Great Wolf Lodge review: New England

January 28, 2015 By

Northeast families ready to escape the cold weather and live in their bathing suits for a few days are in luck: the new (ish) Great Wolf Lodge New England is in a prime location just one hour from Boston and Providence. And it comes packed with even more activities than Great Wolf Lodge Grand Mound (our fave West Coast location). Read on for our Great Wolf Lodge review:

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The New England location is newly acquired, and still going through some growing pains. Rest assured it has all the new activities offered at GWL across the brand, including the ropes course and mini golf areas in the Howlin’ Timbers Play Park, but during our experience (during a busy holiday time period), there was some confusion and customer service could have been improved. Primarily, this was most notable around the dining venues, not the water park. No one wants to get all the kids dressed and bundled up for a New England winter to brave outside restaurants, however, so hopefully we just caught GWL at a bad time.

The ‘dry’ play areas, such as the ropes course, are a very nice addition to the offerings at GWL, perfect for kids less sure about the water play activities or those who just need to dry out (but don’t want to play the MagiQuest game). There’s also a fun laser course, which, instead of tag, is more of an obstacle course, where kids avoid brightly colored lasers. Channel your inner spy and try it out! Also on offer: mini golf, though be advised: you’ll need to pay extra for this activity. We wish GWL (across the brand) would charge one room rate and make all activities all inclusive, but until that time, come prepared for some activity costs on-site.

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Kids who are wild about MagiQuest, like mine, will find slightly less in this department at New England than in some GWL locations. They do have MagiQuest, of course, but not the extended games, such as CompassQuest or ShadowQuest. What they do have is plenty for newbies to get on with, but seasoned GWL patrons will miss the additional games. Get specific MagiQuest tips here.

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You can get a standard room, suite, or Wolf Den or KidCabin suite, both of which are fun for kids and get families more space to spread out. These lodging offerings are in line with what’s offered at GWL everywhere; nothing new here.

Great Wolf Tips:

  • Book midweek or on non-holiday weekends to get those coveted ‘under $199/night’ deals.
  • Skip the packages that include wands or meals…they’re usually ‘padded’ with fairly useless stuff like plush animals and water shoes (aka, things you weren’t intending to buy).
  • Don’t try to do it all at GWL New England: some kids will want to spend more time in the ‘dry’ play area than in the waterpark, and there’s rarely time for the laser game, bowling, mini golf, the ropes course, and MagiQuest.
  • Check out all our GWL tips on our dedicated page!

Date last visited:

January 2015

Room rates:

Room rates vary greatly at GWL, depending on season and room type. A good deal is to find a standard room for $199 or less. In peak seasons, expect to pay 3x as much for a themed room (kid suite). Do you need this? No, but if the price difference is not substantial during the time of your visit, a kid ‘cub’ suite or ‘camping’ style suite does enhance the stay for young kids.

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Dining:

There are multiple dining options onsite, ranging from buffets to sit-down dinners (similar to Friendly’s or Red Robin) to counter service in the water parks. We recommend enjoying the buffet on one occasion, then eating out (outside the lodge) or bringing food in. Food is not permitted inside the waterpark, but it’s simple enough to walk up to the room for snacks or meals.

Directions:

GWL New England is located at 150 Great Wolf Drive, Fitchburg, MA. From Boston, take I-93 N toward Concord NH. Merge onto I-495 S exit 44B toward Lowell. Merge onto Rt-2 W exit 29B toward Leominster. Take exit 28 for MA-31 S, turn left onto Princeton Rd, and right onto Great Wolf Drive.

Photo credit: Shawn Collins and Flickr/Vox Efx

New attractions at Great Wolf Lodge: play ShadowQuest and mini golf

October 1, 2013 By

The following is a guest post written by Northwest parent and travel writer Carrie Yu.

When the weather in the Pacific Northwest turns to rain (and even when the sun is shining), families in the region love to head to Great Wolf Lodge in Grand Mound, Washington, for some serious fun. Just in time for indoor water fun this autumn and winter, new attractions at Great Wolf Lodge include ShadowQuest and mini golf. Available at Great Wolf locations across the country, including Washington’s Grand Mound, here’s what you can look forward to:

ShadowQuest:

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ShadowQuest is a brand-new interactive wand game, available at Great Wolf Lodge’s Grand Mound location, as well as at several other Great Wolf Lodge locations. In this live-action adventure game, your family takes on the task of helping to save the light of the sky before it vanishes. Players follow clues in a guidebook and explore the halls and stairways of Great Wolf Lodge to find hidden objects and complete quests.

