2023 Branson Christmas trip review

This Christmas tree was in front of the Titanic Museum.

We recently visited Branson for our annual Christmas season trip. We stopped at Wally's in Fenton, MO on our way to Branson. The bathrooms were squeaky clean as usual, but I was disappointed that the red and green lights over the stall doors that indicated the stall was occupied had been removed. Maybe the red and green lights offended someone?  Or maybe it's just too hard to change out the light bulbs when they burn out. 

Our first stop in Branson was at the Branson 2 for 1 Tickets location on Hwy. 163 next to the White Oak Station gas station. We wanted to purchase vouchers for the "Awesome '80s" show since I couldn't find any discount tickets for that show. One of the gentlemen behind the counter was Santa Claus' double. This location of 2 for 1 is a lot easier to get in and out of than the location on Hwy. 76. 

Our next stop was the condo we reserved. I found a great deal on Airbnb - the owner had just bought the condo and he was running a deal where the first 3 people to rent the condo got 50% off the rate. I was the last person who got the 50% off deal.  The condo was located across from the Thousand Hills offices on Wildwood Drive.  This condo was a walk-in and it had a walk-in shower in the second bedroom, which my husband used since he has difficulties getting in and out of a tub.  We had issues accessing cable TV on the smart TV in the living room (old people problems, I know), but the owner came by and made sure he fixed it. The kitchen had lots of cooking equipment, including a blender and a crockpot. This condo even had a bidet in the master bedroom, but whose crazy idea was it to put mirrored closet doors across from the toilet? The condo we stayed in the Foothills during our summer trip to Branson had the same master bath setup, but the tub was across from the closet doors. 

On Saturday morning, our first excursion was to Tanger Outlet Mall.  I made some purchases at Bath & Body Works (it's much bigger than our B&BW) and purchased a small backpack at Vera Bradley Outlet with my 25% birthday coupon. We then stopped at the Americana Theater to pick up our tickets for the "Awesome 80s" show that afternoon.  

After lunch at the condo, we headed to the Americana for the 2 PM ”Amazing ‘80s” show. I struck up a lovely conversation with a couple in the lobby, in which we discussed Branson, and this blog and its associated Facebook page.  We then started talking about the St. Louis Cardinals and baseball. 

You’re probably thinking, “Why did they see a non-Christmas show during a Christmas season trip?” The answer to that question is that the show isn’t open during our summer trips to Branson. The show itself was pretty good.  We recognized most of the songs, and the choreography and costumes were great, although the female singers were a little flat in places (in pitch, not chest). There was interesting trivia about the songs and the artists on the video screens.  We were happy to see this show once, although we would probably not see it again.

Since that day was my birthday, we decided to go to Florentina’s Italian Ristorante for dinner. We had a voucher from OzarksDeals.com.  The son offered to pay for the dinner as his birthday gift to me. He mentioned to the waitress that it was my birthday. I ended up with a piece of cheesecake for dessert.  As always at Florentina’s, the food and the service were great. If you love Italian food, you can’t go wrong with Florentina’s. I think it’s even better than Olive Garden.

Oops, I forgot to take a photo of the cheesecake before I took a bite.

After dinner, we went back to the condo to rest up and give our stomachs time to digest all that pasta before going to the “Christmas Wonderland” show. This show is in the King’s Castle Theater, which we had not been to since we saw the debut of “Anthems of Rock” there back in 2020. If you enjoy Broadway musicals, you will probably enjoy “Christmas Wonderland.” There were lots of costume changes and the choreography and singing was very good. There was a tall guy with an Irish accent who played Santa and was also in other musical numbers. During intermission, he also filled in at the concession stand. “The Irish Tenors and Celtic Ladies” is also playing at King’s Castle and I’d be willing to bet that our Irish tenor is in that show as well.

On Sunday morning, we watched our church’s worship service which was streaming on Facebook. We then ate lunch at the condo and drove to Promised Land Zoo (“PLZ”).  We originally bought our OzarksDeals.com PLZ voucher for our summer Branson trip, but we ran out of time to go during that trip.  The voucher was good through December 31, 2023, so we decided to use it on our Christmas Branson trip.

