As if we didn’t have enough to deal with. 2020 is turning into one for the record books. We start off the year with Covid 19, then they shut down Silver Dollar City and now we are facing record floods.

Yesterday the Corp of Engineers shut down the boat launch at Indian Point Marina. With lake levels exploding upwards (pool level of 931 feet and rising as of 29 May, 2020) we just have to shake our heads and ask “God? Is there anything else? If so, can we spread it out a little more?”

With our resort, we go as the lake and Silver Dollar City goes. Yesterday, the governor extended out the phase 1 reopening until the 15th of June, 2020. While this doesn’t really affect us one way or another (since the park is still closed) we can only go along for the ride and observe. 

But, closing the marina at Indian Point is actually a pretty big deal. Not only will it cause us problems for the foreseeable future with families looking to escape to the lake, it also impacts us for fishing tournaments. Just yesterday we had a cancellation for the Big BassTour that was scheduled for the first week of June. This event was originally scheduled to happen in April, then pushed back to June. Now, it has been rescheduled for  30 Oct – 1 November, 2020. 

Always trying to have a backup in place, we did speak to Jim Daly at White Wing Resort and he will help us to get our customers into the water. PLEASE remember this gentleman and his business. Very few direct competitors will help when situations arise – but Jim and his wife Laura are the exception. We always try to reciprocate when possible, but it always seems Jim comes through more for us than the other way around. 

We will do everything we can to offer you the best possible vacation with the least amount of stress for 2020. Give us a call and tell us how we may be able to help you and your family have fun this summer. We ALWAYS appreciate your business – but this year could really use the assist. 

All the best and God Bless to all.

Hunter’s Friend Resort
417 338 2849

We live just 2 miles away from Silver Dollar City and interact with the park quite a bit throughout the year. In the 16 years we have been here, nothing has generated the buzz and anticipation that Silver Dollar City’s newest attraction – Time Traveler – has. And has the wait been worth it.

Both of our kids are quite fearless when it comes to roller coasters. The bigger, the faster, the better. Naturally, going on the newest ride was a given. When we arrived, the lines for the ride weren’t too bad. The park always does well at moving the crowds through quickly and today was exemplary. 

Time Traveler hails itself as “The fastest, steepest, and tallest” spinning coaster on the planet. What that really translates to is “This is going to be fun!” 

Riders come right out of the barn into a 10 story vertical drop and somewhere along the way, a catch releases that allows the carriages to rotate (like a tilt a wheel). So you already have the fear of a typical roller coaster, but now you increase the intensity of the fright factor by allowing free flow turning seats.

30 minutes passed and now it was time for my kids to give it a go and off they went. I didn’t get to put a stopwatch to it, but the total duration of the ride was somewhere in the area of 2 minutes – respectable. The imprint of pure fear on my kids’ face afterwards lasted far longer. Disembarking from the ride, they were almost in a zombie trance for the next 30 minutes and declared it was the single most terrifying ride they had ever been on. Asking them if they were interested in riding it again brought an immediate “NO!” and they meant it. (Money well spent)

I congratulate the team at SDC on a job well done. You have truly made a masterpiece and I cannot see how it will not continue for decades to come to be a park favorite for future generations.

Then came a nice unexpected surprise, Thunderation….

You may believe that since we live in the area and own a lodging business which is literally a couple miles away from Silver Dollar City, it’s natural that we help market this attraction. That’s partly true because some of our customers do stay with us for our close proximity to the park. However, we would like to explain to you why we think Silver Dollar City is a better choice than Disneyworld.

We travel quite a bit as a family and there are only a handful of places where we haven’t been to in US. When we lived in California, we visited Disneyland several times and as early as 2 years, we decided to take our little ones to Disneyworld after a 2 week vacation in the Gulf Coast. Orlando was our last stop before returning home to Branson. We figured that we would have the best for our kids the last. We found decent accommodations close to the park and got up early the next day to take our twins to the happiest place in the world! Or so we thought.

After paying more than $400 for four of us, we grabbed a map and tried to work on a plan to enjoy the most rides possible. Remembering from our visit to Disneyland, we decided to locate the fast pass lanes. Wow! Lines at the fast pass lane had more than 100 people at a time. By the time, it was our turn, we saw that most of fast passes were not available anymore except a few rides. Disappointed by determined to show our kids a good time, we tried to get in lines and almost every of them had more than an hour of wait. It wasn’t until after dark where the lines started getting thinner and we were able to ride some rides after less than an hour of waiting at each. While we thought that it was a success that we could ride some of these rides, our kids were in no humor. Waiting, waiting and more waiting took all the fun away from everything and turned them into cranky little people. We, the parents didn’t mind the exhaustion of running around, smelling the full diapers all over the park and seeing many more cranky, hungry, tired kids all around us; after all, this is the happiest place on earth. At the end of the day, we stuck around to watch the fireworks which was the best fun. This at least put a little smile on our twins face.

Perhaps, we should have been better prepared, done more planning by figuring out what to do every minute of our visit. Frankly though, a family trip shouldn’t have to be this complicated and certainly not that expensive. Spending your time trying to make your little people happy shouldn’t have to be this hard.