The game is 12 stages long and can be completed over multiple visits to Great Wolf Lodge. My family played for about 3 hours and had a great time finishing the first four stages. My kids loved that their wands could be used not only for playing the game, but for opening treasure chests and activating statues and animals all over the lodge!

Howl at the Moon Miniature Golf:

Another new attraction at Great Wolf Lodge is the very cool Howl at the Moon miniature golf course. This golf course is a 9-hole course located near the arcade. It is decorated with lots of woodland creatures and has simple obstacles to work around on your way to the holes.  The whole course is lit with blacklights for a fun effect.

Great Wolf LodgeTried and True Favorites at Great Wolf:

Of course, all the old favorites are still intact at Great Wolf Lodge Grand Mound. Below are a few tips on experiencing the resort’s trademark features.

The water park:

Great Wolf Lodge features a huge indoor waterpark that’s always 84 degrees inside.  Your family will spend hours splashing in the water and having a great time. Even though check-in isn’t until 4 PM on the day of your arrival at Great Wolf Lodge, you can register and get your passes for the waterpark starting at 1 PM. Locker rooms and towels are available, so within minutes of your arrival, your family can be splashing in the wave pool, playing in the kiddie area, or riding down one of the fun water slides.  On the day of your departure, you can stay and play in the waterpark until 9 PM at night.

Great Wolf Lodge takes safety very seriously, and the waterpark is staffed with a large contingent of lifeguards and life jackets are available for those who need a little extra flotation help.

The rooms:

Great Wolf Lodge offers several options for rooms. My family stayed in the basic family suite, which was clean, comfortable, and spacious.  If your family is looking for a more unusual experience, try one of the themed suites which feature fun, separate sleeping areas for the kids.

Admission:

Rooms start at $199 per night. Specials and packages are available and water park admission for 4 people is included with the room rate.  Miniature golf is $6 per person, per round. Wands for Shadow Quest start at $15.99 and the game itself is $12.99.

Directions:

Great Wolf Lodge is located just off Interstate 5, at exit 88.  The resort is approximately 1.5 hours from both Portland, OR and Seattle, WA.

For more Great Wolf Lodge tips and booking advice, visit our Great Wolf Lodge Tips page!

Disclosure: I received a media rate to facilitate my review, as well as passes for ShadowQuest and miniature golf. All opinions posted here are mine and mine alone.

Carrie Yu is a travel writer and mom of two kids, ages 6 and 4.  You can read more of her travel writing at trekaroo.com.

 

Great Wolf Lodge MagiQuest: Step by step guide for parents!

April 15, 2011 By

Great Wolf Lodge MagiQuest, the resort’s signature live-action adventure game, is one of the best things about the fun of Great Wolf, but first you have to figure out how to play. Tweens and teens can usually figure it out on their own, but for younger kids, adult participation is required…at least at first. Anyone who’s ever stepped into the controlled chaos of a MagiQuest shop with an over-excited kid in tow knows what I’m talking about, and if you don’t…well, I hope to make it a bit easier for you when your time comes.

First off, what is Great Wolf Lodge MagiQuest?

MagiQuest is one part video game, one part scavenger hunt, and one part imaginative play. It can also be considered homework writing help at some point. The purchase of one game and one wand grants your quester unlimited play for the duration of your Great Wolf visit. And what exactly are you playing? MagiQuest is a series of quests throughout the public areas of the first five floors of the resort, with your final goal being to slay a dragon in its lair. Along the way, you’ll find interactive computer screen stations, ‘enchanted’ paintings, talking animals, and riddling fairies, who, when your wand is pointed at them, will offer clues to help you to this end. (Notice how I keep saying ‘you’? At this point, your child is basically just tagging along, eyes big as saucers.)

How do you get started?

