Are you wanting to see Silver Dollar City and check out the festivals for yourself? Here is some great information.
For fall, Silver Dollar City presents the National Crafts & Cowboy Festival, featuring some of the nation's finest craftsmen and authentic cowboys. The festival presents a Wild West Show with trick riders, ropers and a world-champion Native American Hoop dancer; Western music; a barn dance, and 125 visiting craftsmen. Best of Missouri Hands juried artists demonstrate their art and fall harvest foods are served up September 13 - October 28 at the Branson, Missouri theme park.
The Home of American Craftsmanship presents the nation's largest festival of demonstrating craftsmen, with entertainment and activities saluting the Great American Cowboy. There are over 125 visiting craftsmen from around the country coming to demonstrate their art, including Best of Missouri Hands juried artists, all joining Silver Dollar City's 100 demonstrating craftsmen. Silver Dollar City's Wild West Show features trick riders, Native American dance with 8-time World Champion Native American Hoop Dancer Nakotah LaRance, comedy canines, and trick roper and bullwhip artist A.J. Silver. Legendary Western actor and watercolor artist Buck Taylor will host the "Buck Taylor's Cowboy Emporium," featuring a variety of Western crafts. Plus they will have Chuck Wagon & Food Network Chef Kent Rollins and Extreme Mustangs featured in the Red Gold courtyard. Also included is a Western Barn Dance presenting kick-up-your-heels fun, with a live band. There will be Western music with groups including The Malpass Brothers, The Home Rangers, Belinda Gail and Kristyn Harris, 2016 Western Music Association Entertainer of the Year. New this year will be the nation's pioneer culinary heritage coming to life with campfire cooking and cowboy cuisine, including Cowboy Beef Stew and Dutch Oven Desserts.
Here is some history behind this festival. Silver Dollar City began the fall crafts festival tradition in 1963, bringing in visiting craftsmen in addition to the park's growing resident crafts colony, with the goal of showcasing the makers along with the finished artwork. More than half a century later, a unique feature still is that all visiting crafters, as with the park's own, demonstrate their work so guests see the process, the skill and the creativity of true craftsmanship. This became the nation's largest festival of demonstrating craftsmen. The focus on authentic craftsmanship was one of the reasons the U.S. Congress in 2010 proclaimed Silver Dollar City the "Home of American Craftsmanship." In addition to craftsmen, Silver Dollar City added features with another American icon several years ago, the cowboy, to carry on the festival as The National Crafts & Cowboy Festival.
Are you preparing your Christmas Spirit? You may enjoy the Holiday and Christmas Festival this winter.
The Old Time Christmas festival will be adding a huge new area this year: Christmas in Midtown, with towering light displays 9 stories high, animated figures in lights, and 1.5 million additional lights, bringing the park total to over 6.5 million lights! Christmas in Midtown is the largest single lighting expansion in the past 20 years of this festival. It is one of the nation's most acclaimed Christmas festivals, profiled by USA Today, CNN Travel, The Travel Channel and Good Morning America. The new Christmas in Midtown is a 70,000 sq. ft. area filled with new light displays 9 stories high, including 30 angels, animated reindeer pulling a sleigh, 3 light tunnels, two 40-foot long moving trains, dozens of stars and snowflakes, and a 50-foot tree, all created at Silver Dollar City.
Christmas will include Rudolph's Holly Jolly Christmas Light Parade, led by the most famous reindeer of all, features musical lighted floats with 200,000 lights accompanied by 33 costumed characters, Rudolph's Christmas Town, where kids can meet Rudolph, Clarice and Bumble, also includes activities from Reindeer Games to cookie decorating. It will also include two original musical productions presented with Broadway-style experiences, with elaborate sets and talented casts: It's a Wonderful Life, adapted from the Frank Capra classic, and the acclaimed production A Dickens' Christmas Carol. The Christmas on Main Street light & sound show features the 5-Story Special Effects Christmas Tree with over 350,000 colorful LED lights. Tinker Junior's Toy Shop is an interactive show for kids featuring a 12-foot talking and singing Christmas tree. Kids can also meet Santa in Santa Claus Lane, illuminated in colorful lights. Plus, the festival presents holiday shows, a musical Living Nativity, shows, rides, shopping and new Silver Dollar City dining specialties. Hours and Schedules are HERE.
During An Old Time Christmas, Silver Dollar City is open Thursdays - Sundays, plus Wednesdays Nov. 22 and December 20, and open after Christmas Dec. 26-30. Hours and schedules are HERE.
