"Any thoughts,suggestions.?"

Uh ... have fun ... ? Not sure what kind of thoughts and suggestions you might be looking for here. Partly as I'm not sure what distance you're contemplating. By "walk the at thru gsmnp" do you mean starting at Fontana Dam and walking the 70-some miles of the Smokies, or do you mean starting at the southern terminus of the AT at Springer Mt. and doing 230-some miles to the north end of the Smokies? The former is less than 10 miles per day, the latter works out to a nearly 30 MPD average. There are folks that can do the latter, but if you're "new at this" then hopefully you're planning on the more sane of those two interpretations ...
I don't recommend that anyone count on averaging nearly 30 MPD unless they already know from experience that they can do that, particularly right at the start of a trip, and on that trail. Georgia isn't actually all that hard, but it certainly does include its share of PUDs (pointless ups and downs) and so forth. And my recollection of North Carolina is that it got a bit harder (than Georgia).

If transportation is an issue, I found the Hoch's at the Hike Inn near Fontana Dam to be nice folks; they picked up me and a couple of fellows I was hiking with at the Fontana Dam visitor center and brought us to their motel, shuttled us into town for resupply, brought us back to the visitor center to continue the next day. On the other end the Standing Bear Hostel is its own sort of unique place, not too far off trail and overall a friendly place that's very nicely located. In between, Gatlinburg hopefully wouldn't be too difficult a hitch at that time of year (I would hope, anyway). Or maybe you're happy to carry 8 days worth of food and blast through.

If you could specify what sort of thoughts and suggestions you're looking for, you might get a less random response! :-)