Recently my wife and I stayed in the Margaritaville Resort in Gatlinburg from Sunday through Friday. As always, my social media posts and blog posts are 100% NOT SPONSORED. This is great for you, as I can give you honest and accurate reviews of places we go to and things we do. I don't have to worry about sugar coating the experience because of any obligation I feel I owe to a business because they gave us a discount or something free. With that said I'll let you know about the good and bad of our stay here.
First - The Good:
1. Location - The location allows you the opportunity to walk almost anywhere you would like. You're right across the street from Anakeesta. You're right next to Ripley's Aquarium. You're literally in walking distance to just about anywhere you would want to go to in downtown Gatlinburg. If you want to grab a bite to eat, do some shopping, or go see a show you can pretty much walk there in a matter of minutes.
2. Clean - Probably one of the most important things to someone looking for a place to stay is cleanliness. This place felt cleaner than any place I've stayed in in a long time. Now, it is fairly new, so it should be clean, but this place seemed spotless and clean absolutely everywhere.
3. Wonderful rooms - We got what was their 'Basic' King room (street view). We felt it was far from basic, however.
Great features: Nice bathroom with a large shower, with 3 shower heads including the rainfall type shower head. Nice fireplace to enjoy, whether to help keep you warm or to just enjoy watching as you fall asleep at night. It had a large TV. The Keurig was nice for those morning cups of coffee. The private balcony was great as it allowed you to see and hear the Cliff Branch stream and have a wonderful view of not only the city but the gorgeous mountains as well.
4. St. Somewhere Spa - Staying here allowed us (and all guests) to receive any services the spa offered at a 20% discount off of the usual rate. My wife took advantage of this offer and got a gel manicure and a pedicure as well. She was extremely happy with the quality of service as well as the friendliness of the staff and would recommend going here to anyone.
5. The little things - So many things made this a great stay other than what I've listed so far. The staff was very friendly! It was extremely quiet! Each day as we arrived back from our activities we came back to a clean room and free bottles of water. All of this just added to great experience we had here.
Now - The Bad:
1. Ok. Honestly, I've got to reach a little here. Randomly the bed and the bedside table and lamps would shake a bit. I know a long time ago there were beds that you could add a quarter to and it would shake and rattle the bed for a few minutes. That's kind of what this felt like. It would last only two or three minutes each time. It would also happen randomly, sometimes in the evening, sometimes at 2:00 AM, purely random. It wasn't a big deal, and I kept forgetting to ask the staff the cause of it. Washer and dryer use perhaps? I dont know, but again, not really a big deal.
2. Onsite dining experience - Dining at the onsite places at Margaritaville was absolutely HORRIBLE!
Check out this picture of my hamburger from the Landshark Bar and Grill:
Looks good, right? WRONG! First off, our waiter, who granted was nice enough, smelled like a walking cigarette! That was a turnoff right as we sat down. I got this Hawaiian Luau Burger that had bacon, pineapple, lettuce, tomato, and mango teriyaki sauce. I love eating Hawaiian burgers at different restaurants that offer them, this however tasted just awful. There's no words that can describe it really. The only way i could begin to describe it is that everything about it tasted old or out of date. The homemade chips were just as bad as well as the BBQ sauce he brought along to dip them in. I ate a couple but I had to stop as I was afraid that I would break a tooth. They were like trying to eat a coin. My wife got the Landshark burger which just has cheese, lettuce, tomato, and their 'signature sauce'. She said it is was just 'ok'. She said the signature sauce wasn't good and she would just assume eat a burger from Wendy's.
We also got a few mixed drinks. I got a '5 o'clock somewhere'. Hands down it was the worst drink I've ever had....EVER! Again, this tastes like it was made with old or perhaps out of date items. I resorted to drinking just the water that was brought with it. My wife got the Peach Moonshine Margarita. She actually enjoyed her drink and even ordered a second.
The total cost of two burgers with chips, and three drinks come out to $80. That was absurd for how bad the food and my drink were. I can safely say we will NEVER be back to the Landshark Bar and Grill. We will also strongly advise everyone else to just stay away from there as well!
We also tried out Joe Merchant's Coffee and Provisions. We had a bit of a sweet tooth as we went back to our room one night and stopped here because we seen they had some desserts available. The menu didn't have prices, but looking at it I thought the Kentucky Bourbon Pie sounded good, so I ordered a slice of that. My wife ordered a brownie that sounded good to her. Take a look:
Look good? Well, it wasn't. First off, the total cost of a small piece of pie and an extra small brownie- $15!
Now, we should have asked about the price before we ordered, but we never thought it would have been that much! On top of that, they tasted HORRIBLE! These tasted as if they were either old or just made with bad ingredients. Also, you might not be able to tell from the picture, but they were very small. Three bites and you were done. We will never get anything at Joe Merchant's again and will advise others not to as well.
SUMMARY:
At most places you have to take the good with the bad. You don't necessarily have to here. We will definitely be back to the Margaritaville Resort in Gatlinburg. We won't, however, visit any of the onsite places to dine. That is our recommendation as well. If you get a chance, do book a stay here and enjoy the St. Somewhere Spa if you like. Just dine out at somewhere else in the city. I have other blogs about some great places to eat if you would like to check those out. Also, if you have stayed here or plan to stay feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments section here or on my social media accounts. Thanks for the read and I hope to get some more posts up soon about some of the other things we've got to experience here lately.
@GatlinburgLife
