Amy
I mostly hated this place. It was like Chuck E. Cheese on a grand scale. The worst part was having to wait for our room. I did pre-check-in and we came in early, hoping it would speed things up. Nope. The room was late, so we had to spend a few hours around the hotel. It was loud, crazy-crowded, and kids were running around all over the place making noise and spreading germs. There was no escape from it. A good portion of the first and second floors were filled with ways to get parents to spend money and we managed to avoid going into most of them. After accompanying the girls on a MagicQuest and a little arcade time, I sat in the (crowded) lobby for a bit until the room was ready. At this point, I was ready to go home.
The room was fine and the girls seemed to like that they had their own little camping-themed bunk bed nook. We decompressed for a bit and drove to Centralia for dinner (the food at GWL is known to be awful, so we didn't even try eating there). After we came back, we hit the water park area. This part was lots of fun. There was a wave pool, and various slides and water contraptions. The only bummer is that the really good slides require kids to be 48 inches tall, no exceptions. Anya measured at 47 inches. So Chris and I took a few turns going with Eloise on the big slides and Anya didn't mind. The girls seemed to prefer the wave pool to anything else anyway. We all had a good time and stayed until closing time. Everyone fell asleep pretty quickly.
The next morning, Chris took the girls back to the water park (well, I waited in line for them for the waterpark to open. And what started as an orderly line quickly dissolved into chaos once the doors opened. At least I managed to snag a good table for our stuff), and for a little more arcade and MagicQuest time while I went back and organized everything for checkout. At 10:30 the girls felt like they were swimmed out, so we left. We stopped in Olympia for a nice brunch on the waterfront and then headed back home.
So, overall, I'd say the water park part is fun. I loathed just about everything else about the place, though. So if Anya wants to do another birthday here, I'd begrudgingly go. But ONLY on a weekday. You will never get me to step foot in that place on a weekend again. And, Anya, if you are reading this, know how much I love you that I did this trip for you. I wouldn't do it for anyone else.
Chris
I wouldn't say I had fun as such, but I could see the appeal. It was like Vegas for children. Lots of noise, no clocks, and people looking like they could puke or freak out at any moment.
My main complaint was that there was no hand sanitizer anywhere. I know I'm a special kind of germ-worrier, but even a New Orleans street sweeper would have complained that there should have been some way to combat the infectious diseases which were doubtlessly wafting through the place in invisible clouds, or being continually smeared on door handles and elevator buttons. I filled out a comment card suggesting that perhaps the fire suppression system could be filled with bleach water and periodically switched on for good measure.
I thought that the wand game was brilliant. You had to buy a wand ($15-$19) but no wand is complete with out an accompanying jewel (which you have to buy separately for $10-$17) And even though it only makes sense to buy one MagiQuest game for a team (another $16) you can't only have one wand for two girls. So you gotta buy two of those. These two wands enabled the girls to "magically" turn on various animatronic beasts and electronic paintings around the hotel. It also let them play the aforementioned game, which I contend was a brilliant trick to keep the children from touching things, while at the same time encouraging the children to run up and down the stairs until they were deliriously tired.
The water park was actually entirely cool. I didn't see a single band-aide afloat (though I did strangely see a receipt drift by in the wave pool like a 2 dimensional jelly fish.) The slides were awesome. It was especially cool because it was totally black in the tubes at night. Sad that Anya was 1 inch below the "free to ride anything" line. But we all had a blast. When it came time to go, both Anya and Eloise didn't fight it. Eloise actually said, "I'm good, we can go." That is about as good a sign as any that the place sucked the life out of them.
I would go back. But only on a week night. Outside of flu season. And I would leave poor Amy at home.
Anya
I love Great Wolf Lodge. It was lots of fun. The swimming pool was best. The wave pool was fun, the slide were more fun. We bought a wand, mine was blue with a beat up jewel on it. We used the wands for opening up secrets in Great Wolf Lodge, all around we had to find them.
These things were called Magic Quest.
Back to the water park, the next morning: I got to go on a different slide. I almost drowned by the wave pool, the slides gave me a heart attack. It was so much fun. But I was jealous that my friend got to go on a bigger slide that was more fun. She said she went into a drowning funnel on the inside, it was deep and she almost fell off. I was jealous. Back into the wave pool for me! I got sweeped up by the wave and all that stuff and I got to play a game of shark mermaid and dolphin.
Oh wait! And when we went back to the hotel, we changed into our normal clothes, and played some games in the lobby. My favorite one was the Haunted Mine and Roller coaster (these were motion movie things) of course they were pretend, because, I mean, it was in a lobby. As I was saying, it was pretend. It was actually like an accordion which was carrying us back and forth, up and down and back and forth again.
Oh and, um whenever we played a game and did okay we got tickets (we got 392 tickets). And when we were all done with the games on the last day of Great Wolf Lodge we got the prizes that we wanted. I got a ball, a candy bracelet, and an airplane.
It was lots of fun!
And my friend gave me a present. It was a hair stylist doll. I got to brush her hair. Put one of MY head bands on it and put stickers on her face. And she looks just like me. My parents said she looked freaky in the dark.
The end.
arcade time
visiting with one of Santa's helpers
reading in their bunkbed nook at bedtime
posing with their magical wands
one last posed picture before leaving
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