We went to the booth, turned in our vouchers and were given a code to use to access the drive-through part of the tour. Since it was a damp day, there weren’t any animal demonstrations. We went to feed the parakeets and did the walking tour.  We then went back to the car to do the drive-through tour.

For some reason, we had a difficult time finding the keypad to enter the code that would open the gate. The son finally spotted it. Perhaps an arrow and a sign pointing out where the keypad is located would be helpful. There is a person in the booth for the “Let There Be Lights” tour that opens the gate – I guess we were thinking that there would be someone in the booth for the drive-through tour.

Hello, Mr. Llama, what can I do for you?

Once we got through the gate, the drive-through tour was very enjoyable, although some of the roads were kind of bumpy. The best part of the tour was when the animals came up to your car. The hill leading out of this part of the park to get to the exit is very steep – you have to floor the gas pedal and speed up the hill to get over it. We drive an SUV so this wasn’t hard for us, but someone with a sedan or a minivan would probably have problems getting up over the hill.

After we left PLZ, we made our way to Andy’s Frozen Custard for a treat. The son and I got the special Andy’s sundae that is a fundraiser for Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce’s 87 & Running Foundation. After all, Branson has been selected as the Chiefs’ official vacation destination. And after the Rams left St. Louis, we became Chiefs fans.

We went back to the condo for dinner and to rest up before attending the final show of the trip.  We had seen Clay Cooper’s regular show but had never seen his Christmas show, so we decided to check it out.

There was a pre-show skit titled “Just Horsin’ Around” produced by and starring Matt Gumm, the all-around talented Branson entertainer. It took place in an Old West saloon and was very funny. 

The first half of Clay’s show was all country music. The second half of the show was Christmas music. All the music was great and the dancers were great as well. Clay has a live band backing him in contrast to the other two shows we attended, which used tracks for the accompaniments. Clay is very personable with the audience members and the interactions were one of my favorite parts of the show. If you don’t want to be singled out for any interaction with a show member, however, maybe you should sit closer to the back of the theater.

Monday was our shopping trip day. The Black Friday sale at Bass Pro Shops usually starts on the Monday before Thanksgiving. We were disappointed to discover, however, that the $10 hoodies we always buy didn’t go on sale until Black Friday.  Hubby did purchase two nice flannel shirts and the son bought a Henley thermal shirt and a pair of jeans. I purchased a pair of Christmas pajamas with a bass on the shirt and the inscription, “Happy Bassmas.”

We went next door to the souvenir store to look around a bit.  It was raining, so we only walked up to the main square to see the Christmas tree.  We wanted to go into the store with the Christmas trees for charity, but they didn’t open until 11 AM. 

Our next stop was the Grand Village shopping center.  We visited Dickens’ Gift Shop, but we didn’t find anything we really wanted. We looked around the toy store.  We went into the Christmas store, but it was too crowded for hubby. He has a bad foot/ankle and he was afraid someone was going to step on it.  We wanted to eat lunch at Mel’s Hard Luck Diner, so we stood at the front door, along with a lot of other people, until the doors opened at 11 AM.

Lunch at Mel’s was as good as it always was. We decided to order our favorite onion rings as an appetizer rather than an additional side. I ordered a bacon BBQ cheeseburger, and it was huge!

After we left Grand Village, we went to Price Chopper to pick up some pastries for an easy breakfast on Tuesday morning before our drive home. We went back to the condo for supper and started packing up to go home.

We had a great time, but hubby and I discussed it, and we believe this will be our last Christmas season trip to Branson.  We’ve seen all the Christmas shows we’ve wanted to see except for Dolly’s Stampede and that’s out of our price range. We would rather spend our vacation budget on one Branson trip per year. 

Thanks for reading this very long review! Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Diane

 

2023 Branson summer trip review and a retrospective

This year is the 20th anniversary of our first trip to Branson. Our son was 6 years old the first time we visited Branson.  He's now 26. Time sure flies, doesn't it?  For this blog post, I've compared what we did 20 years ago to what we did this year.  I've separated the review into categories.  

