Pigeon Forge, Tennessee is most famously known as home of the Dollywood theme park. Here’s a description from Wikipedia.
Situated just five miles (8 km) north of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Pigeon Forge is a tourist destination that caters primarily to Southern culture and country music fans. The city’s attractions include Dollywood, as well as numerous gift shops, outlet malls, amusement rides, and music theaters.
While Pigeon Forge isn’t that much of a nationally known destination, it does welcome around 11 million visitors every year. The nearby Great Smoky Mountains National Park is also the most visited National Park in the country. While both Dollywood and a National Park would normally be reasons for us to visit the area, we had a different reason for this trip.
Sharon did a lot of research when buying her purple Jeep Wrangler (named Jeep Jeep). In the midst of this, she got to know several Jeep owners and had a chance to meet one of them at the Great Smoky Mountain Jeep Invasion. This event draws over 5000 Jeep Wrangler owners to Pigeon Forge for the weekend to look at Jeeps and buy all things possible for your Jeep.
Saying this, our priority for choosing a place to stay was being close to the LeConte Convention Center and the choices for hotels consisted of many of the lower end hotel chains like Comfort Inn, Super 8, Best Western and Holiday Inn Express. We looked at several places but Sharon’s Jeep friend suggested we look at the Twin Mountain Inn as she had stayed there before and thought is was a good value. I checked it out and it had good enough reviews on TripAdvisor. Since I didn’t have any need to stay at a chain hotel for loyalty points, I figured we’d give it a shot.
Twin Mountain Inn & Suites
3929 S River Rd
Pigeon Forge, TN
BOOKING & PRICE
I decided to book this hotel using an online travel agency. When dealing with a hotel I’m not familiar with, I just prefer the security of a big company to deal with in case there are any problems when we arrive. I did have a bit of a problem getting the rate I found online when I went to book the room on Expedia but once I figured that out, I went and made a reservation.
Room cost for 3 nights – $269.38
I paid for the room with my Sapphire Reserve card so I earned 808 Ultimate Rewards points that I value at a minimum of $16.00. I also earned 539 Expedia points that I don’t give any value to at all – I booked with Expedia because I was lazy and I already had an account set up with them.
PICTURES
The Twin Mountain Inn & Suites is a five story hotel with 50 rooms. The hotel is located on S. River Road just behind the Pigeon Forge Parkway (US 441). For those familiar with the area, this is almost directly behind Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede on the Gatlinburg side of town.
We arrived at the hotel and were greeted as we entered the lobby. Our check in was processed quickly after our information was updated and we were provided our room keys. We were then directed to a woman sitting at a table on the other side of the lobby to help us with our plans for the weekend.
She was pleasant and asked if we were in town for the Jeep Invasion (we were) and if we had any other plans. We mentioned Dollywood and she offered us discount tickets at a very good price. All we had to do was go to the timeshare office she works with to get our tickets. Ohhh, this is a pitch. I wasn’t expecting that when checking in at a hotel but I told her that our plans weren’t set and we’d get back to her if we were interested. Frankly, we only had 2 days in town and didn’t want to spend any time at a timeshare presentation.
We headed up to our room, number 402.
Upon entering the room, we were very impressed with how large it was. There were two beds, a desk, dresser with a flat screen TV, fridge and microwave and a gas-powered fireplace.
While the bed did fail the pillow test with only 3 pillows on each bed, I was able to grab a pillow from the other bed so I’ll cut them a break. They did have enough plugs by the desk and nightstand so there were plenty of plugs for your laptop and other devices. However I didn’t have anywhere to plug in my phone on my side of the bed, so I had to plug it in by the television across the room. A minor inconvenience but I’d still rather have a plug with no table than have to walk across the room to see the time.
The wifi in the hotel was free and worked decently well. We were able to get work done, check Facebook, buy tickets for Dollywood and stream videos on an iPad with no lag.
The bathroom was a very typical setup with a vanity outside of the bathroom and a sink, tub/shower and toilet inside the bathroom door.
The shower did pass the vent test as there was no fan blowing the shower curtain towards you while in the middle of your showering.
The one thing was the shower didn’t have any light inside and generally the bathroom was very dark. We didn’t realize until leaving the hotel that the bathroom had two sets of lights. You needed to turn them all on to get a decent amount of light in the room.
I need to mention that all of the rooms of this hotel face towards the river and advertise having a balcony with a river view.
This is the “river view.” I’d call it a view of the road and houses across from a creek that runs outside the hotel. I just couldn’t see myself spending much time sitting out on the balcony taking in the view.
The hotel does offer a complimentary breakfast daily just off of the lobby area. While we were there, they had several types of cereals, eggs, sausage patties, biscuits, gravy, coffee and juices.
There is also a small pool located at the hotel.
FINAL THOUGHTS
We had very few needs for this trip. We were looking for a decently priced place to stay, close to the convention center and Dollywood. The Twin Mountain Inn provided all of those. Rooms were large. Wifi worked. We didn’t hear any other guests during our stay even though the place was pretty full (we counted 12 Jeeps in the parking lot on Saturday night). If you’re looking for a no-frills place to stay, this is an solid option. The view at sunset looking out over the front of the hotel isn’t bad either.
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