We recently went on a 7-day adventure to Yogi Bear’s Golden Valley Park in North Carolina and we want to share our experience with you along with our tips to make your stay better. When we booked, we knew nothing about camping with Yogi Bear Parks and wished someone would have shared their experience with us to help us be prepared.
Note: We are not an affiliate of Yogi Parks, we just wanted to give our honest review.
Our tips can be used to stay at most Yogi Parks but we specifically stayed in Golden Vally, NC so all our pictures are from that park. Yogi Jellystone parks have locations all over the country and for the most part are the same.
What We Loved About Yogi
Yogi Jellystone parks are a great place to vacation with kids. There are so many activities to keep your kids entertained and our kids loved it. We have 2 boys, one is 7 and the other is 11. We loved that it was just like being in a campground, even though we stayed in a cabin.
Booking Tips
The best time to book is in the off-season. If you look at the rates during the peak season, they are much higher. We booked our trip for the first week in June but we did it a few months before we went. I was able to use a coupon code and the rates were lower than if we had booked during peak season.
If you are looking for coupon codes, head over to their deals page where they list all the available specials that can be applied to your stay. They usually always have these codes available. I noticed if you stay during the week, the rates are better than on the weekend. The park is also not as busy.
What to Do There
There are lots of family activities to enjoy at Golden Valley’s Jellystone Park. They have hiking trails, pools with activities, a lake with kayaks, a water zipline, and a very big water obstacle course to play on. They have tennis courts, pickleball, and basketball as well as a laser tag course to use.
There is a jumping pillow and jump pad next to the playground that my kids loved. Each evening, kids would head over to play so there were always extra kids to play with.
They have a putt putt course and gem mining that the kids had a blast doing. Another thing they do that we enjoyed with the kids is the daily activities. We made tie-dyed shirts the week we were there but they have tons of other hands on activities to do as well. For a list of the daily activities, you can download the app and it keeps you up to date while you are visiting.
We rented a golf cart and used it to ride around the park. It was also fun to ride in the evenings. They do a “hey hey” ride for kids where a tractor pulls a trailer with hay bales and ride you all over the park.
Most of the activities are free to do when you are there. The ones you pay extra for are the water rentals, zipline, laser tag, gem mining and some of the crafts. You can buy a fun pass which is available during peak season (June 3 – August 13). The fun pass gives you instant access to all sorts of added fun like the paid activities, tasty treats, bear visits, & more!
Plan Your Meals in Advance
We defiantly recommend this! The closest grocery store to Golden Vally is a good 30-minute drive. They have restaurants on-site but the hours and menus aren’t so you can come to stay without any food.
For eating they have a Poolside bar, Creekside Cafe, and a restaurant called Scouts Table. We ate breakfast one morning at Scout’s table. It was a family-style buffet, where they bring it to your table, and it’s all you can eat. We spent about $80 that morning for our family of four so we only did that once. The breakfast buffet wasn’t open all week, so make note of this.
We went to Scout’s table one morning for bagels and coffee when the buffet wasn’t open. It’s best to check the availability and hours before your trip because they were only open from 9 to 3. We didn’t have lunch there but we were told by another guest that it was good.
The Creekside cafe has pizza and sandwich-style cuisine. We had the pizza one night when they had dough available but it wasn’t my favorite. It could defiantly use some spices and something extra as it was very bland.
For the rest of our trip, we ate the things we planned ahead. We smoked a boston butt to take and grilled chicken ahead of time. We brought a large cooler full of food and had plenty of snacks.
They have some food and beer to purchase in the Ranger’s Station. Let me say, that you can have beer in the park, but they ask that you keep in in a koozie or cup which I think is fair. If you need to purchase beer for your visit, get it before you get there. The town is “dry”, which means the closest beer store is a 30 minute drive. The Ranger’s Station ran out while we were there so I made the hour long round trip.
Things to Bring
If you are staying in a cabin or glamping tent, make sure you bring bath towels and bed linens. I made sure to bring my sheets but forgot a comforter so I ended up having to go to the dollar store (which is 15 minutes away) to get a blanket to use.
There are no washer and dryers in the cabins but they have a laundry mat on site so if you need it, you can bring detergent and quarters. Each site (even the cabins) have a fire pit. They have wood there to purchase but it would be cheaper if you brought your own. You will also want to bring some outdoor chairs and a lighter or firestarter to get it going.
Each accomodation has different amentities which you can find here.
Extras
There are things you can add to your stay and we did try a few during ours. We rented a pool cabana for 2 days during our stay. The pool cabana is a covered area with a sofa, fan, tv, fridge and table. You get 2 layout chairs in front of your cabana, too. We enjoyed this because it gave the kids a break and we had a place to get out of the sun during the day.
We also added a golf cart to the rental and this is a must! The park is so big and there are so many places that can only be accessed by walking or the golf cart, we are so glad we added one. If you put it with your reservation, the coupon code is applied to any add ons so make sure you do this!
Another add on is a hot tub. We didn’t do this, but if you do, they bring it to your site, fill it up and have it ready to use.
You can add on linen rentals (if you don’t want to bring your own), bear visits, pavillion rental and the fun pass. You can find all the add-ons here.
Cons
We had a few things to add that we noticed while we were there, hopefully by us sharing, it can help someone else.
We noticed that the campsites were not level. Almost all of the campers had to compensate for this with leveling blocks, so make sure you bring some if you are staying in your camper.
We also had a golf cart issue while staying. The carts have an automatic breaking system that keeps the cart at a certain speed when going down the hills, but our cabin was at the very top of the hill so almost everytime we came down, the breaking system would get too hot and the cart would stop until it cooled off. This usually took 5 to 10 minutes but in the meantime, we had to just sit. Let me note that it is not the park’s fault that this happened, however it is a safety feature of the golf cart.
We let the manager know that this is an issue and they told us they were going to address it. This will continue to be an issue, especially since they are adding more cabins even higher up from where we stayed.
Another issue we noticed was staffing but we understand that this is a worldwide issue post pandemic so we just want to encourage everyone to be patient and know that for the most part, employees are doing the best they can.
None of the issues we encountered ruined our trip or made us not want to return. We loved this park and we do intend on returning. I’m not sure if we will take our camper when we go back but we know we will go back in the future.
