PIGEON FORGE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 13, 2025--
On a warm summer day back in 2015, Dolly Parton realized a dream that had been 30 years in the making. Since she welcomed the first guests to her eponymous theme park, Dollywood, in May 1986, Dolly had also hoped to create a hotel where those guests could extend their families’ vacation time together. On July 27, 2015, the doors of Dollywood’s DreamMore Resort and Spa opened to the public … and the 300-room resort has been going strong ever since. So strong, in fact, that a second hotel, Dollywood’s HeartSong Lodge & Resort, opened two years ago, confirming that Dollywood is a destination of its own within the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee.
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“Destination Dollywood” has a lot to celebrate this year, with the theme park’s 40 th anniversary season having launched in March and Dollywood’s Splash Country water park opening for its 25 th anniversary season on May 10. Each year the parks welcome millions of guests, many of whom opt to stay at Dolly’s original resort, which echoes the park’s famous philosophy on guest service. Around here, hosts (what Dollywood calls its employees) care enough to treat guests like family and extend heartfelt hospitality at every turn.
People feel like they’re part of the Dollywood family as soon as they arrive, as hosts hand them a glass of the resort’s signature pink lemonade and encourage them to settle into one of the dozens of rocking chairs that line the exterior porches. Guest rooms encourage family and multi-generational travel, offering an array of bed arrangements so kids, parents and grandparents can enjoy vacations together. “ Camp DW ” provides recreational opportunities designed with the whole family in mind. It’s not a drop-off-the-kids sort of program, but instead provides crafts, music, story times and other activities that encourage families to spend their time with each other in fun and meaningful ways.
Even the resort’s full-service restaurant, Song & Hearth: A Southern Eatery, gets in on the theme. On several nights each week it serves family-style meals, with heaping platters of Southern classics like fried chicken and pot roast and biscuits getting passed around the table. A menu staple is Stone Soup, a recipe that was adapted from a story Dolly shares about how her mother, Avie Lee Owens Parton, showed her big family lots of love in a simple meal.
The name of the resort – DreamMore – was inspired by a speech Dolly made to the University of Tennessee’s graduating class in 2009. In it, she encouraged her audience to “Dream more. Learn more. Care more. Be more.” Those same words can be found at the base of the DreamMore Fountain that greets guests as they arrive at the resort. More words of wisdom, which are affectionately dubbed “Dolly-isms,” can be found on posters in all the elevator landings. Guests find it hard to get off to a bad start or end a day on a sour note when “Dreams are of no value if they’re not equipped with wings” are among the first and last words their brains process.
Speaking of wings … guests can find artistic evidence of Dolly’s favorite animal, the butterfly, all around the resort, from giant sculptures perched on the building’s exterior and specially shaped benches in the gardens outside to images of the beautiful insects stitched into carpets or perched on the signs that mark each room number in guest hallways.
There are plenty of other tributes to Dolly throughout the resort, as well. Some of her instruments – an autoharp, banjo, dulcimer and guitar – can be found on the walls of the lobby-level living room. One level down is a corridor filled with her album covers … and there’s room for more, since Dolly shows no signs of slowing down when it comes to “songtelling.” In fact, she even wrote a song especially for the resort’s opening in 2015 and tucked it into a “Dream Box” time capsule that’s on display in the hotel’s lower lobby. Nobody except Dolly has seen this song, which will be revealed on her 100 th birthday in 2046.
There’s even a Dolly Parton Suite, which features bold tones of purple and pink, a huge closet, and a one-of-a-kind bathroom that makes guests never want to leave. The resort’s spa is similarly glamorous and sparkly, the perfect place to unwind and be pampered.
Like Dolly, the resort has collected an array of awards. It’s consistently recognized among the best theme park hotels in the country, achieving these honors because all around DreamMore, as guests enjoy stunning views of the same mountains that have always inspired Dolly, they can reconnect with loved ones in a comfortable, homey and stress-free environment that truly embodies Southern hospitality.
The entire resort underwent a refresh a few months ago to prepare for its 10 th anniversary, and it’s ready for its moment in the spotlight. Guests who stay at either of Dolly’s resorts enjoy a variety of perks, including free shuttle service to the park, early entry and the best price on tickets. To check availability and explore the array of offers and packages, please look here.
Dollywood's DreamMore Resort and Spa celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2025. The resort has been named among the best theme park resort hotels many times since its opening on July 27, 2015.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A day after the audacious U.S. military operation in Venezuela, President Donald Trump on Sunday renewed his calls for an American takeover of the Danish territory of Greenland for the sake of U.S. security interests, while his top diplomat declared the communist government in Cuba is “in a lot of trouble.”
The comments from Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the ouster of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro underscore that the U.S. administration is serious about taking a more expansive role in the Western Hemisphere.
