PARK VISTA GATLINBURG – On a recent road trip, our family elected to spend some of our Hilton HHonors points to spend a night in the Smokey Mountain region of Tennessee at the Park View DoubleTree. This hotel was rather a surprise I had planned for our family since we had just spent a long day in the car traveling towards home. While they knew we were spending the night in the Gatlinburg area, they had no idea of the great “waterpark” that was features in the hotel.

The hotel is a giant structure off the main drag of downtown Gatlinburg and up in the mountains. It took us a while to locate the hotel since it was located back in more of a residential area and up a very steep and hidden incline.

Once there, we were greeted with a very large, 300 room hotel with views looking down onto the city.

Our room was a standard double queen bedroom, featuring updated furnishings, and a nice separate sink area from the bathroom.

We were also given chocolate chip cookies upon our arrival, which is always a nice touch.

The room did feature an outdoor balcony, though we were there late at night and left early the next morning, so there was no chance of us actually getting to use it. Further, we were on a lower floor overlooking the roof, so there was nothing to see anyways.

After quickly getting settled in, as is normal for our family, we were headed down to the pool. Our boys had no idea what to expect, and they were thoroughly impressed with my surprise upon entry to the pool house. Inside was a lower zero entry kid pool with fountains, a small, shallow pool, and a kids slide through a tree. On the upper level was a large tree featuring a big water slide into a separate big pool.

This was one of the best standard rate hotel pools our family had experienced, and was a great value at 30,000 points for a category 5 hotel.

One of the other unique features of the hotel, which we did not get to experience, was in the hotel lobby was an ice cream cart. Taking an ice cream was on the honor system with donations all going to charity. It was an excellent touch.

Our status with HHonors also got us a free appetizer at the bar. However, by the time we got checked in and went to the pool, they no longer were accepting the voucher. Instead we went to get fresh popcorn from the bar, which we were shocked they charged to get. So they took our voucher instead for a free serving of popcorn.

Our family really wished we had more time to spend in the Gatlinburg area, as we did not get to spend anytime out in the city, as it was simply just a quick stopover before heading home the next morning. The good thing is we are happy to know the Park Plaza is an excellent choice for future visits.

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Source: InACents