Grand Ole Opry House Layover, Nashville
Part of the full Nashville From BNA: Broadway and the Ryman
The Grand Ole Opry House, nine miles northeast of downtown Nashville, sits on one corner of a complex that also holds nine acres of indoor garden and an outlet mall, all three a few minutes apart and all three indoors.
The oak circle in the Grand Ole Opry House stage
The hall at 600 Opry Mills Drive opened on March 16, 1974 with Richard Nixon in the audience, playing a few songs on the piano before the show. When the Opry moved out here after 31 years at the Ryman downtown, someone cut a six-foot circle of oak out of the corner of the old stage and set it into the middle of the new one, so that every performer since has sung standing on the same boards. The room seats a little over four thousand.
Daytime guided tours go backstage through the dressing rooms and out onto the stage, and cost around $47. A show ticket with a post-show tour attached runs about $111. The tours work around rehearsals and performances, so what is available on a given afternoon varies.
Nine acres of garden under glass at the Opryland hotel
The Opryland hotel, sharing the Opry complex off Briley Parkway, is built around its atriums rather than the other way round: nine acres of them, planted and roofed in glass, with paths running through at ground level and hotel balconies looking down. The Cascades hall has a waterfall three and a half stories high and more than 8,000 tropical plants around it. The Delta hall has a quarter-mile river with a flat-bottomed boat working up and down it.
It is a hotel rather than a ticketed garden, so there is no admission desk and guests and non-guests walk the same paths. On a wet afternoon the whole of it is under cover, and on a hot one it is air conditioned, which the walk down Broadway is not.
Opry Mills, on the ground the theme park left
Opry Mills stands on ground a country-music theme park held from May 1972 until it shut for good on the last day of 1997, so the land could be redeveloped. What replaced it opened in May 2000: an outlet mall of more than 1.2 million square feet and over 200 stores on the bank of the Cumberland, plus a cinema and the food court the city bus uses as its terminus.
Nine acres of atrium and 1.2 million square feet of mall is a lot of floor to cross at walking pace, and all of it happens between two long bus rides.
No direct bus from the Opry to the airport
WeGo Route 34 leaves the Opry Mills food court every half hour and runs down Ellington Parkway into downtown, reaching Bay 14 at WeGo Central in about 25 minutes. Route 18 to Nashville International Airport (BNA) leaves from that same bay, every 30 minutes until 11:15pm, and takes 34 to 40 minutes. Two dollars a leg, and about two hours from the Opry House door to the airport terminal once you allow for the connection.
Four hours is the working minimum out here, because two of them belong to the bus. If you have less than that, the full Nashville layover guide keeps everything within a mile of the river downtown, which is the better use of a short afternoon.
Frequently asked questions
What should I do during a layover near the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville?
Three things sit within a few minutes' walk of each other at 600 Opry Mills Drive. The Opry House runs guided backstage tours by day, around $47, which get you onto the stage and its six-foot circle of oak cut from the Ryman. The Opryland hotel alongside keeps nine acres of gardens under glass, including a quarter-mile indoor river and a three-and-a-half-story waterfall. Opry Mills, the outlet mall on the third corner, has more than 200 stores. Budget an hour on the bus in each direction before any of it.
How do you get from the Opry to Nashville International Airport?
There is no direct link. WeGo Route 34 leaves the Opry Mills food court every 30 minutes and reaches Bay 14 at WeGo Central downtown in about 25 minutes; Route 18 to BNA leaves from that same bay, every 30 minutes until 11:15pm, taking 34 to 40 minutes. Each leg is $2. Allow two hours from the Opry to the airport door.
Can you go inside the Opry House without seeing a show?
Yes, on a tour. Daytime guided backstage tours run through the week at roughly $47 a head, taking in the dressing rooms and the stage itself. A combined show ticket with a post-show backstage tour costs about $111. Tour availability moves around show schedules and rehearsals, so the day's timetable is the one to check.
Is the Opryland hotel's garden open to people who are not staying there?
It is a hotel rather than a ticketed garden, so there is no admission desk and guests and non-guests walk the same paths. Nine acres of atrium sit under glass across several halls: the Cascades with a waterfall three and a half stories high and more than 8,000 tropical plants, and the Delta with a quarter-mile river running through it that a flat-bottomed boat works up and down. Parking is what costs money out here, which arriving by bus avoids.