With thinly veiled threats, Trump is rattling hemispheric friends and foes alike, spurring a pointed question around the globe: Who's next?
“It’s so strategic right now. Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place," Trump told reporters as he flew back to Washington from his home in Florida. "We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it.”
Asked during an interview with The Atlantic earlier on Sunday what the U.S.-military action in Venezuela could portend for Greenland, Trump replied: “They are going to have to view it themselves. I really don’t know.”
Trump, in his administration's National Security Strategy published last month, laid out restoring “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” as a central guidepost for his second go-around in the White House.
Trump has also pointed to the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which rejects European colonialism, as well as the Roosevelt Corollary — a justification invoked by the U.S. in supporting Panama’s secession from Colombia, which helped secure the Panama Canal Zone for the U.S. — as he's made his case for an assertive approach to American neighbors and beyond.
Trump has even quipped that some now refer to the fifth U.S. president's foundational document as the “Don-roe Doctrine.”
Saturday's dead-of-night operation by U.S. forces in Caracas and Trump’s comments on Sunday heightened concerns in Denmark, which has jurisdiction over the vast mineral-rich island of Greenland.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in a statement that Trump has "no right to annex" the territory. She also reminded Trump that Denmark already provides the United States, a fellow member of NATO, broad access to Greenland through existing security agreements.
“I would therefore strongly urge the U.S. to stop threatening a historically close ally and another country and people who have made it very clear that they are not for sale,” Frederiksen said.
Denmark on Sunday also signed onto a European Union statement underscoring that “the right of the Venezuelan people to determine their future must be respected” as Trump has vowed to “run” Venezuela and pressed the acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, to get in line.
Trump on Sunday mocked Denmark’s efforts at boosting Greenland’s national security posture, saying the Danes have added “one more dog sled” to the Arctic territory’s arsenal.
Greenlanders and Danes were further rankled by a social media post following the raid by a former Trump administration official turned podcaster, Katie Miller. The post shows an illustrated map of Greenland in the colors of the Stars and Stripes accompanied by the caption: “SOON."
“And yes, we expect full respect for the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” Amb. Jesper Møller Sørensen, Denmark's chief envoy to Washington, said in a post responding to Miller, who is married to Trump's influential deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
During his presidential transition and in the early months of his return to the White House, Trump repeatedly called for U.S. jurisdiction over Greenland, and has pointedly not ruled out military force to take control of the mineral-rich, strategically located Arctic island that belongs to an ally.
The issue had largely drifted out of the headlines in recent months. Then Trump put the spotlight back on Greenland less than two weeks ago when he said he would appoint Republican Gov. Jeff Landry as his special envoy to Greenland.
The Louisiana governor said in his volunteer position he would help Trump “make Greenland a part of the U.S.”
Meanwhile, concern simmered in Cuba, one of Venezuela’s most important allies and trading partners, as Rubio issued a new stern warning to the Cuban government. U.S.-Cuba relations have been hostile since the 1959 Cuban revolution.
Rubio, in an appearance on NBC's “Meet the Press,” said Cuban officials were with Maduro in Venezuela ahead of his capture.
“It was Cubans that guarded Maduro,” Rubio said. “He was not guarded by Venezuelan bodyguards. He had Cuban bodyguards.” The secretary of state added that Cuban bodyguards were also in charge of “internal intelligence” in Maduro’s government, including “who spies on who inside, to make sure there are no traitors.”
Trump said that “a lot” of Cuban guards tasked with protecting Maduro were killed in the operation. The Cuban government said in a statement read on state television on Sunday evening that 32 officers were killed in the U.S. military operation.
Trump also said that the Cuban economy, battered by years of a U.S. embargo, is in tatters and will slide further now with the ouster of Maduro, who provided the Caribbean island subsidized oil.
“It's going down,” Trump said of Cuba. “It's going down for the count.”
Cuban authorities called a rally in support of Venezuela’s government and railed against the U.S. military operation, writing in a statement: “All the nations of the region must remain alert, because the threat hangs over all of us.”
Rubio, a former Florida senator and son of Cuban immigrants, has long maintained Cuba is a dictatorship repressing its people.
“This is the Western Hemisphere. This is where we live — and we’re not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors, and rivals of the United States," Rubio said.
Cubans like 55-year-old biochemical laboratory worker Bárbara Rodríguez were following developments in Venezuela. She said she worried about what she described as an “aggression against a sovereign state.”
“It can happen in any country, it can happen right here. We have always been in the crosshairs,” Rodríguez said.
AP writers Andrea Rodriguez in Havana, Cuba, and Darlene Superville traveling aboard Air Force One contributed reporting.
In this photo released by the White House, President Donald Trump monitors U.S. military operations in Venezuela, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (Molly Riley/The White House via AP)
