I’m an Elvis fan. Not the sort of Elvis fan that has a house decorated in memorabilia or Elvis tshirts, but the sort of Elvis fan that owns all his music and has attended Elvis impersonation festivals more than once, and has seriously considered getting an Elvis tattoo. I love his music, I think he’s cool, and probably the best looking man ever. Going to Graceland was not a question of if I would go, but a question of when. It was the thing I was most excited to do when I went to Memphis.
I don’t need to explain who Elvis is or why he’s important or iconic because I think that’s understood. If you’re reading this and you don’t understand that, please go listen to some music.
Graceland is the mansion that Elvis bought in 1957 in Memphis TN for himself his wife his parents and his grandmother. The house was built in 1939 on farmlands, and it was a fairly rural property when Elvis bought it, but since that time it has become more surrounded by neighbourhoods, so it’s properly a part of Memphis now. After Elvis died there in 1977, his grandmother and other members of the family continued to live there. It opened to the public as an attraction in 1982.
Visiting Graceland can be a little bit overwhelming because there are so many options for tickets and experiences. There are the regular tickets, VIP tickets, and other special package tickets. You can even stay at a hotel on the grounds if you want to. I didn’t want to go crazy with all the luxury add-ons, but I did want a good package. I went with the ultimate VIP package. It was a little over $200 US and gave access to pretty much everything. I don’t regret a penny of it.
I took an Uber from my hotel to Graceland. (As a side note this was the first time I had taken Uber. In 2024. I was a late adopter.) Graceland is busy and the tickets are timed. You want to plan and not miss your time slot. I bought the earliest ticket that I could get to give myself lots of time and avoid some of the crowds. It was definitely more crowded when I left them when I arrived.
Arriving at the gates of Graceland I felt very excited. I went inside and picked up my commemorative badge, lanyard, and map and was taken on a little trolley over to the back of the Graceland mansion. We went into a small room that contained memorabilia, and we first watched a short movie about Elvis. Maybe ten minutes or so. By the end of the movie, I was already fighting back tears.
From there we were allowed to walk through Graceland mansion. This wasn’t a guided tour, this was just walking through at your own pace, which was perfect. There are options to take guided tours but that didn’t appeal to me.
The upstairs was off limits, but the main floor and the basement were open to us. The mansion is surprisingly small, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in garish opulence. It’s incredible. It is ostentatious and tacky and over the top and amazing. I took a million photos. I just kept looking at these rooms thinking, oh this is the kitchen where Elvis would have made a sandwich, and this is the sofa where he sat and used that ashtray to smoke his tiny cigars, and this is the piano that he played, and on and on and on. It was incredible.
From the mansion you walk outside, and you see the fields where there are still a couple of horses. You go into his private racquetball court building and walk past the graves where he is buried alongside his parents and grandmother and, most recently his daughter.
And then, if you have the right ticket, you can also visit his private planes. There are two of them on the grounds and you get to go inside. They are the height of 1970s private jet opulence and still smell vaguely of stale cigarette smoke.
All of this alone would have been enough, but once you’re finished with the mansion, you go back to the complex where there are seemingly endless excellent high quality exhibits of Elvis’ clothing, his cars, his movie memorabilia, his gold records, bizarre artifacts like badges that he got from police forces across the country, the TV that he shot a bullet into, his jewellery, his karate gear… It’s a lot. And yet it didn’t seem like enough.
When that was over there was lots of time for exploring the many many Elvis themed gift shops. There are also Elvis themed diners and snack shops on the grounds. I bought my mom’s boyfriends a couple of T-shirts and myself a pair of socks because I’m not one for souvenirs, but I wanted something to remember the day.
I’m not going to say that going Graceland was the greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but it absolutely lived up to my expectations and exceeded them. I can’t explain why I got emotional multiple times on the visit. I fought back tears and I had a lump in my throat. I was just genuinely moved and amazed by everything that this person accomplished and brought to music and culture in his relatively short life. It really hit home as I was in Graceland that I’m older than Elvis ever got to be.
I feel like even if you’re not an Elvis fan, Graceland is worth visiting because it’s such a unique, American, pop culture attraction.
If I ever go back to Memphis, without hesitation, I will return to Graceland for another homage to the King.
After Graceland, I still had another day or so in Memphis. I’ve written about my trip to Memphis in a different post. After Memphis, I flew home and had a brief visit to Charlotte, NC.