In MagiQuest headquarters (the wand shop located on the ground floor of all Great Wolf Lodges), your game is activated (after your child picks his or her wizard name, of course), and you’re sent off to begin your quest with your brand new wand, probably with a special magic wand top, which can come home as a souvenir. The MagiQuest staff is amazing, and the expert ‘Magi’ really do try to explain the game to everyone, but it’s at this point that most parents stumble out the MagiQuest shop doors in abject confusion. Allow me to save you some time:

  1. First, find a tree. Yes, you read that correctly. Depending on your Great Wolf location, these fake trees will be located on the first or second floor, and they’ll have a computer screen embedded in the trunk.
  2. Point your wand (er, I mean your kid’s wand) at the screen and follow the first set of instructions. You’ll have been given a booklet back in the shop: get that back out of your pocket where you stuffed it…you’ll need it.
  3. Pick a quest at the tree (you’ll need to hit ‘accept quest’ for the computer system to ‘know’ which one you’re doing), find the same quest in your booklet, and get going.

Once you’ve completed all the quests (this can take days, depending on how often you play the game during your stay), you’ll be deemed worthy to fight the dragon (featured on a large, interactive video screen). But don’t worry, no matter how long you stay, you’ll get your money’s worth: fighting the dragon unlocks an entire new series of ‘adventure’ quests, and after that, they can try their hand at Great Wolf’s new CompassQuest.

How to wean yourself from the game:

After running up and down five flights of stairs two or three dozen times and fighting your way through mobs of kids in swimsuits waving wands in your face, you might be ready for a well-deserved break. Your child probably isn’t. If he or she is young (under age eight or so), you may need to tag-team it with your spouse or a energetic grandparent, but we felt comfortable allowing our older kids to continue playing in pairs (and judging by the amount of kids swarming the halls, other parents felt the same way). Once kids understand how the game is organized, they can continue working their way through the quests on their own. (Being able to read helps, but isn’t crucial…the clues are spoken as well as typed on the screen.) Remind them that if they get confused, they can ‘check their status’ at any time at any tree to see what they’ve accomplished and what they still need to find for any given quest, and MagiQuest staff are always on-hand to help in the shop. See? Now you don’t need any MagiQuest online cheats!

For more tips and an overview from a QuestMaster, check out the Pit Stops for Kids’ Kid Cam:

But wait, there’s more: Final tips to get you through the game!

  1. If in doubt, ask! Down in the MagiQuest shop, staffers can field any questions, from general inquiries to specifics (i.e. ‘I can’t find the pixie watching the stars by night’), and are happy to give answers (‘Third floor landing, past the elevator to the right’). Other kids are also very helpful. They are occasionally rewarded for helping fellow Magi with extra points added to their scores down in the Magi shop, so feel free to ask a staffer for a ‘guide’ as needed.
  2. Always ‘accept’ quests before taking off to find clues.
  3. The MagiQuest game ‘activates’ at a set time each morning and turns off at a set time each night. These times vary slightly by season and lodge, but are generally posted as 9 am and 10 pm. The evening shutdown seems strictly adhered to, but often, however, the game is turned on earlier than posted in the mornings. If you have an anxious gamer, they may be able to play as early as 8 am.
  4. When fighting the dragon, only one player at a time is allowed in the lair. This is because additional wands can mess up the game settings. Be prepared to wait as long as 15 minutes in line when the lodge is full, and use your time waiting wisely: study how the other kids get into the lair…I won’t ruin the fun for you, but it involves a series of wand waving at various fixed points in the doorway.
  5. Check your standings on TV at night! Kids love seeing their Magi names listed each night on the lodge’s information channel. My kids always check how much gold they have before climbing into their KidCabin beds. Sweet dreams!
  6. MagiQuest seems to be busiest in the evenings after dinner. If the lodge is near or at capacity at the time of your visit, yoMagiQuestu’re much better off visiting the water park at this time and playing MagiQuest during or near mealtimes or in the morning.
  7. Keep your wand for next time. You can use the again and again! After our first Great Wolf visit, my kids brought their wands hom
    e and played with them (roughly) for almost two years before we went back. When we presented their wands for approval at the wand shop, they worked perfectly! And their games were still stored in the computer chip, allowing them to continue where they left off as long as we purchased the game again for $9.99. Remembering to bring wands back is a major money saver.

CompassQuest: CompassQuest is Great Wolf’s newest addition to the MagiQuest game. Players need to purchase another tool (a plastic compass that attaches to their wand with a clip). The challenges are timed, which adds an element of excitement for older players, but keep in mind that when the resort is full, this will mean longer lines at the ‘trees’ and lairs. Kids can get frustrated watching their time run out while they wait! Be sure to play at off-peak times (right when MagiQuest activates in the morning or during mealtimes.)

