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Mountain Harbor Inn
Categories: Hotels, Bed & Breakfast, Restaurants [Edit]
1199 Highway 139Dandridge, TN 37725
(865) 484-1050
- Attire:
- Casual
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
2 reviews for Mountain Harbor Inn
If you are looking for a beautiful place to dine, or stay in the Smokey Mountain region and want to avoid the crowds of Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge, this is the place. Beautiful inn, restaurant, and marina.
Or if you are staying in those two areas and want to get away for a day to a great lake for fishing or swimming or cruising and sightseeing, this is the place. You can rent a 'hot dog' to pull behind the pontoon boat for the kids to ride. You can also rent waverunners, and fishing boats and we found this place to have the most reasonable rates for the pontoons, and possibly the best maintained. They were also the most reponsive, friendliest, and most accomodating.
They rent pontoon boats (ours was a 24 footer that was in excellent shape and safely held 12 people with lots of seating---I think for up to 16). If you are fishing, then you want to probably have no more than 6 people as it can get tight quick with casting.
The lake easily exceeds depths of 90-100 feet and you can spend all day on it and never see more than a small portion. To say it is gigantic is an understatement.
One word of caution---stay away from Douglas dam. It can be a treacherous area. Also stay away from all islands as it can get shallow pretty quickly. If you hit the local Wal-mart or well equipped bait shop, you can also purchase a map of the lake which includes hazardous areas to avoid.
The boats come equipped with a very user friendly GPS so getting lost is nearly impossible. They always tell you how far you are away from the marina where you picked up the boat.
The entire crew had a great time and we cannot wait to go back.
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The setting of my dream wedding. It was absolutely amazing.
It's an Inn nestled in the hills around Douglas Lake with the beautiful Smoky Mountains as the view. The lake is pristine. Seriously. Can't tell you how many it sleeps (check the website, yo), but we were able to have a party of up to 120 in the reception hall. We got to rent out the entire Inn for the whole weekend in a money saver package deal. Included in that was every room, some wedding-y stuff (officiant, use of chairs, trellis, kitchens, etc. etc.) and some pontoon boats. It was fabulous
The staff was unbelievably courteous, helpful, fun. I loved them. They were there to entertain every request (which I tried to tame, mind you) and were so understanding and just really awesome. I can't say enough. My mother-in-law (my wedding planner) and I interacted mostly with Kim, who is just so sweet, but everyone was great and I just can't say that enough.
The setting is gorgeous. Only gripe is the boat dock that seems to be slowly invading the scenery off the deck. However, we were able to salvage just enough to put the trellis in the corner, thereby avoiding any sneaky boats trying to quietly invade my picturesque setting. I am making this sound worse than it is. Not even the dock can compete with the beautiful Smoky Mountain backdrop.
Here's my major gripe with the place and it's something you might want to be aware of should you be planning any major event:
We had to book the place about a year in advance (advance time changes depending on the time of year, the size of party, etc.), and within that time we had the price increased on us, the "includeds" in the wedding package decreased and/or changed and the number people we were able to sleep in the Inn (mind you we rented the entire thing) decreased (by 8 beds to be exact). This is all well and good (if not severely frustrating), but they didn't tell us these things; we found out at random times when we would call up with questions or to double-check things.
This simply screams poor management. I can't imagine there are so many people renting out an entire Inn in Dandridge, TN that they couldn't call us to inform us that, you know, those 8 people we were planning on giving a room to would need to find a hotel somewhere down the street.
This sounds just awful, but likely mostly because this is my first bout of venting (I was determined to let nothing about the wedding get me down). Overall, the experience was amazing. I would recommend this place to anyone planning a wedding. My caution is that you should just be prepared to be on the ball and really stay in touch with them about their situation.