I made Lake Santa out of it!

That would be a lot of syrup there.  Anyway, we went to the omelette station there and had some fresh omelettes made, all of which were really delicious of course.  I've been enjoying the spinach and onion omelettes there for a while now.  And of course, it's great to just sit out there in the courtyard where there's the shade... and some begging pigeons.

Afterwards, it was time to visit the Island at Pigeon Forge for the first time.  And this is something new and exciting they have there - dinosaurs!

Now to be clear, we haven't been here before.  But they've just added all these animatronic dinosaurs all over the place, and they all let out an occasional growl here or there, moving just enough to give folks a thrill.  But if I know anything from watching the Jurassic Park movies, I know this is not a good idea.  I mean, life finds a way!

Okay, this is obviously an AI thing - it's amazing this technology though.  I just took the picture I made and here at the hotel had it make the dinosaur come to life there... but we won't do that again.  Here's a more stationary dinosaur, a smaller-sized spinosaurus that's doing a bit of fishing.

 

And here below is Big Foot!  Maddie met Big Foot at the beef jerky store, which was pretty fun.

There were all kinds of different beef jerky, including the version she got, some spicy pickle flavored beef jerky.  And right after this, we walked over to the Build-A-Bear store, which was a lot of fun for Maddie too.

She made a new plush cow friend today - his name is Sourdough!  It's a fun little process making these plush friends, one that sort of reminds me of Babyland General, where there's an actual heart inside each creation, along with wishes birth certificates and the whole bit.  It's fun!

And here's a fun surprise for Camille.  We picked up a plush Toothless (from the movie "How to Train Your Dragon") - it'll be a fun surprise.

After we left there, we made our way towards the ferris wheel - and got attacked by another dinosaur!

Coming out of the bushes was a big dilophosaurus, and if you know anything about them from the movies, they spit out at you.  We weren't paying attention, and Mom got hit with a sudden stream of water that got us cracking up!

Ah, here's another dinosaur, a triceratops - and beyond there is our next destination, the ferris wheel.  And there were more dinosaurs too, greeting us with grunts, growls and the occasional roar.

A shooting gallery!  A little pricy at $5.00 for 18 shots, but it was worth it to see Mom hit the skunk, watching it turn around and spray afterwards.  The big one is the truck, rocking back and forth.  Someone else was with us too, also shooting, so we got to see a little more as well.  I love shooting galleries.

And then it was time for the ferris wheel!  Mom wanted to go during the day time to see the landscape and the mountains and all the scenery.  There wasn't much of a line at all, and we were able to get on quickly, and happily there was air conditioning in the cars - very nice!

Up, up, up we soared.  The view was spectacular, the day crystal clear and the skies very blue.  The air conditioning in the little car kept us nice and cool so that we could fully enjoy this comfortable ride into the sky.

Looking south to the Great Smoky Mountains.  You can see the Comedy Barn to the right, and Alcatraz too!

Look closely and you can see the Inn at Christmas Place.

It was a nice ride.  We went around four times, and everything was very smooth and the views were really nice.  The windows gave us a complete view of the entire Pigeon Forge area - a few mountain ridges obstructed our view towards Dollywood, and another ridge prevented us from seeing the Titanic, but you could see King Kong towards the north, and towards the south of course was the tremendous view of teh Great Smoky Mountains, already with clouds moving over around their crests.

We picked up an ornament here...

A little light shopping after the ferris wheel - we stopped at the Patriotic Peddler where we got ourselves a Christmas ornament with the ferris wheel on it.  And then Maddie spotted the duck store.

Live-streaming back with Ansley, a duck fanatic back at home...

We have a friend at work - Ansley - who is slightly obsessed with ducks, so we actually sort of live-streamed our experience in the store, scanning from one duck to the next so that Ansley and Camille could see all the ducks.  We wound up getting them a few as well, of course!

Parrot Mountain had a few visitors here

There were a few places where there were parrot visitors, ambassadors from Parrot Mountain!  Mom got to visit with them all, a few cages here and there, plus a storefront further along where you could pose for photos with parrots, although we've done that quite a bit in the past.  There were other birds too...

Key lime and Dole Whip!

Two men enter.  One man leaves!

Steampunk time!

Weird sodas!  Maddie got pickle flavored soda!

Trying hot sauces!

Parrot Mountain store

We'll have updates in a bit - we went to Texas Roadhouse here, and went to the pool, and Gumdrop Grotto too and dried up at the fire pits there.  And the Braves game was tonight.  Vacation's still going on - we'll update in a bit.