Margaritaville Resort in Gatlinburg

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

Memorial Day Weekend 2018 / 'Trying new restaurants'

This year over the Memorial day weekend my wife and I decided to try a few restaurants that we hadn't previously tried. We, of course, visited some favorites. This blog post, however, is about the three 'new to us' places that we went to.

1. J.O.E and POP'S Sub Shoppe:

Having already tried, and liked, Mama's Chicken Kitchen which is in the same building, we decided to give J.O.E. and POP'S a try. We weren't necessarily in the mood for a sub, we basically just wanted to try something new and this was the closest place to us when we made that decision.
We had been wanting to give it a try since it had opened though, so this worked out well.

We ordered a regular size Philly Cheesesteak and a regular size Chicken Cheesesteak. Both had grilled onions and white American cheese. Each sub was cut in half so we both took a half of each. We also spilt an order fries. What I can say is although we weren't really hungry for a sub when we walked in, by the time we were finished we were already looking forward to coming back soon to order the same thing again! We do like to try cheesesteaks when available anywhere we go, and these really held their own to any we've had. If I were forced to pick a favorite between the steak and chicken, I'd probably give the steak the slight advantage, where as my wife would probably give the edge to the chicken. If you can, just try them both that way you can judge which is the better of the two and you can let me know your favorite. The fries were very good as well, so be sure to get an order of those with your sandwich too.

2. NO WAY JOSÉ'S  Cantina:

Unfortunately the food pictures I took while here didn't really turn out so well. I can assure you though that the lack of getting good pictures was the only thing I was disappointed with here.

Although, the salsa that was brought to our table with the chips wasn't my wife's favorite,  I thought it was some of the best I'd ever had. Unlike the salsa at most other Mexican restaurants, this salsa was extremely chunky with lots of onions. Now, this may, or may not, be to your liking. I absolutely loved it! As far as our dinner order, my wife ordered the Baja shrimp burrito which is a flour tortilla filled with marinated Baja style Shrimp. It also comes with Mexican rice, refried black beans, grilled onions and peppers, and topped with grilled pineapple, Pico De Gallo, and sour cream sauce.  I ordered the Jose's Baja Chicken and Shrimp which was a grilled chicken breast topped with Baja-style shrimp, Pico De Gallo,  and Chedder Jack cheese. It was served with grilled vegetables,  Mexican rice, and refried beans. The portions were large and the taste was outstanding!

Our first time here couldn't have been much better. We're going to try some of the other Mexican restaurants in Gatlinburg, but our standards have been set pretty high now! We will be back much sooner than later to try out some other menu items....perhaps saving room for some fried ice cream next time!

3. GOOD EATS:

We decided to eat here based on the fact that they were not busy at all and every one else had 20-30 minute wait times. Also, since we hadn't previously ate here we thought this to be the perfect opportunity.

I ordered the gator bites. The gator bites themselves were ok. I thought it was strange though that they were served with celery,  carrots,  and an orange sauce that is typically served with a Chinese meal.

My wife order the Monte Cristo, which is ham, turkey and Swiss cheese served on French toast that's dipped in a pancake type batter. It's grilled, topped with powdered sugar and served with a raspberry dipping sauce or jelly of some sort. She thought it was.....ok. It sounds better than it actually tastes according to her.

We both felt (meh) about the food and experience there. The place has such a weird vibe and decor. Also, the only other customers they had were a father and his son. Even though they weren't busy it took quite a while to get our food. Honestly the place was just OK. We probably won't go back unless we are extremely hungry and every other place has a long wait time. We had heard good things about GOOD EATS, but the place just wasn't for us. You might try it and absolutely love it. If you do give it a try, or have tried it already,  be sure to let me know what you think of it.

Well there you have it. Three 'new to us' restaurants that we tried out. Two were good and one was kind of a swing and miss. We will continue to go to as many places as possible , whether new or favorites,  and give an honest opinion of them all. Be sure to check back soon and if you have any comments feel free to leave them here or on twitter @GatlinburgLife

Thanks for reading!

