i have hiked that trail. Never alone though. No fun in exploring nature without someone to share it with. My kids carried the bear spray and I just carried.
Both of those are excellent common sense precautions.
Depends on whether those you are exploring nature with are capable of shutting their mouths for more than two consecutive minutes. Constant, purposeless, inane, media-driven chatter and the Glories of Nature do not mix well.
I have hiked this trail twice, once with company and the second time to escape from it. I encountered maybe one person along the trail, seated on one of the benches. I was less concerned with attacks from humans than with the big thunderstorm that was looming up behind me and echoing off the hills, and with the bears which had begun to frequent the area. Encountered no bears, and the rain didn't begin until I got off the trail (which, as you'll remember, emerges smack into a Gatlinburg parking lot with no preamble). Luckily, there was a pretty good barbecue place not too far along the River Road into which I could escape.
In retrospect, I should probably have been more concerned about human aggression, which is more frequent than unprovoked bear attacks here. A black bear generally won't attack unless you've scared it, or have come too near its cubs, or just have something delicious which it feels it has every moral right to share, whereas humans seem to think along the lines of (a) "I want to hurt someone," and (b) "There you are!" I don't own a gun (no moral objections--just don't have a gun) and would frankly balk at the idea of having to carry one into the national park on the grounds of simple propriety ("One shouldn't have to do this!"), but this might be one of those cases where the moral high ground leads straight to the graveyard.