The whole point of this particular voyage was for my friends and I to stay at a cabin in the woods…read morewith a view and a hot tub, so we looked at a lot of the cabin rental places in the area and settled on Greenbriar Valley, in large part due to its positive reviews on TripAdvisor.
Here's why this is a good place to stay: the "Village of Cobbly Nob" (which is really fun to say, right?) is about 10 miles East of Gatlinburg - which allows you to access the area from the East (on Hwy 321), as opposed to the North/West (on Hwy 441) - which, in effect, allows you to get to your cabin, go to Dollywood, and even access parts of the National Park without having anything to do with the downtown Gatlinburg "strip," or whatever it's called. It's really hard to overstate the atrociousness of the Gatlinburg Strip, and though it does fall into that so-awful-its-amusing category, we found that it was primarily a thing to be avoided at all costs - and we were so, so glad our housing situation allowed us to do so. Interestingly, this place also seemed substantially cheaper than the places closer to Gatlinburg and Dollywood.
Some other things Greenbriar Valley gets right that seem to be a problem at other locations: the cabin we were given was exactly the cabin we were promised (there seems to be some propensity for bait-and-switch in these parts). Though it was tricky to find the rental office and then the cabin when we arrived in the middle of the night (as should be expected - it's the wilderness), the meticulously detailed directions and ample signage staved off disaster. The kitchen had everything we needed, implement-wise (but bring your own spices, cooking oil, etc, as there were no pantry staples). And though we could see a rooftop here and a neighbor's window there, from our deck, all we could really see was a stunning view of the Smokeys. It felt majestic and secluded, which was just what we were aiming for.
Some things to keep in mind : you're not at a hotel. There's no concierge, no after-hours office staff, and things throughout the cabin are well-kept and clean, but also old (although, if you want flatscreen TVs, etc., I'm sure there are options for that as well). It helps to keep a positive attitude about the fact that things can go a little wrong (and when/if they do, they can't just call the front desk and get another room) and you can still have a great vacation in the woods.
For us, it was the hot tub. Worked great on the first night, didn't work at all on the second night. The next morning, they sent some one out right away to fix it. By evening, it was not working again - and the whole having a beer in the hot tub under the stars thing was the selling point of the trip and the cabin for us. Long story short, we called a few after-hours numbers and ended up getting a guy on the phone who said he wasn't able to come out till morning. But, when we said the thing hadn't worked two out of the three nights we had stayed in the cabin, he seemed genuinely surprised and interested in helping us. He ended up talking us through a pretty simple solution, and we got the thing up and running again.
Of course, the first question the maintenance guy had for us when we got him on the phone was, "can you put your husband on the line?" and, after having explained that we had no husbands, his second question was, "so can I talk to your boyfriend..." but, well, waddaya gonna do? I'll make no Yankee generalizations about the South here. Suffice to say, it all worked out in the end, and a great time was had by all.