Our stay at River Place Inn in Pigeon Forge.

Not too long ago we had to book a last minute stay in Pigeon Forge, TN. Every place was booked solid...except one. That place was the River Place Inn. We booked the room through Airbnb. The pictures looked nice enough and the room was reasonably priced too for a last minute booking.  We was, disappointed,  to say the least. The pictures online were not even of the actual room. Let me share the pictures of the room with you.

Here you have what their 'clean' rags and towels looked like. If they were actually clean, they were extremely stained and probably hadn't been replaced in years!

The bed spread had a lot of stains and cigarette burns!

The coffee maker was absolutely disgusting!

There was no way you could take your socks off and walk on the horribly stained carpet!

The table in the room was beat up.

The lamps and lamp shades looked like they had been pulled from a dumpster somewhere.

The shower curtains were horribly stained. They were absolutely horrible!

We were on the top floor, actually we were in a room that was really by itself,  on the roof! There was a narrow stairway that led up to the room that felt very dangerous to be going up! You had to pretty much take a run and go, and slam your body into the room door to get it to close or open!

I could go on and on, and on. I think by now you probably get a good idea of what this place is like though.

This is just our opinion,  but we would avoid staying here. If you find yourself needing to stay in Pigeon Forge and this is the only place available ... well, you've seen the pictures and can judge for yourself,  but don't say you wasn't warned.

5 Fun Facts about Gatlinburg!

Here are 5 fun facts you may, or may not know, about Gatlinburg!

1. What's greater; the number of people that get to call Gatlinburg home or the the number of aquatic animals in Gatlinburg? There are just over 4,000 residents in Gatlinburg. The number of aquatic animals  is well over double that amount though! Ripley's Aquarium is home to over 10,000 exotic sea creatures!

2. Gatlinburg is actually the 2nd most popular place in the United States to get married. The only place that hosts more weddings is Las Vegas. As a side note,  I've always been so glad to say that Gatlinburg is where my wife and I got married!

3. If you've ever been to Gatlinburg,  there's a good chance you've stood in line, anxiously waiting to get through the doors of the Pancake Pantry.  If you've been there, you know how good the pancakes are. What you might not know though is that in 1960 they were actually the first pancake house to open in Tennessee! If you haven't been, I'd definitely recommend going. The fact they are still open after so many years speaks on just how good they really are!

4. There are roughly 1,600 black bears in the national park. Everyone hopes for a chance to see one when visiting the Gatlinburg area. A couple of the best places to see one when visiting the area are Cades Cove and the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail. If you're not lucky enough to catch a glimpse of one there,  you can always go to the Ober Gatlinburg Wildlife Encounter. Admission is $6 for adults and  $4 for children. There you will actually get to see a family of bears; dad (B.J.), mom (Minnie), and their two children (Holly & Chief). Also keep in in mind that despite not being in the wild the bears at Ober Gatlinburg still hibernate and may not be visible in December, January, and February.

5.During peak season the population in Gatlinburg balloons from around 4,000 to over 40,000 people! There are two peak seasons; June 15th -August 15th and the entire month of October. Those are wonderful times to be in Gatlinburg,  but if you want to avoid some crowds you might want to pick a different time to visit.

Stay tuned for more blog posts about Gatlinburg and the surrounding area.  If you have any comments or questions you can reply here or on any of my social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Vero, or Twitter) @GatlinburgLife

Donuts in Gatlinburg.

I think everyone knows that Gatlinburg has some of the best pancake houses that you can find absolutely anywhere. If you visit Gatlinburg for a few days though you might find yourself wanting a different breakfast option one morning.  With that, may I suggest a donut?

The first of two options would be going to the Donut Friar. Situated in The Village, this is the most popular place in Gatlinburg to grab a donut. They open at 5AM and you can grab a seat at one of their tables inside or sit outside near the Village fountain. Popular items there include their cinnamon bread, éclairs, and jelly filled donuts. Powered,  chocolate glazed, coconut,  and donuts with sprinkles are popular option as well. As for myself, well, I usually can't decide. In those instances, I'll just get a few glazed and mix in several different kind to make a dozen.

