Explore Gatlinburg

Anakeesta is a mountaintop park above downtown Gatlinburg, opened in 2017. Visitors ride an open chairlift or enclosed gondola up from the Parkway to a ridge-top village with gardens, a treetop canopy walk of suspended bridges, a single-rail mountain coaster, ziplines and an observation tower with views of the Great Smoky Mountains.

Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies, opened in 2000 in downtown Gatlinburg, is run by the Ripley Entertainment company. A moving walkway carries visitors through an underwater tunnel of sharks, sea turtles and rays, and other galleries show a coral reef, penguins, jellyfish and touch tanks with horseshoe crabs and stingrays.

Gatlinburg SkyPark sits on Crockett Mountain above downtown Gatlinburg and is reached by the SkyLift, a chairlift running since 1954. At the top, the SkyBridge, opened in 2019, is a pedestrian suspension bridge about 210 metres long with a glass-floored section in the middle, looking over the town and the Great Smoky Mountains.

The Gatlinburg Space Needle is a 124-metre observation tower on the Parkway in downtown Gatlinburg, completed in 1969. Glass elevators carry visitors to an open-air deck with a 360-degree view of the town and the Great Smoky Mountains, and its base holds an arcade and other amusements.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, established in 1934, protects about 2,100 square kilometres of forested mountains on the border of Tennessee and North Carolina. Its main Tennessee entrance and the Sugarlands Visitor Center lie just south of Gatlinburg. The park has more than 1,300 km of trails, part of the Appalachian Trail, historic farm buildings in Cades Cove and the Kuwohi summit.

Ober Gatlinburg is a ski area and year-round amusement park on Mount Harrison above Gatlinburg, opened in 1962 and the only ski area in Tennessee. An aerial tramway runs from downtown up the mountain. Besides its ski slopes, it has an indoor ice rink, a wildlife encounter, a scenic chairlift, an alpine slide and a mountain coaster.

Dolly Parton's Stampede on the Parkway in Pigeon Forge is a dinner show in an indoor arena, opened in 1988 under the name Dixie Stampede and renamed in 2018. Some 30 horses and their riders perform trick riding, races and friendly contests between the two halves of the audience, who eat a four-course meal without cutlery.

Dollywood is a theme park in Pigeon Forge at the foot of the Great Smoky Mountains, co-owned by Dolly Parton and Herschend and opened under her name in 1986 on the site of an earlier park. It mixes roller coasters such as the wooden Thunderhead with Smoky Mountain crafts, a steam train, live music shows and seasonal festivals.

The Old Mill in Pigeon Forge is a gristmill built in 1830 on the Little Pigeon River, near the iron forge that gave the town its name; it is the only building in Pigeon Forge on the National Register of Historic Places. Its water wheel still turns the millstones, and the mill sells its own flour and meal, with a restaurant and shops around Old Mill Square.

Alcatraz East Crime Museum on the Parkway in Pigeon Forge opened in 2016 in a building styled as a 19th-century prison. It began in 2008 in Washington, D.C., as the National Museum of Crime and Punishment. Its two floors cover the history of crime, policing and forensic science, with artefacts from notable cases and interactive crime-scene exhibits.

The Titanic Museum Attraction on the Parkway in Pigeon Forge, opened in 2010, is housed in a half-scale replica of the bow of RMS Titanic set in a pool of water. Visitors receive the boarding pass of a real passenger and walk through galleries with about 400 artefacts, a replica of the Grand Staircase and rooms on the ship's sinking in 1912.

Hatfield & McCoy Dinner Feud is a comedy dinner show in a theatre on Music Road in Pigeon Forge, loosely based on the 19th-century feud between two Appalachian families. Singers, dancers and acrobats play the two clans in a musical comedy with slapstick and audience participation, while guests are served a Southern-style meal.

WonderWorks Pigeon Forge is a hands-on science attraction in a building constructed to look as if it had landed upside down, opened in 2006. Its more than 100 interactive exhibits let visitors feel hurricane-force winds and an earthquake simulation, lie on a bed of nails and try a space-flight simulator, and it has a ropes course and a laser tag arena.

SkyLand Ranch is a mountaintop park on the Parkway in Sevierville, just north of Pigeon Forge, reached by a chairlift. At the top is a western-themed village with shops and food, viewing points over the Great Smoky Mountains, and the Wild Stallion mountain coaster, whose sleds run down the hillside on a single rail.