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Great Wolf Lodge water safety: why you don’t need to worry

April 10, 2011 By

As a family travel expert, I’ve experienced many family resorts with my kids, and can sum up Great Wolf Lodge’s water park safety measures in one word: impressive. During our recent stay at the Grand Mound location, we enjoyed the water park under the supervision of literally hundreds of lifeguards during our three days at the resort, and observed only professional, polite, and friendly interactions with guests. Guards manned (and womaned) their stations with diligence, rotated responsibilities on a frequent and regular schedule, and enforced rules with confidence.

Great Wolf

What makes Great Wolf’s water park staff such a well-oiled machine? I learned that each Great Wolf property is partnered with Jeff Ellis & Associates (E&A), a private, outside consulting firm specializing in aquatic risk management. I really like that an outside organization polices them, ensuring that standards remain the highest possible. In fact, Great Wolf lifeguards are training all the time: you may even see drills during operating hours (don’t be surprised to see a guard suddenly dive into the pool after a practice dummy). In addition to this, Ellis & Associates performs four unannounced operational audits per year at each resort, testing them in areas of professionalism, diligence in scanning techniques and rescue skills, as well as their ability to manage an aquatic emergency.

I could list stats all day long, but offer a visual instead: count how many times a lifeguard passes in front of my camera as I take a 30 second video of my son.

Great WolfRules you should know before you go:

1. All height requirements for the various water slides and features at Great Wolf are carved in stone. They’re clearly posted on-site, but we recommend checking them out before you arrive to prevent disappointment. I saw kids who did not meet the height requirement of a slide try to ride more than once; without exception, they were politely but firmly turned away. Oh, and tippy-toes are not allowed (see photo)!

2. U.S. Coast Guard approved life jackets are permitted (and can be borrowed free of charge on-site), but no other floatation device or toy may be used in any part of the water park. Same goes for snorkels and flippers; leave them at home…it’s less to pack!

3. Outside food and drink are not permitted. For what it’s worth, this rule does not seem to be enforced. I wouldn’t make a show of rolling a large cooler into the water park, but extra waters and snacks in a tote bag seem to be ok (and will save you a bundle at the concession stands).

4. Lap-sliding (sliding with a child on your lap) is not permitted (though I wish it was). The slides on Fort MacKenzie are built for the smaller guests but are still quite intimidating, and I know many toddlers and preschoolers would be braver on the lap of a parent.

5. The lifeguards, though great, are not meant to take the place of a parent. Kids are not allowed into the water park without adult supervision. I’m not sure how heavily this rule is enforced, but its just practical; every parent knows to watch their kids around any major body of water.

At the time of our visit, no Great Wolf Lodge water park personnel were aware of our visit, or had any pending knowledge of this review.

Six reasons to love Great Wolf Lodge (plus Great Wolf Lodge tips!)

January 17, 2011 By

Our family thinks the Great Wolf Lodge offers the perfect antidote to dreary winter and spring days, making it an ideal location for an easy family getaway! If you’re on the fence, we have six reasons to love this family-friendly resort chain, plus Great Wolf Lodge tips you need right now!

Read our full review of our experiences at the Grand Mound, WA Great Wolf Lodge location.

1. Great Wolf is the comfort food of family travel. At Pit Stops for Kids, we’re all about adventurous and educational travel. We advocate for getting kids out of their comfort zone, provide tips on how to make travel days run smoother, and offer reviews on off-the-beaten-path destinations like national parks and even yurt camping. That’s all well and good, but sometimes, you just want an easy getaway that’s all about the FUN. That’s what Great Wolf is: kid-friendly, parent-approved, no-brainer (or planner) FUN.

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2. Kids get their exercise! Until you’ve climbed four flights of stairs and back down again eight times in ten minutes while waving a wand at various wall fixtures, you haven’t had a true cardio workout. We loved Great Wolf’s MagiQuest game so much, our kids spent half their stay completing quests. The other half was spent swimming in the wave pool and climbing the stairs to the water slides!

