This has been a busy time of year at The Fun-Lover’s Guide to Dollywood. Our first edition was delivered just a couple of weeks ago, and we’ve spent the past several weeks making sure that this vacation guide to Dollywood and the Great Smoky Mountains can easily be found throughout Pigeon Forge, Sevierville and Gatlinburg. Right now, we’re in nearly 100 high-profile brochure slots throughout the area as well as in nearly 100 of our own rack and drop locations. So whether it’s at a hotel, overnight rental office, convenience store, supermarket, music theater, attraction, outlet mall or restaurant, your chances of finding the print version of our vacation-planning guide are getting better all the time. After all, we’ve got 250,000 copies to get into the hands of excited Dollywood vacationers this year!
Meanwhile, we’re also working on our advertising sales effort, which gives you, the Smoky Mountain visitor, even more vacation-planning options, both in the printed guide and at our Web site. And of course, we’re working on marketing ourselves as a publication. You can even help us in that effort. If you plan to visit this Web site again this year, please bookmark it. That will make it easier for more Dollywood visitors searching for vacation information online to find our site in a Google search. And you can also become a fan of our publication on Facebook, which means you’ll get several posts a week featuring Tour Tips and Fun-Facts from this year’s guide as well as up-to-date information about new events and activities going on at Dollywood. And if you do become a fan on Facebook, be sure to share that page with all your friends, especially the ones you know are headed to East Tennessee this year for some Smoky Mountains travel.
Finally, I’d like to thank several people who were very supportive in helping me get this guide off the ground. First, my wife deserves endless thanks for her patience during the ups and downs of launching this publication. She was a great encourager when things looked tough and a great sounding board for a bunch of ideas, both good and bad. Thanks also go to Tim Berry and Pete Owens in the Dollywood marketing department for their cooperation and access to what’s going on at the parks. Also thanks to some colleagues in the publishing business—Mike Smith of Touring Publications and Tom Irmen of Everything Knoxville Magazine—for their suggestions and experienced wisdom that helped me over more than one hump along this bumpy road that runs through the publishing world.