Another place to get a great donut is at Mad Dog's Creamery and Donuts.

They are located at 731 East Parkway and open at 7AM and I actually prefer them over the Donut Friar.  Options seem to be endless here. They have several different varieties of cake donuts, yeast donuts, filled donuts, and house specialties such as Espresso Sugar. They also serve funnel cakes, 24 flavors of ice cream, milkshakes, banana splits, and doggie treats! Yes, if you have your 4 legged baby with you, you can enjoy your donut or ice cream on one of the outside picnic tables and your fur baby can also enjoy a treat with you. They also have water bowls outside for your pets convenience.  If you visit here, I highly recommend my personal favorite,  the chocolate dream!

Don't limit yourself to just to one, be sure to get a box full so you can enjoy one later in the day.

While you're there be sure to also check out the awesome piece of chainsaw art on display outside.

Donut Friar and Mad Dog's Creamery and Donuts gives you two great options on that day you want to take a break from the pancake houses. I hope you give them a try and find them to be as delicious as I do! Be sure to check back soon as I continue to blog about my favorite things to do and favorite places to visit in Gatlinburg.

FUN off the strip in Gatlinburg.

There are a lot of things to do and places to visit on the Strip in Gatlinburg. In fact, you can check out my other blog posts for some great ideas on what to do when you are on the Strip.

This time I want to tell you about a couple of places to check out that's not on the strip. Get ready to spend about half a day having what might be the most fun you'll have while in Gatlinburg.

If you're coming in from Pigeon Forge,  turn left at red light #3 onto East Parkway when you get in Gatlinburg and drive until you come to traffic light #3A at Glades Road. On the right you will see the shops and artists of Buie's Landing.  One of those is Art Studio of the Smokys. I'd suggest to call ahead of time and schedule an appointment for yourself and absolutely anyone in your party to stop by and take a private art lesson/ create a painting.  My wife and I recently did just that. Neither of us have ever tried to paint or have any art experience what so ever.  We had seen all the gorgeous works of art that had been shared on their social media sites of people just like us, however. People with little to no experience,  and they ended up with wonderful paintings. Even if ours didn't end up looking as good, we figured we would at least have fun trying! We were right about the fun! The paintings we ended up with didn't look bad either! Have a look!

This was such a fun and unique experience! Your whole family would enjoy taking the time to truly relax and enjoy the time together while doing this. I'd also recommend it as something wonderful for couples to do. We can't wait until we get a chance to go back again! The finished painting you end up with will always be a reminder of the wonderful and unique time you had while in Gatlinburg, or if you prefer, would make an awesome gift!

I'd recommend calling ahead and getting an early appointment time of about 10AM or so. This way, you can reserve a couple hours of time, and when you get through, head right across the street and have a bite to eat!

Right across the street you will find an awesome place to grab a bite to eat. That place is Three Jimmy's!  We headed over there as soon as we finished our paintings. The first time we went there we actually ordered a Hawaiian pizza to go. It didn't disappoint!

In fact it was so good we decided we needed to go back and dine in. We also wanted to try something different on the menu. My wife ordered the club sandwich,  which she said was wonderful!   I opted for the street tacos w/shrimp and a raspberry Chipotle sauce! The verdict....some of the best street tacos I've ever had!

We're looking forward to going back and trying something different on the menu. I'm sure it's all good, so we'll end up trying everything on the menu at some point. Perhaps next time we'll even save room for dessert!

So there you have it! A nice little half a day in Gatlinburg, off the Strip. A nice morning of relaxation and fun followed up with a wonderful lunch! If you want to spend the rest of the day in the area, you are right at the beginning of what is known as the Arts and Crafts community. There's plenty of shops and businesses in the area to keep you occupied for the rest of the day. I'll also guarantee that if you do visit other artists and businesses in the Arts and Crafts community that you will find something else you don't want to go home without!

There are a lot of ways to enjoy all that Gatlinburg has to offer. Check back soon as I'll share more of my favorite businesses and things to do.