Plus, Great Wolf Lodge locations include ‘dry’ areas, such as the ropes course at the New England location, perfect for kids less sure about the water play activities or those who just need to dry out (but don’t want to play the MagiQuest game…more on that in a minute). There’s also a fun laser course, which, instead of tag, is more of an obstacle course, where kids avoid brightly colored lasers. Channel your inner spy and try it out! Also on offer: mini golf, though be advised: you’ll need to pay extra for this activity.

We wish GWL (across the brand) would charge one room rate and make all activities all inclusive, but until that time, come prepared for some activity costs on-site.

3. Outside food and drinks are not only allowed, but encouraged. Hallelujah! Suites have both fridges and microwaves, making it easy to put together simple meals for your family. We always save money eating breakfast and snacks in our room. And outside food is permitted in the water park, too: go ahead and bring an entire cooler! To save money on lunch and stay hydrated all day, we bring in our own drinks.

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4. The staff is friendly and helpful! And I mean very helpful. Disney helpful. From check-in to check-out, ‘Pack Members’ are on-hand to answer questions, point guests in various directions, and promote safety both in the water park and out. The MagiQuest staff is especially courteous, especially, in our opinion, at the Grand Mound Washington location, always walking the four bottom floors ready to assist any kids who need a hint on the game. The water park’s life guards (at every location) seem to be everywhere; when my son fell and skinned his knee at the New England location, two were on-hand with a band-aid and a smile before I could even get out of the water.

5. Families are accommodated. Well, of course they’re accommodated, Great Wolf is a hotel, after all, but I of course mean this in the greater sense! I love the extra room (literally) Great Wolf suites provide, the options for families of five (and larger), and the fact that throughout the resort, there’s something for everyone. Young kids love the Clock Tower sing-along every evening and can get some much needed quiet time in the Cub Club, where there’s always crafts, toys, and games just for them. Older kids can have the run of Gr8Space (12 and up) and the Northern Lights Arcade. For moms (and girls, too), you can’t beat the full spa. (See a full list of activities by age.)

Arriving early? Don’t worry about your room not being ready; just check in, get your wrist bands (these serve as room key and water park pass), change into swim suits in the locker rooms, and hit the slides. Same goes for the day you leave: guests have full use of the resort (water park, MagiQuest, Gr8Space and more) until 9 pm the day of check out, allowing for nearly a full additional day of fun! Go ahead and stay all day, then put the kids in pajamas for the drive home!

Great Wolf Lodge

6. Water safety is Priority #1! As a family travel expert, I’ve experienced many family resorts with my kids, and can sum up Great Wolf Lodge’s water park safety measures in one word: impressive. During our recent stay at the Grand Mound location, we enjoyed the water park under the supervision of literally hundreds of lifeguards during our three days at the resort, and observed only professional, polite, and friendly interactions with guests. Guards manned (and womaned) their stations with diligence, rotated responsibilities on a frequent and regular schedule, and enforced rules with confidence.

I could list stats all day long, but offer a visual instead: count how many times a lifeguard passes in front of my camera as I take a 30 second video of my son.

shadowquest

Now, as promised: Great Wolf Lodge Tips!

  • Book midweek or on non-holiday weekends to get those coveted ‘under $199/night’ deals. Yes, they still exist!
  • Skip the packages that include wands or meals…they’re usually ‘padded’ with fairly useless stuff like plush animals and water shoes (aka, things you weren’t intending to buy). Yeah, you won’t get away with not buying wands, but a la carte is the way to go here.
  • Don’t try to do it all at GWL: some kids will want to spend more time in the ‘dry’ play area than in the waterpark, and there’s rarely time for the laser game, dance party, creation station, themed rooms, bowling, mini golf, the ropes course, and MagiQuest.
  • Remember that no ‘lap sitting’ is allowed on the slides (so kids will have to muster their own courage and ride without a parent). Also, height restrictions are enforced, so prep your younger kids ahead of time, letting them know what they can and can’t ride.
  • U.S. Coast Guard approved life jackets are permitted (and can be borrowed free of charge on-site), but no other floatation device or toy may be used in any part of the water park. Same goes for snorkels and flippers; leave them at home…it’s less to pack!
  • Consider eating off-site if the weather cooperates. Great Wolf Lodge dining is pretty cookie-cutter, and expensive to boot. We bring our own breakfast (easy to do thanks to fridges and microwaves) and eat outside the resort at least once during our stay. It’s a good way to see the light of day!

