Hotel and convention center with 2,888 rooms is one of the 30 largest hotels in the world
General Information
Hotel Front Desk: 24 hours
Check-in: 4:00 PM
Check-out: 11:00 AM
SoundWaves water attraction admission requires a qualifying package or separate admission.
How to Get There
From Nashville (10 mi): Take I-40 E from downtown Nashville, follow signs for Briley Parkway/TN-155, exit for Opryland Drive, and continue to Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center at 2800 Opryland Dr.
Overview
Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center, formerly known as Opryland Hotel, is a hotel and convention center located in Nashville, Tennessee. It is owned by Ryman Hospitality Properties (formerly known as Gaylord Entertainment Company), and operated by Marriott International. With 2,888 rooms, it is one of the 30 largest hotels in the world.
The original Opryland Hotel opened on November 26, 1977, on land adjacent to the Opryland USA amusement park. The hotel was originally built to support the Grand Ole Opry, a Nashville country-music institution that had moved to the area three years before. The hotel at that time had 580 guest rooms and a ballroom. The Magnolia Lobby was designed to resemble a grand Southern mansion with an impressive staircase and a Tiffany-style chandelier.
In 1983-84 the hotel was expanded, adding over 400 guest rooms and incorporating facilities to meet the demands of the corporate meeting and convention market. A Garden Conservatory resembling a Victorian garden was added. This atrium maintained a constant temperature of 71 degrees and housed more than 10,000 plants.
In 1988, 2 acres and 797 guest rooms were added to the hotel. The Cascades Atrium was built, including a 3.5-story waterfall and more than 8,000 tropical plants. The Cascades Lobby expanded to 24 check-in stations that could check in 580 guests per hour when necessary.
A 4.5-acre expansion completed in 1996 doubled the size of the resort, adding approximately 1,000 guest rooms, 10 meeting rooms, a 289,000-square-foot exhibit hall and a 57,000-square-foot ballroom. The trademark feature of this addition was the Cajun-themed Delta Atrium, which incorporated a quarter-mile-long indoor river. Flatboats were introduced to carry guests along the river, and past a water feature that included jets which were choreographed to music. When the expansion was christened, water samples from more than 1,700 rivers throughout the world (including every registered river in the United States) were poured into the Delta River. The Old Hickory Steak House, built to resemble an antebellum-style mansion, was also added.
On October 26, 2001, Opryland Hotel Nashville was rebranded as Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center (or Gaylord Opryland, for short), taking its name from its corporate parent.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center" which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0