Lodging

2003 - We stayed at Crow's Nest Resort (n/k/a Dooley Lodges & Resort) on Indian Point. There weren't many websites to research places to stay in Branson on the Internet 20 years ago.  And we had dial-up Internet, too, which made the process slower.   When we got to the cabin, I thought I was back in the 1950s. The cabin consisted of one large room with beds and the bathroom on one side and the kitchen/living room on the other. And there was no clock in the cabin - we had to drive back into town and go to Kmart to buy one. 

2023 - We stayed in a lovely condo in the Foothills subdivision in town, across the street from the Thousand Hills golf course. It had two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and it had a lovely little patio in the back. Here is the listing: Foothills condo.

Attractions

2003 - We visited Silver Dollar City, Celebration City, Hollywood Wax Museum, and Ride the Ducks.  Celebration City was a theme park that was open from 4 PM until 10 PM. It was located on Green Mountain Drive near its intersection with Shepherd of the Hills Expressway. Ride the Ducks was shuttered after the tragic accident that killed 18 people. 

2023 - This year, we visited the Veterans' Memorial Museum.   This museum contains exhibits beginning at World War I through Desert Storm.  We enjoyed viewing all of the exhibits. They were very well done. The lady who checked us in was very friendly and bubbly.  There are walls that list the names of all of the soldiers who were killed in action in WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, and other conflicts. We reviewed the names on the walls to see if we could find the names of any of our relatives, but we were fortunate enough not to find any. At the end of the tour (or at the beginning), be sure to ask for the Military Trails of Missouri passport, which contains pages for all of the military museums, memorials, and Civil War battle sites in Missouri that you can get stamped when you visit each attraction. We used a deal from OzarksDeals.com for admission to the museum, and you can see that deal here. 

We also visited Retromania.  We are fans of 1980s music and we listen to 80s on 8 on Sirius XM. The 80s was the decade of my young adulthood - I turned 21 in 1982. Retromania contained a free-play video game arcade, a black light mini-golf course, the Slashers haunted house, the 80s movie theater, the 1980s museum, and the New Wave Cafe.  There were escape rooms available but they cost extra, so we didn't go through them.  We had a Groupon deal for Retromania (which you can find here), but I wouldn't pay the full admission price. We only spent about an hour here, most of it in the video game section. 

Shows

2003 - We didn't attend any shows in 2003. We were not sure how our son would behave in a show.  

2023 - We went to "Queen Esther" at the Sight & Sound Theater and the Showboat Branson Belle this year. We really enjoyed "Queen Esther." The set piece was impressive, with various sections that moved and scenery that came up out of the floor.  You could almost believe that there was a real elephant on the stage.  The acting and singing were superb.  (The photo above is from "Queen Esther.") There are no discounts for Sight & Sound, but paying the full price is well worth it. 

We also went to the Showboat Branson Belle. I've been wanting to go there for years, but I couldn't talk hubby into it.  The son is a picky eater and we didn't want to pay for his food if he didn't eat. We made the son pay for his ticket so if he didn't eat, he would lose his money and not ours. The only things he did eat were the roll and the dessert.  He missed out on the salad, the tender roast beef, the chicken thighs, the green beans, and the garlic mashed potatoes. Hubby and I split the son's meal.  

The show was hosted by magician Christian James. He performed a pre-show during dinner and performed small tricks. After dinner, there was a 40-minute break where we could go out on the deck and view the lake.  The show performers performed some songs on the fourth deck. The show contained popular songs from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. There was a medley of Elton John music and a montage of movie songs. The performers were talented singers and dancers and we enjoyed the show very much.  

I reviewed the Branson and me page on this blog to see what we have done the most in Branson.  We have seen the Haygoods 5 times in three different theaters. We have seen the Duttons 3 times. We have been to Silver Dollar City 8 times. We have been to Shepherd of the Hills Fish Hatchery 6 times, and it is currently closed for remodeling. We have seen the Andy Williams Ozark Mountain Christmas Show, the Hughes Brothers Christmas Show, and Rick Thomas's Mansion of Dreams show twice each. We have stayed in condos at the Suites at Fall Creek 5 times. If you want to see all the things we have done in Branson over the years, click on the Branson and me tab above. 

Thanks as always for reading! See you next time!

Diane