Cherokee/Great Smokies KOA Good Sam Verified Campground

This campground has such potential.. It was our second stay and it was like night and day. The staff was very rude and un accommodating. The ice cream stand never open. The shower houses were filthy with human waste on the walls, leaky toilets and filthy showers. When reported nothing was done. The staff ride gold carts at extreme speeds. The actual sites were very nice. In addition, so many cabins ere built that there is no public space for the campers in the RVS. Will not be back.

Read before you stay. Myself, my husband and my 2 teenage boys stayed the first week of July for 2 nights. We left early. First I would like to say the campground has so much potential and really cool things to do with a family if it were managed well. The staff was extremely rude to everyone. One of the staff members even complained to us as soon as we got there about how poorly he was treated by management. Clearly, the employees are not happy for whatever reason. You couldn't go near the... Read More

Read before you stay. Myself, my husband and my 2 teenage boys stayed the first week of July for 2 nights. We left early. First I would like to say the campground has so much potential and really cool things to do with a family if it were managed well. The staff was extremely rude to everyone. One of the staff members even complained to us as soon as we got there about how poorly he was treated by management. Clearly, the employees are not happy for whatever reason. You couldn't go near the main store without witnessing some argument between customers and staff. When we go to a campground we go to get away from everything not to be around arguing and fussing. First, to our disappointment, the pool closed early each night by 8:00. We asked why and they said they didn't have anyone there to work. Another time my husband waited in line for 30 minutes to ask if we could purchase tubes for the river and they said no. Then as he walked out the door he heard them tell another lady she could purchase tubes. Also, have really cool bikes and three wheel trikes for older kids which is really nice but 90 percent of them were broke or had a problem. We had to wait for maintenance to come and try to fix a couple of them and he wasn't happy. Another time we were going to purchase ice cream and a lady had been standing there before us waiting for her ice cream (she had already paid) so we said please serve her first she was here before us. The guy told us he no. He said he would ring us up first because he didn't want to have to walk back and forth from the cash register to the ice cream again. The register and ice cream are only about 10 ft apart! I love the property but it really isn't worth the problems.
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Called to make a reservation while looking at site map online. Was told it would cost $10.00 to request a specific site, so after asking how many sites were available elected to not request a specific site but a general location. Arrived on Friday and after standing a line for about 20 minutes due to only one person at check in was escorted to the site by a nice gentleman. The site had the sewer hookup in the middle of the back of the site and would have required sewer to be run under camper... Read More

Called to make a reservation while looking at site map online. Was told it would cost $10.00 to request a specific site, so after asking how many sites were available elected to not request a specific site but a general location. Arrived on Friday and after standing a line for about 20 minutes due to only one person at check in was escorted to the site by a nice gentleman. The site had the sewer hookup in the middle of the back of the site and would have required sewer to be run under camper and out the back and a very long way. Asked to be moved and the escort told me I'd have to go back to office, another 20 minute wait. Moved to an acceptable site, level, concrete pad, with trees. After hooking up cable found that cable was not working. 2 young employees attempted to get cable working and it seemed the entire line of sites where we were parked did not have cable. After 2 days without cable stopped by office on Sunday to inquire. Was told by a very rude employee at counter, again after a 10-15 minute wait, that cable was an amenity and that the campground paid approximately $32 / month for each site so asking for refund would amount to about $1 / day, refund comment was unsolicited. This rude employee was only interested in making sure that myself and the person in front of my understood that cable was not guaranteed by the campground since it was an amenity which he repeated several times. The cable was repaired on Monday afternoon. The restrooms less than clean. The setting and location of the campground are very good. The office seems to be understaffed and at least the one employee had no interest in listening to a complaint nor offering a solution. I won't be staying here again.
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This is a wonderful family campground. Lots of activities to keep young folks occupied. Fishing is great to keep older folks occupied. The roads are paved and in fairly good shape. The campsites are fairly level and range from tent sites up to big rig huge sites. Most all have some shade on the site. The laundry rooms are large, clean, inexpensive, and do a good job. We had a full hook up large pull thru site with a concrete drive. The issues we had were with the 50 amp service that needed... Read More

