In case you wondered where I’ve been – the answer is: on vacation!
On Thursday afternoon (coincidentally, my birthday) we hit the road for Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. We have previously been there, but just for a one-day excursion. We had a good enough time that when we discussing going away for a long weekend this summer, Pigeon Forge was high on the list as a place to revisit.
This time we rented a cute little 2-bedroom home right off the main strip (Pigeon Forge is truly a mini-Las Vegas, minus the casinos) – complete with a hot tub on the semi-private porch! Since we got their later than expected, we spent the first night just chilling out, buying a few groceries for the weekend, and getting a good night’s sleep. The next morning we hit the ground running and for the next two days did some pretty fun stuff.
First up was MagiQuest, which had four different areas to enjoy. We bought passes to do all four things: a mirror maze, mini-golf, a laser course and the actual MagiQuest which involved using a wand to locate different clues to collect runes. We started by checking in for the MagiQuest game, which involved picking our Magi names. CootieBoy selected “Michael” as his name as a joke, but then lamented later that he did not write down “Mike” so that he could be “Magi Mike.” CootieGirl wanted to be “That’s Ok” but she wrote it as “thatsok” and so the person assigning our names was a bit confused and said “That Sok” which she corrected by saying, “No, that’s ok,” to which he responded, “It’s not That Sok?” I then said, “No, it’s that sock – you know the one. That sock.” CG groaned and said, “It was supposed to be ‘that’s okay,'” at which point we all laughed and told her it was That Sok for life. I called her that several times throughout the day, to her dismay.
Once we had instructions, we began our quests. We all initially started with the first one, which was the easiest, to figure out what we were doing. Then once that was complete we spent the next 55 minutes running around, each doing different quests. Denis at some point was allowed to do a more advanced “adventure” instead of a quest, while I was stuck on a quest that I thought I had 90% completed, but it turns out I had 0% completed because I’m a nimrod. In the end, I think CG gathered 6 runes, Denis had 4 runes and 1 adventure, CG had 4 runs and I had a measly three completed. But it was still a lot of fun.
After that we headed downstairs and played around of mini-golf. As always, Denis and CG were very good while CB and I were very bad. Once the game was over we realized we had been there almost three hours already, and still had two activities to go. Since it was lunch time I asked one of the workers if we could leave and come back and do the other activities later.
“Sure!” she said.
“Can we come back tomorrow and do them?”
“Sure!” she said.
With that we headed next door for some Mellow Mushroom for lunch and to plan out the rest of the day. We decided to do the rest of MagiQuest on Saturday, and that we’d split up after lunch. I drove Denis and CB to The Island for some shopping and walking around while CG and I went to Alcatraz East, which is a crime museum that looks at crime through the ages as well as forensic sciences and technology used to capture them. It was pretty interesting and had a temporary exhibit dedicated to OJ and Nicole Brown Simpson. I was in the middle of telling CG all about the Bronco chase when we went down some stairs and were greeted with four cars, including a white Bronco. I quietly said, “That can’t be the real Bronco.” And then I saw a sign that basically said, “This is the real Bronco.” Well, shut the front door. I was gobsmacked. The other cars were just replicas, but they had Ted Bundy’s VW Bug, Bonnie and Clyde’s car and one owned by John Dillinger.
We then met up with Denis and CB and tooled around The Island (shopping area with a huge fountain as seen in this post’s featured image above) before getting some ice cream and heading back to our home for the weekend to drop off the kids. At that point, Denis and I left them at the house and visited Christmas Place that we passed by when visiting MagiQuest. We spent at least an hour going from room to room looking at stuff – the place was HUGE. We picked up several new ornaments for our trees, and I saw some amazing decorations that made me with I had all the money.
With that we headed back to the house and while Denis was cooking dinner, CG donned her swimsuit and went into the hot tub, which she loved. She would have spent a lot longer than the recommended 20 minutes had I not kept an eye on the clock. After a late dinner, we opted to stay in and watch a movie (the TV allowed me to log into my Vudu account), and had a nice quiet evening in.