Do you have Great Wolf Lodge tips? Share them in the comments!

Extensive Great Wolf Lodge review: Grand Mound Washington

July 1, 2009 By

This past week, my family and I spent two nights and two days at The Great Wolf Lodge in Grand Mound, WA.

We arrived at the resort at approximately 9 pm on a Sunday night. The lobby was still filled with children watching the evening animatronics show by the Grand Hall’s main focal point, the clock tower (more on that later), but there was no wait to check in.

Great Wolf

Get our top Great Wolf Lodge tips here, good for all locations!

As a family of five, we had booked a Kid Cabin Suite, which consists of a room with a queen bed, a pull-out sofa, and a framed off cabin compartment with a kid-sized bunk bed and day bed. Based on photos from the website, my boys had wanted a Wolf Den Suite (similar but with a faux rock wall to simulate a cave), but as it’s designed for a family of four, booking one would have required purchasing an additional water park ‘Paw Pass’ for our youngest to the tune of $40 a day (a detail I only realized after booking¦luckily it was easy to change). For our family, the Kid Cabin Suite was a better deal.

And the kids were very happy with it.

The rest of the room was spacious and clean. We were pleased with the corner fireplace and flat screen TV, and it was also very nice to have a fridge and microwave (enabling us to eat breakfast in our room and store drinks and snacks). Within the kid cabin was a second flat screen TV with a Game Cube (games can be ordered for $6.95 an hour). We opted to skip that feature, and used the TV only for free channels in the mornings. I was slightly worried about noise level at night with so many kids afoot throughout the lodge, but at least in our section of the lodge, the ‘Hibernation’ hours of 10 pm to 7 am were well adhered to. We never heard a peep after putting the kids to bed at 9 pm each night.

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On Monday morning, we ate our own breakfast in our room, and I checked out the fitness center. It was smaller than I had expected, but at 7:30 am, I was easily able to get an elliptical machine. There were also treadmills and weight machines.

Great Wolf Lodge activities:

MagiQuest:

By 9 am, the water park was open and MagiQuest was activated for the day. This bears explaining, because trust me, your kids will want to do it.

Tip: get all our MagiQuest tips here!

MagiQuest is an interactive activity installed throughout the lodge. The official website explains it better than I can: Armed with high-tech wands, your family must solve magical challenges throughout the resort to gain powers (and points) and move to higher levels of the game. Even if this doesn’t sound like your sort of thing, you won’t be able to avoid it. Everywhere you go (on the public areas of the first four floors), kids will be waving wands and bringing various fixtures in the hallways and ceilings to life. I know it sounds annoying, but it’s actually quite good fun. We encountered older children stopping to give hints on the game to younger ones and while kids occasionally bumped into us in their excitement to find their next clue, the general chaos wasn’t unmanageable.

MagiQuest

But onto the nitty gritty: wands start at $14.99 (you can pay substantially more for fancy toppers) and then an additional $9.99 is necessary to activate’ your game. I am not one to spend money on overpriced souvenirs or gimmicks, but let me say: it’s worth it. Every penny. It took my kids their entire stay to complete the quest (playing on and off as time allowed), and then several more games opened up…they continued playing right up until the moment we left, and could have played for another day at least. They took their wands home as keepsakes, and if we come back for a return visit, they can reuse the same wands (paying only the $9.99 activation fee). All in all, it was a great activity, and good exercise too!

ShadowQuest:

shadowquest

ShadowQuest is a brand-new interactive wand game, available at Great Wolf Lodge’s Grand Mound location, as well as at several other Great Wolf Lodge locations. In this live-action adventure game, your family takes on the task of helping to save the light of the sky before it vanishes. Players follow clues in a guidebook and explore the halls and stairways of Great Wolf Lodge to find hidden objects and complete quests.

The game is 12 stages long and can be completed over multiple visits to Great Wolf Lodge. My family played for about 3 hours and had a great time finishing the first four stages. My kids loved that their wands could be used not only for playing the game, but for opening treasure chests and activating statues and animals all over the lodge!

Howl at the Moon Miniature Golf:

Another new attraction at Great Wolf Lodge is the very cool Howl at the Moon miniature golf course. This golf course is a 9-hole course located near the arcade. It is decorated with lots of woodland creatures and has simple obstacles to work around on your way to the holes.  The whole course is lit with blacklights for a fun effect.

