Pigeon Forge-Gatlinburg KOA

Planning our summer RV road trip I needed a place to stay in the Pigeon Forge\Gatlinburg area. We had never stayed at a KOA before and typically hit the state parks with our RV but this KOA was centrally located so I decided to give it a try. My first impression is that it was packed! I mean it is summer and every place is full but from the gate you could actually see how full this place was. It was Packed and you felt it just rolling to our site. The sites are very close to one another and not very level. On the positive there are full hook ups with water, sewer and electric and showers nearby that were fairly clean. The main office has coin operated laundry and there is Wifi throughout the campground but with so many people on it the Wifi was practically useless. If you're a kid you will love it here and mine did. They have a nice pool for swimming, a pool for the little ones, a jacuzzi and a big bouncing trampoline like thing that the kids were playing on. In the end the KOA served its purpose as it was central to what we wanted to do in the area. We did some laundry, and we had a place to park our rig while the kids ran around for awhile but it just felt too crowded for my taste.

We rented a cabin which had a leaky refrigerator, the ac barely kept up, and the beds were quite uncomfortable. We love camping, but for the price I was hoping something a little nicer in the cabin. Could have gotten a hotel room and been much more comfortable.

Horrible. When you go to the mountains for an experience, you hope you won’t land camping in a parking lot. But here you do. They pack you in like sardines. No room to “camp”. So many other options in this area. Pick somewhere else.

This park is in the heart of Pigeon Forge and lacks the space to show it. While it will get two stars for its proximity to the attractions and Dollywood, the park was cramped. The campsites are literally on top of each other. If a trailer pulls in too close to the edge of their site and extends their slide outs, there is BIG possibility that the camper beside it may need to readjust their parking due to their slide outs. From my slide out I could actually see into my neighbors slide out. We could have passed notes from window to the other. At one point, a slide out almost hit the side of their neighbors trailer because both parked too close to the lot line. The lots are tiny. TINY. There is no space for error. If a person had a vehicle parked in the wrong spot of their site, someone trying to leave may not be able to pull out at all.

The upside is the amenities. The pool is heated year round, free WiFi (however, when the campground becomes packed, the signal tends to go out), bathrooms are decent and they have an exercise room. For the kids, a new playground was just installed and they have a large balloon bouncer. Otherwise, there isn't much for their entertainment.

We are seasoned campers and this was not a campground for those wanting to get away. This was just a parking lot close to the tourist area.

We stopped here to explore Gatlinburg. The sites are very close together; essentially a parking lot. We only use electricity and water, so we had a bit of a buffer between ourselves and the other bigger rigs that use full hook ups. There isn't much privacy due to the dense placement of rigs and the air was often filled with smoke from the many camp fires.

There are a lot of kids here. If you have kids, there is a large kids play area, jumping trampoline and pool area at the front of the campground. The KOA also has a work out room which was nice. The wifi works fairly well the closer you are to the bath house.

Poor ergonomic design is a big problem in the bath house; the toilet spaces are very, very small as are the shower facilities. Additionally, there were just too many people for the bath house and the once daily cleaning could not keep up. As a result, the bath house was dirty for much of the time.

There is a very nice park (Patriot Park) right next door to the KOA campground and a trolley system that will take you to Gatlinburg for $1.25 per person one-way.

NOTE: The $35.36 paid included our KOA discount and was for a water/electricity site.

This is a typical tourism area KOA experience situated in between all of the tourist things. It is tight but it is very well maintained by the cheery staff. The check in was really quick and they were super accommodating on finding a site our big rig would fit into. They understand their park has site issues and they are prepared to do what they can to eases this.

You need to trade off that this is a great place for the family to sleep and go out and enjoy the Smokey Mountain National Park (5 minutes away) or Dollywood (5 minutes the other way) and the strip or the Island (5 minutes in the other other way) in the area. The park has a great laundry, the typical tourism concierge in the office and a nice pool. They will deliver wood to your campsite for a fee.

Sites on the south 1/3 are in an expansion area and the trees will be good in about 15 years, right now there is no shade there at all.

WiFi in the park is great during the workweek because the park is mostly empty. Did not really have any issues the entire time trying to do work. 4G LTE on AT&T is also available and is strong only during the workday, evenings the towers in this area are overloaded.

Paid $77 for a single night stay and wished we had gone to River Plantation RV Resort down the road instead. Most KOAs are generally pretty spacious and nice. This location has the tightest, smallest sites we've ever stayed at. We couldn't believe we were able to open our slides with our neighbor RVs on one side and behind us and a large tree on the other side. It was like a puzzle maneuvering our 42ft 5th wheel around to get it to fit with all the obstacles. We stayed in spot 76.

We were told it was full hookups but didn't realize until we were plugging in power that it was only 30amp (not 50amp). It was cold at night so we ran the furnace almost the entire night but we were just a bit more cautious in our power consumption and everything was fine.

It was raining so we weren't able to use many of the outdoor facilities. Looked like a standard looking KOA playground.

The biggest advantage to the park is the close proximity to Dollywood and the town of Pigeon Forge. There are a few other RV parks in the area and everything was full when we arrived late October without a reservation, so we were grateful they had a spot for us. But after staying 1 night we kept looking and found River Plantation nearby for much cheaper and a lot more space and moved over there for the next few nights.

We purchased our Dollywood tickets from the front office to take advantage of a $5 off discount per ticket offer.

We just got delivery of new Georgetown motorhome and had reservation for 4 night but called and they got us an extra 4 nights. Staff was easy to work with and very helpful. We stayed on site 218 in the meadow section. Highly recommend this area. Right along creek. Bathhouse was very clean anytime we were in. Wonderful facilities. Pool are is excellent with lazy river and all. Only down side is the local business dumpster patrol at 6 am.

Good location to Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg if that's your thing. Park wasn't full during the week and looked like they purposely spaced people out for more privacy. Nice. Come Thursday night they were literally doing curbside check-in as people pulled in. Yikes. The sites in our area were staggered and back-in. We have a 40' 5er and the rig that backed in behind us had their slide within 18" of ours. Terrible - F. Not enough room to get in and out of your site if you're a 40' and the place is full - so you'll need to ask the neighbors across the street to move their truck when you want to leave. Pool with the new lazy river was great for the kids, super nice and they loved it. Playground is nice. Had an issue where the construction crew putting in new power hit a water line. KOA didn't let folks know right away and had to call front desk to confirm. They had the water back up a couple of hours later. Next day they shut the water down again purposely, presumably for additional maintenance of the prior day fix. KOA failed to inform the campers on their txt alert system prior to the shutdown and the front desk said they only knew about it once campers started calling again. Not acceptable given this was a planned shutdown. I asked how they knew the water was safe to drink since the system had been depressurized and there are no backflow preventers on the water hookups. Desk said "oh, just run it for a few seconds and it will be fine". I had literally just watched the neighbors extendable hose shrink as the system depressurized and the water from their hose was pushed back into the same pipe that fed my water. Gross. Put some backflow preventers on there for just this type of occurrence.

This is a great campground for kids. We’ve stayed at tons of KOAs and this is one of the better ones. It has a lazy River, great playground and it’s close to all the pigeon forge has to offer. I recommend bringing an e bike for easy access to pigeon forge and to avoid major traffic delays!