This is why we will always prefer to visit Silver Dollar City. SDC is nothing like Disneyworld, Disneyland, Six Flags or any other theme parks. It’s a unique park in its own category. Originally built around a cave, the park has grown tremendously to comfortably compete with Disneyworld. The variety of rides is amazing and they keep adding the wicked rides one can think of. I do not dare riding these rides but I watch as one of my twin daughters hop on some of them and scream, laugh and wows like no end. The wait for rides definitely less than what they are in Disneyworld. You don’t see cranky kids at this park. There are different sections. Rides for small kids, rides for older kids and rides for adults and anyone who’s tall enough to ride them. There are plenty of restaurants and cafes. Over 60 stores that offer unique local art and other items. There are cooling stations in the hot months of summer. The park is built on the hills with beautiful landscaping and enough trees to provide shade. It’s clean and there are so many staff to help with questions, directions and anything else. Staff who welcome the visitors with Ozarks hospitality talking and joking with the people. You do not get the feeling that you’re one of the thousands of people just there to visit the park. You feel that you are among old friends who are happy to have you there.

You also do not have to break the ban when visiting Silver Dollar City. The annual passes are cheaper than a one day pass at Disneyworld. You can visit the park as many times as you’d like to March through December.

The park offers different festivals throughout the year. Blues and BBQ fest, the new Wonder Fest, Star Spangles Summer, Moonlight Madness, Southern Gospel Picnic, Craft and Cowboy Fest and several more are available for people with different interests. The one our family enjoyed the most is the “An Old time Christmas” This is actually very popular with visitors. Parades, Christmas shows, over 5 million Christmas lights and a 5 story tall Christmas tree with special sound and light effects. In our Facebook page for Hunter’s Friend, we provided pictures of this event if you’re interested in seeing them.

In the end, everyone would like to visit the “happiest place on earth” at least once in their lifetime but if you’re looking for a place that you can visit over and over again, Silver Dollar City is your park. Southern hospitality, affordability, competitive rides, amazing shows and a time well spent with family are what you will find at Silver Dollar City.

Don’t forget! We are only a couple miles away from the park located on the same peninsula. When you drive to the park from one of our 3 locations, you do NOT fight the traffic. You arrive at the park literally within minutes while everyone else coming from Branson is stuck on Hwy 76 or Hwy 465. Why wait when you can start having fun right away?

What are they building at Silver Dollar City ? We don’t know yet but we are sure whatever it is, it’s going to be amazing as they proved in the past that they are always ready to make it more fun for their visitors. We hope that you get a chance to visit this park at least once in your lifetime too and make everyone in your family happy.

Branson has been going through major changes in the recent years. Once a capital of country music shows, Branson now has become a tourist attraction that offers more than just a musical entertainment.

One of the places that just opened in the city is a place called Fritz Adventure. A 80,000 square feet indoor attraction has anything from climbing walls, stairs, ziplining, crawling through underground tunnels and gigantic slides.

The attraction can be a great family entertainment if you are into physical activity. By the time, you and your children are done playing in this massive playground, you are wiped out. You would believe that you have done a 1 week worth of exercises. The good thing is it’s more fun than exercising!

The Fritz Adventure also has a cafeteria on the second floor where you can hang out if you don’t feel like climbing, crawling, or run around. You can just relax and watch your children go in and out of little caves, containers, tunnels etc.

Having a new attraction like this in Branson is especially nice because we never anything like this in town before and it’s perfect spot to hang out in cold Branson days

As we have said in our previous blog, Branson has been slowly getting away to be known only as the place for country music shows. What Branson was 15 years ago is definitely not what it has become in the recent years. The new Ferris Wheel that was brought to town from Chicago to Fritz Adventure to zip lining, Branson now offers much more selections when it comes to family entertainment.

One of these new attractions is called “Big Foot” which is scheduled to open on May 1^st. The attraction will be consisted of a 200’ tall Action Tower that have 2 types of rides. One is a free fall ride (yes from 200 ft) and the second is a ride which lets the riders tumble over back to the ground. These two rides are certainly enough to offer a new type of activity for Branson visitors.

The attraction will also offer a “Big Foot Discovery Expedition” where visitors will be able to ride in safari trucks to the Big Foot Farms to search and find the ‘Big Foot”

Big Foot will also offer a miniature golf, arcade, 8D Cinema, an adventure maze and a food truck park.

We are pretty excited to check out this new place and will write more once we visit it.

Cheers,

There is a new ride coming to Silver Dollar City.

For the past 6 months or so they have been constructing some sort of a new ride. Day after day there is no less than 30 to 40 contractors working on this ride behind the scenes with probably 100 (most likely more) cement trucks working their way through. This photo was from last week (April 2017) and we passed these trucks lined up on the side of the road waiting to unload. Cement trucks have been working all winter long so whatever it is they are building is going to be HUGE.

The first parking lot closest to Indian Point road has also functioned as something of a staging area where welders looked to be creating rebar for reinforcement. That took up the better part of the north end of the parking lot.  

To keep lookie loos (like yours truly) out of it, they constructed a wooden fence along Indian Point road to block out the view. I would guess the fence is 100 yards long and it is effective in cutting down on the gawkers as they drive past. 

Silver Dollar City is keeping a tight lid on whatever this attraction is but judging by the size of the crew working it and the amount of materials necessary to construct it, the wait will be worth it. We will post more as we learn more.