On Saturday we were up and at ’em again – this time opting to do the outside activities since it was due to rain that afternoon. We went out to do go-karts, for which we had bought a Groupon in advance. The kids each got 3 races, as well as 30 minutes of continuous game play in the adjacent arcade. The races were funny to watch. CG, who has her driver’s license, went superslow during her first race, while CB sped around. In the second race though, she definitely picked up speed and went much faster. During their third race Denis and I hit up a nearby tchotchke store for a bit, and then once we met up with the kids again we hit the arcade. CB was initially VERY excited about the ability to rack up 100s of tickets without spending any money. But then about 2 minutes in he realized he wasn’t actually earning any tickets. He expressed great frustration and spent the next 5 minutes walking around the arcade trying to find a game that was just a pure game, not something expressly made for earning tickets. After no luck, he went to “play” a game but really just to be snarky about it. However, when he threw the game card down on the game console it promptly slid down and disappeared from sight. The card had managed to find the one narrow spot between the console and the tabletop cover and slid right in there. I immediately busted out laughing when we realized what had happened. Fortunately, rather than get mad, CB laughed as well. He then asked if he could use some of his spending money on a REAL game card to play games and win tickets. I gave him $20 and let him go at it for 10-15 minutes to earn tickets.
Eventually we left the arcade (cheesy prizes in hand) and took a drive over to Smoky Mtn Alpine Coaster. Now, those who have read about our original travels to Pigeon Forge may recall that last time we went we missed out on riding a similar coaster because it was down for maintenance on the one day we were there. This time around, the weather was still okay, and the ride was open, but it also had about 100 people in line to get one as well as an additional 20-30 waiting to get their tickets. It did not take us long to decide against wasting 1-2 hours in a line versus doing something else. Instead, we headed back to the house, which was fortuitous because a huge rain storm came through. We waited that out and then headed over to MagiQuest to complete our last two tasks for which we had tickets.
First up was The Vault, which was a room full of lasers and you basically had to make your way from one end of the room to the other while avoiding as many lasers as you could. Fastest time wins, but every time you passed through a laser, 30 seconds was added to your time. I went first, and hit a ton of lasers, hitting my buzzer at 538.6 seconds (but really I was in there less than 60 seconds – that’s how many lasers I hit). CB went next, clocking in at 694.1 seconds, but in his defense he went really slow in an attempt to truly avoid as many lasers as he could – to no avail. Then it was CG, who just eeked out CB with a time of 690.6. Denis pulled up the rear AND hit the best time, commando crawling through half the course to a solid 455.5 finish time. FUN.
Up last was the mirror maze. I had read great reviews of how difficult the mirror maze was, but foolishly thought it would easy as pie. Uh. No. Well, I take that back – CootieBoy zoomed through the course and was the first to finish. At some point we were all together, then he raced ahead and the three of us remained behind, lost in the maze. Then CootieGirl wanted to go one way, but I wanted to go another, so she and Denis turned right while I turned left. At some point CG and Denis got separated because at about the halfway point Denis and I were reunited and after a few minutes finally got to the end. But at that point CG was still in the maze. The maze had loud music playing the whole time, but I hollered her name to see if I could hear her – I could. She was close! I went back into the end of the maze by 3-4 turns and called her again – and this time I could see her reflection in the mirror, but had no idea where she actually was. She made a few more turns and finally there she was. She was with another teenaged boy who had helped her get to the end. She admitted later she was about to break down in tears when he found her and helped her out. That’s how difficult that maze was.
We headed back to the Island because we had yet another Groupon to use – this time for the 7D Dark Ride Adventure. This is basically a 3D shoot’em up game. Our groupon covered six games, so we did one as a family of four, and then the kids did a second round. It was a lot of fun and CB won the second game quite handily. He and another guy were neck and neck through the first 75% of the game and then CB pulled ahead and never lost the lead. Once the game was over we wandered for a bit before heading back to the house again.
From there we had a free afternoon. I offered up the idea of going to see “Toy Story 4” which Denis and CG were not inclined to do. CB took pity on me and said he’d go with me, so Denis took us over to the movie theater to drop us off while he and CG would go play another round of mini-golf at one of the many courses along the strip.
Y’all. “Toy Story 4” is adorable. Not my favorite, but definitely a great, great movie. CB and I really enjoyed it.
Once the movie was over Denis picked us up and we decided to find a place for dinner. The first place we went to had an hour wait, so then we tried another place (Alamo Steakhouse) and got a table pretty quickly. The meal was delicious even if CG had some difficulty due to a loose braces bracket in her mouth. We then went back to the house again and sparked up another movie for the evening.
Sunday morning Denis got up early and headed over to Krystal for some White Castle-esque burgers. While he was gone I began going through the check-out instructions to get the house back in order, and getting the kids up. I commenced with packing and doing as much as I could before Denis got back. We hit the road around 10:15 a.m. and were back at home by 2:30 p.m.
It was a very quick weekend, but it was a fun one nonetheless. I had joked the day before how when we drove home we should re-enact this:
Alas, we didn’t re-enact the commercial. But the fact is, it WAS really nice.
