So we just got back from Great Wolf Lodge. Bottom line, we loved it and we're planning on going back, probably sometime in early/mid-February. Familiar with GWL? In a nutshell, it's an indoor water-park destination in Grand Mound, WA (insert joke here -- then look at a map and see at it's about 20 minutes south of Olympia). Great Wolf has an impressive array of wet rides, shops, food (buffets as well as quick-serve fare like Pizza Hut pizza) and a bunch of dry activities ranging from arts and crafts to video games. If you've been on a cruise, it feels similar. (We love cruises, just so you know our frame of reference.) Our family is two moms and two 5-year-old boys who are taller than 42 inches and shorter than 48 (more on why that matters below).
Here's some of what we learned, loved and might do differently next time:
How 'bout those wristband/roomkey/chargecards? I love technology. The wristbands in the picture were all we needed to play, eat, get souvenirs and come and go from our rooms. So nice not to worry about losing our room key, credit cards, whatever. I wonder how many cruise ships are doing this? They all should ...
There's a Starbucks. I don't drink coffee, so I don't care, but I know Cheryl found it a welcome sight. In other beverage news, it's a Pepsi place (I'm a Coke products person), but it doesn't really matter as you can bring your own pop and keep it in the fridge in your room.
Themed rooms weren't necessarily worth it for us, but may be for you. So, they've got rooms come with either "kid camp" or "wolf den" setups, which are basically bunk bed alcoves that have themed decor. These look cool. The kids did like them/fear them a little (hey, wolves can be scary). But they weren't worth the extra $50 or whatever a night, at least not for us.
Go at non-peak times!!!!! I can't emphasize this one enough. We were lucky enough to be able to take advantage of our kids' weird half-time/full-day kindergarden setup, which gives every other Friday off. We stayed on a Thursday night, and experienced lines essentially never. We heard tell of lines up to an hour long to ride the slides, and that would have dramatically diminished our experience.
If your kid's not 48 inches tall, it helps if he or she is at least 42 inches tall. There's only one slide the under-48-inch crowd can't go on. If you're under 42, you're pretty much limited to the wave pool and the kiddie area, which is great, but, you know, a kiddie area.
The MagiQuest is worth the money. You'll see lots of people waving wands around and activating talking raccoons and mouthy treasure chests and such. This is MagiQuest. It costs $14.99 to get the wand, which uses infrared beams to work its "magic." The wands are re-usable. Once you have a wand, you need to pay $9.99 to activate it. This lasts four days, but two days can feel like forever when you're a 40-something mom trudging around behind a 5-year-old who keeps saying "I don't want to see the dragon!!!" Even though our guys got a little scared of the whole questing business after a while (especially when we kept getting chided by the Pixie Crystal for failing to accumulate the right stuff), they did enjoy it enough for us to feel like we didn't waste our $. And I can see how they'll enjoy it more when they're not so unnerved by seemingly inanimate objects that light up and start babbling about how they need to do this or that. It's a must for Harry Potter fans, I would think.
Is it expensive? Well, that depends on your perspective. My family probably couldn't have afforded it when I was a kid. But now we're lucky enough to be able to spend $219 a night (special off-day rate), plus a bunch of extra stuff, without too much trouble. We stayed one night and two days, and that was plenty of time for us to feel like we really got away. Also, we ate on site but you don't have to. There are restaurants nearby and you can bring your own food. The buffet dinner was $55 for two adults and two kids and worth it, in my book, with peel 'n' eat shrimp, rock crab and dungeness crab, mussels, clams, clam chowder and a bunch of stuff that wasn't seafood (prime rib, kalua pork, Asian food, lots of kid-friendly fare like pizza and mac 'n' cheese and desserts including the ever-popular worms in dirt, etc.)
Get a Paws Pass, especially if you're a first-timer. So we debated whether or not to spend the $79 per kid for these. But we ended up feeling like it saved us a few bucks and enhanced our experience. We got a wand and game ($25), a pair of custom Crocs + a Jibbitz decoration ($35), a color-your-own T-shirt ($10, I think), a fun shaker drink -- milk or lemonade + syrup ($4), a souvenir soda cup, which the moms took for themselves ($7), a stuffed animal that they stuffed on the spot ($20) and admission to the teen-oriented gr8-space, which we shared with a couple of nice teens we met in the water park ($5). I think that's it. And don't think for a second that I don't think we're ridiculously blessed to be able to afford this kind of thing.
More on the rides coming soon ...
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