Pigeon Forge is an armpit. If you go, you'll spend the whole time eating fast food, staring at taillights as you sit in traffic, and shuffling through outlet stores browsing through cheap plastic crap. Gatlinburg is marginally better, but unfortunately it's the same kind of thing now. I can only recommend it as a jumping-off place if you plan to spend most of your time up in the Smokies.
It pains me to be so negative about a place right in the Smokies, which is basically God's very own country, but these days that whole place is wretched all the way from I-40 to the Open Hearth restaurant at the far end of Gatlinburg. It depresses me every time I have to drive through there to get to that end of the park.