The King continues…

An Experience

Graceland – the home of Elvis

Memphis, TN

Part Two

When I left you last we had just finished our tour through the Mansion, now we re-board our shuttle bus to go back through the gates, where folks still leave messages on the brick.



That Pink Caddy - sweet!



Back at the museum complex we begin the next leg of our Platinum tour.  The complex houses 7 more attractions, 4 restaurants and 15 (yes, I said 15) gift shops!!  Our tour continued in the Automobile museum where the many cars and other wheeled vehicles were on display including a refurbished John Deere tractor, a pink Cadillac and a motorcycle. 

We also enjoyed the Influence Exhibit.  A tour that showed you how Elvis influenced musicians to come, from all generations and styles.  The kind words that folks had to say about the King truly showed us how Elvis steered the music for years to come.



Note:  ALL the furniture was wrapped in plastic



My favorite exhibit was the tour of two custom jet planes.  The larger of the two, the Lisa Marie was fantastic.  You walked into a “living room” with two sofas and plenty of lounging space.  Through to the dining space where meetings were held as well as dinner.  The queen sized bed was quite impressive as was the blinging bathrooms.  The smaller jet was more business then fun, but looked like a first class ride.

We did stop in to Shake, Split & Dip for a waffle cone with cookie dough ice cream.  A great break on a hot day.  The tour continued with a “Tour Exhibit” that we chose to skip.

As we snooped around we did see a few more notes of interest, want to stay at Graceland?  You can do so at the Heartbreak Hotel and RV Park behind the complex.  The Chrome Grill had great smelling burgers and Gallery Elvis was all high end jewelry.

I think that if you pay for the Platinum tour but use your AAA membership to get the discount you would be defiantly getting your monies worth on this tour.  (Just the Mansion for $32 is very steep).  Though we’d all love to see more of the Mansion the audio tour seems to tell you a lot about the spaces you can see.  A big con for Graceland is the neighborhood.  Driving to the property you travel through a very rough neighborhood.  Also, I recommend going early in the day to beat the heat as well as the lines that seem to grow steadily as the day went on.  This was a great way to spend 3 ½ hours, even for someone who is not much the Elvis groupie.

This peacock jump suite was part of the Vegas years....