This is a wonderful family campground. Lots of activities to keep young folks occupied. Fishing is great to keep older folks occupied. The roads are paved and in fairly good shape. The campsites are fairly level and range from tent sites up to big rig huge sites. Most all have some shade on the site. The laundry rooms are large, clean, inexpensive, and do a good job. We had a full hook up large pull thru site with a concrete drive. The issues we had were with the 50 amp service that needed a new circuit breaker that never was repaired while we were there and the cable TV service worked fine then went all snowy the last night. WI-FI was the best at any park we have stayed in to date. We will be back again just check the 50 amp service.
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Our first test of towing up and down mountain grades proved to work just fine. F350 had no issues at all keeping steady 55 up hill and "tow mode" allowed engine brake to engage for downhill slopes, automatically downshifting to keep the downhill speed safely in control. Very happy with the setup. Cherokee KOA is a very large campground located on a woodsy road about 5 miles up hill from Cherokee. Located on a river with several trout ponds. It is a "Holiday" style KOA, which means log cabins,... Read More

Our first test of towing up and down mountain grades proved to work just fine. F350 had no issues at all keeping steady 55 up hill and "tow mode" allowed engine brake to engage for downhill slopes, automatically downshifting to keep the downhill speed safely in control. Very happy with the setup. Cherokee KOA is a very large campground located on a woodsy road about 5 miles up hill from Cherokee. Located on a river with several trout ponds. It is a "Holiday" style KOA, which means log cabins, tent sites, big pools which were cloudy and green, lots of activities and toys and of course hordes of kids and summer vacationers. Weekends are off the chain and the movie night Friday and Line Dance Saturday had music till 10 PM loud enough to be heard in Tennessee. Big office and convenience store at check-in, staff was friendly and efficient. We were escorted to our "Premium" site #47 backed up to the pond and employee tried to assist in the back up procedure. Absolutely right angle turn with zero swing room for the truck, which meant several back and forths and using grass area of vacant spots in front of us. Grass very muddy and we chewed it up unfortunately, but the guy said it was no problem while acknowledging that the office probably shouldn't have put us in this particular site with our length. Especially when we took a bike ride around the grounds and found a dozen very large, slanted back in sites along the river being utilized by tiny tent-campers. Once in, the site is very nice and in a quiet(ish) part of the park, but still near to one of the bathhouse/laundries, of which there were 3. Total tree cover here and at most of the sites, so satellite is out, but their cable service works fine with 47 channels (tho no CBS for some reason?). WiFi is very good (at least mid-week when camp isn't full) which is a good thing as ATT is non-existent. For us, this park is ridiculously expensive for what we got out of it.
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Our first camping trip in our newly purchased camper was a total disappointment thanks to the Cherokee KOA. I made online reservations, which gave me a confirmation except it did not indicate which site. We called the office to find out which site we reserved, and the lady said it would be a $10 charge to know the site. When we arrived and was assigned our site, to our dismay our site was a dump. Both the entrance and exit to the site had a huge mud hole, and filled with water. The pic-nic table... Read More

Our first camping trip in our newly purchased camper was a total disappointment thanks to the Cherokee KOA. I made online reservations, which gave me a confirmation except it did not indicate which site. We called the office to find out which site we reserved, and the lady said it would be a $10 charge to know the site. When we arrived and was assigned our site, to our dismay our site was a dump. Both the entrance and exit to the site had a huge mud hole, and filled with water. The pic-nic table pad was muddy and dirty. There were thorny seed husks all over our campsite. There was hardly no grass at our site. The fire ring was beside the road and not near our camper or pic-nic table. This unkept site was not conducive with having 3 young children. The indoor pool and hot tub was yellow and murky. The indoor hot tub jets didn't work. The outside hot tub didn't even work at all so it had cold water. Then an older male wearing a KOA T-shirt let his dog urinate in our site near the fire ring. We went to the office to attempt a resolution in this matter, and the manager on duty (06/14/2018) was not helpful at all, and obviously does not practice customer satisfaction. He only offered for us to move to the site beside the one we had. That site was basically in the same condition minus the mud holes. That also meant packing everything back up, disconnecting the camper utilities, and pull it around to that site. After paying $227.40 plus a $14.00 resort fee you would expect better facilities and service.
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Clean, staff not helpful, no information about local attractions, no cell phone service for major phone company, WiFi hard to connect and when connected very slow. Good family campground