Waterpark:

The main attraction of The Great Wolf Lodge, however, is the water park. My first impression was that it actually smelled less chlorinated than most indoor water parks, which was a huge plus for me, since that heated, chemical-based smell really bothers me. I learned later that I wasn’t imaging it: The Great Wolf takes green’ measures to use less chlorine.

But of course my kids didn’t care about any of that. They were off and (not) running (that’s a big rule) from the moment we stepped through the doors. They were initially disappointed in the lack of a lazy river, but were quickly enamored by the wave pool. There was an excellent zero-depth entry splash and slide area for toddlers (the deepest section went up to my four-year-old’s waist) and a huge fort with dumping bucket and more slides. My husband and one of my kids spent most of their time in the pool with basketball hoops and moving floatation pads in the shape of animals, and my favorite feature was the indoor/outdoor hot tub. The thrill rides were fairly mild, but plenty thrilling for my family (oldest child at age 10). Two of the slides have a minimum height requirement of 48 inches, much to my preschooler’s disappointment, but there was plenty else to distract him. During our two day stay, we spend two whole mornings in the water park.

Northern Lights Arcade:

The kids were quite happy with the medium-sized arcade (and I was quite unhappy, because I hate arcades.) That said, this one was clean and the staff was very friendly. The kids were all able to redeem tickets for prizes, and came away with the usual assortment of arcade junk, which they greatly enjoyed.

Dining at Great Wolf Lodge Ground Mound:

On that first day, we ate an adequate lunch of hot dogs and hamburgers at the Spirit Island Snack Shop, which came to a total of approximately $30 for five people (this did not include drinks, as we brought in our own). Outside food is allowed in the water park, which was a great cost saver. I saw some families bringing in whole coolers. I wish I had been that organized!

For an afternoon break, the older boys continued their MagiQuest game, and I took the preschooler to the Cub Club, where he was able to color and play simple computer games for free. For additional fees, kids could decorate their own Great Wolf Lodge t-shirt or choose from a number of other art projects. We found it quite peaceful…and there was no pressure to purchase anything.

We opted to leave the lodge to eat dinner at La Tarasca in nearby Centralia, which I cannot recommend enough. We were back in time for the nightly clock tower show and story time, which was geared for ages perhaps 2-5. I took our four-year-old, and when we arrived right at 8 pm, we had trouble finding a place to sit. The show was a combination of song and animatronics, and ended in an appearance from Wiley the Wolf (GWL’s mascot) and a bedtime story read by a lodge employee (called a Pack Member). The message was very environmental in nature, and I’ve read other reviews criticizing the heavy emphasis placed by GWL on the outdoors when everything they offer is in fact indoors, but I was willing to let it pass. Perhaps that’s because our family spends enough hours out-of-doors backpacking and camping that I wasn’t concerned my children would mistake the woodsy d’cor of the lodge for the real thing.

Throughout our stay, I made mental comparisons between The Great Wolf and Silver Mountain Resort, where we had stayed the previous summer. They both have their pros and cons, and of course both are family friendly and have family suites. For a compatible room rate (based on the best available public rate at each), you get substantially more room for your money at Silver Mountain, with ‘true’ suites with separate rooms and a full kitchen and the ambiance of an established ski and mountain resort, but Great Wolf provides more for families to do on-site with their Cub Club, Gr8 Space (night club for kids 12 and older), and MagiQuest. The water parks are very compatible: Silver Mountain lacks a wave pool, but boasts a lazy river and surf simulator. My kids couldn’t decide which was better. Undoubtedly, Great Wolf is more centrally located for most people in the Pacific Northwest, and they are definitely geared solely toward families with young children.

We found the service staff to be excellent throughout our stay, with Pack Members’ never failing to say hello, smile, or ask if we needed anything. A Magi Master’ was always on-hand to answer quest-related questions, and I didn’t count the number of life guards in the water park, but it was teeming with them.

I’d definitely recommend The Great Wolf Lodge for a kid-centered getaway.

As I will disclose whenever applicable, we did receive significant compensation in the form of reduced rates and gift vouchers for review purposes, as is standard in the travel industry; however, these compensations came with no strings attached. As always, no less than my honest impressions will be present in this review.