SoundWaves – Nashville, Tennessee

This past spring, we took our first family trip to Nashville and thoroughly enjoyed our visit to SoundWaves, the beautiful water park at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Centre.

It’s about an 11 hour drive to Nashville from the Toronto area. We did the drive in two days as we had a few stops we wanted to make along the way (including the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky).

This was our first time staying at the Gaylord Opryland, and the hotel is huge. There’s a massive atrium with lush gardens throughout – several restaurants, shops and even a river boat cruise – right in the hotel. It’s truly a spectacular place.

Because we love water parks, I upgraded our reservation to a “SoundWaves” package. SoundWaves is the water park in the hotel and is not included in a regular stay. The indoor water park opened in November 2018, and the outdoor water park in May 2019 (the weekend before we arrived).

This is an absolutely beautiful water park. May was a great time of year to be in Nashville. The weather was warm (especially given we’d had such a long, cold winter in Ontario). The indoor water park had some nice features including both a lazy river and a “fast” river, plus a “FlowRider” surf simulator – all with a music theme.

SoundWaves is described as an “upscale” water park – and that’s exactly what it is. The outdoor part has an elegant resort-like feel to it. There was live music playing in the afternoon – and then a large video screen playing music videos above the wave pool.

The water slides at SoundWaves were okay – they didn’t compare to Kalahari or Great Wolf Lodge, however, the ambiance at SoundWaves was amazing. We truly felt like we were on vacation.

If you are looking for a relaxing resort-like water park experience, we highly recommend SoundWaves at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel.