Gatlinburg Falls Resort — Attraction in Gatlinburg

Would give 0 stars if I could. First, we rented our pet friendly cabin 2 mnths in advance. 2 wks before our trip I got an email with all the info to log in & view the reservation. Email said virtual check in was available however, listing said if pets were brought to let them know when checking in at the office to pay pet fee. So, I call since all other fees were paid & we wanted to do virtual check in. They look up my reservation & tell me “uhh that’s not a pet friendly cabin” I said, it in fact said in the listing it was. She said that cabins are sometimes bought & have listings from the other agencies still up. I told her this was on THEIR website. She asked me to send her the link to the listing I was reading in an email & they’d look over it. Emailed me back with the pet fee price. I asked if it was ok to bring our dog & they replied with a generic “thanks for emailing us, if you have any other questions please call or email us back”. My husband was able to call & pay over the phone. The day of we received a text & email with an address to the cabin. Once we arrived, the GPS is saying that we have to go over this sketchy 1 car bridge & the cabin was on our left. Clearly the building over the bridge is some type of storage building. We are going up this steep mountain not knowing at all where to go. We are looking for the number given in the address on any of the cabins. We are led by one way only roads not knowing at all where we are. We finally get someone on the phone, they tell us the cabin number & we start looking all over. We see a sign with numbers & arrows not even order. We were getting so frustrated. We finally get to the cabin, it’s about to rain, I’m about to pee my pants, I gave my husband the code to unlock the door. Door won’t open, it’s stuck or something. He’s trying the code again & again. I’m pissed. We FINALLY get someone again & they are just telling us to try the same code. Can’t get in, they say maintenance times are between 4-8 hours. It’s 7pm. While we wait on hold we have to go back down this mountain to find a bathroom. They can’t give us a time of when it will be fixed other than a guy said he could try to be there within the hour. We get back with no updates, the trash cans outside that were messed up when we got there were all tidied back up. Clearly someone had came. Door still won’t open, we call back & get same thing 4-8 hrs. My husband jiggles the door enough & it opens. Cabin is nasty, covered in cob webs, looks like it hasn’t been swept or dusted in years. Next day, someone did call me & left a voicemail to check in but my phone didn’t ring. I didn’t call back at this time because I was pissed & we got in so whatever. We couldn’t get in multiple more times, my husband was able to mess with it enough to get in. He says the inside of the lock kept getting stuck & seemed like it wouldn’t unlock completely & that was the issue. Few nights in, we can’t get it to open at all. Getting back about 9pm. Call & ask if someone can come get the door open, again got the 4-8hr time frame. My husband explained that we are outside basically in the middle of the woods in the dark. Still no change in time frame. He FINALLY gets in & still on the phone on hold while this guy is asking his manager what to do. He tells him once he comes back we got in but could someone still come fix the lock. He said the manager said that the wood was probably just swelling with the humidity & the lock was not broken. My husband asked to speak to the manager, he stated we could email the customer service email & request to speak to a manager & they get filtered through daily & a manager should see it & contact us. I then ask this man was he not just speaking with his manager & couldn’t he just give the manager the phone. He said there was a manager on call all the time & he was chatting through a messaging system. We were fed up so I just basically cussed the man out & hung up. We were going to go to the office the next day to complain in person but it was our last day & we didn’t want to...

BLOOD in the bed! We will get to that. This was the worst trip of a lifetime. We arrived at the first place (there will be three). We passed the beer can left on the ledge outside and entered through the basement and the distinct smell of mold. The next room had a large hole in the wall with graffiti around it. The next room, the game room, smelled strongly of spilled beer. The floors were sticky and you could hear each step as your shoe struggled to pull away from the floor. The broom and dustpan were still out with a broken beer bottle in the dust pan. There were ants. There was still old food on the floor. The carpet was soiled and needed a steam clean at the least. The cleaning crew had been there and left their card on the counter. They had put the covers on the toilet to say they had been cleaned but the place clearly had not been cleaned. There were cobwebs, smears of an unknown substance on the light switch, and just too much more to list.

Maintenance: this place was very poorly maintained. There were door handles falling off, holes in the drywall, the electrical box for the hot tub was falling off of the wall. The furniture was not the same as in the photo and was literally threadbare. The front and rear doors had the paint missing where people had been grabbing the door instead of the handle for years. The worst was the exposed electrical box above the bunk bed where one of our kids would need to sleep.

After two hours trying to get through to the company, we finally got a really nice lady on the phone. The maintenance line kept hanging up on us so we called in like we were new customers and they picked up right away. This is the person that helped us. She got us a new place.

Place #2: We were told we could only have it for one night. We arrived at 9:00 pm due to the issues with the other place. We were told the second place had just been cleaned. It was filthy. The carpet was soiled. The place smelled. The floor was sticky. There was an unknown substance smeared on the microwave handle.

We called the company and told them we were going to dinner, were having problems with the house, and they needed to get someone out to clean it while we were out. We made it back around midnight to find a garbage bag of bed linens on the porch. No one had been in to clean at all. We called the company again. The person that answered said there was nothing that could be done that night. We were going to make do. My wife pulled the sheet back for my daughter and noticed something under the sheet. She pulled the fitted sheet back to find that there was no mattress cover and the mattress had a large blood stain. The "cleaning crew" had seen this and simply covered it up with one sheet.

That was the last draw. We headed back to Nashville. Our travel companions tried to tough it out. Gatlinburg Falls put them in a third place the next day. It was still dirty. They would not refund 100% of our money. They returned all but $310. The rent for the week was $3,100. The fact that they kept $310 tells me that they likely kept their profits and made the homeowner for which they were managing the place loose their profits since property management in the area is typically 10%. This shows the companies poor ethics since it was the company's cleaning crew that failed, not the homeowner.

We took about 100 pictures and videos to document this because we did not know at the time if we would get our money back voluntarily. I will post just a few below.

As a real estate investor, the problem is clear. This company has taken on way more properties under management than their systems are equipped to handle. If they want to save this company, they need to let a lot of their properties under management go, focus on the ones they own, fire their cleaning crew, and rebuild slowly making sure that their systems and personnel are able to scale up properly as they start taking properties under management. Until then, I would not use this company. Your health is at...

I received an email for being chosen for a free upgrade that was followed by an email telling me the jacuzzi in the original cabin was broken. That explained the upgrade. The original reservation was a listing at Hidden Valley. The upgrade was at Park Vista Way due to HV being booked up. We got checked into our cabin that afternoon, and was there for about 30mins before heading out. Everything looked fine except the TVs downstairs were not working properly and a game that was broken as well. I thought it would be okay since there were other rooms that provided television and the game wouldn’t be that big of an issue. Again, I was being considerate since I was offered the upgrade. The next morning we wake up, jump in the shower, and water is dripping on the sofa and the floor. I went to check other rooms and the sink in one of the bathrooms started to back up. I called to alert them of the issue and the first thing she asked was if anyone was showering but they would send someone (yes, this had to have happened before). Four hours later maintenance comes but now the floor is wet and the dining area is having a mini storm(not literally but it was very frustrating to say the least). My slippers were also now soaked because I had no idea were I could not step to avoid the wet carpet. Not only was the plumbing backing up on the main level it was now soaking floors in one bedroom and the dinning room. I felt as if they were saying since you qualified for this free upgrade that we gave you, just deal with it. Even though I am sure it was for the inconvenience of the broken jacuzzi. I was irritated and very disappointed in the service I received from guest services over the phone. I wasn’t valued as a customer and it was a total slap in the face. Tristan is in maintenance and he was very nice, he started tackling all the things that were out of service. He was able to put my mind at ease until I spoke with guest services the following day. The maid never showed up to get the water up and it was the most unpleasant experience I have ever had in renting cabins from different resorts over the years. Kindness and consideration to others will go so far. Every hospitality Tristan had showed me went flying out the window after I spoke to guest services again. The next day after checkout I received a call inquiring of my stay. I stated to her what happened and her response was that it was eventually resolved; although, the floors were still wet in different areas. Who wants to stay in a cabin with water coming from the ceiling in not one but multiple areas? Let’s not forget the backed up sink in one of the bathrooms that was leaving a sink regurgitating with what seemed like black disgusting mold. She didn’t sound apologetic but offered me 10% discount for something and another 10% on something else followed by a tone of take that or leave it. I was baffled at that time in the conversation. I asked her to send me an email because at that moment I was driving. I never got the email and I still don’t know what the two 10% discounts meant as they were stated separately. I think one was for a future stay and I have no idea what the other discount would go towards. I never received that email, only a crappy upgrade, a poor tone, horrible guest service and a 10%take it or leave it.

I could not upload the videos but I did grab some pics from the video. I didn't go upstairs to take pictures because at this point I am frustrated, tired, and sleepy from driving all day the day before. Image 1: Shows the areas that water was coming from in one out of multiple locations. Image 2: Shows the soaked carpet that was about two square feet and the one section I the bottom right corner was the only dry spot. Image 3: Shows the first time I noticed it before we moved the chair.

Would I return to Park Vista Way? I wouldn’t want to at the expense of my husband and I. Sometimes it really is too...