Great Wolf Lodge

About six months ago, my sister-in-law (Auntie Kristy) and I started talking about what we wanted to do to celebrate my mom’s 60th birthday. My mom has always loved swimming and water parks, so when Kristy suggested we might look into Great Wolf Lodge, I jumped at the chance. It was one of those things that I’d always wanted to try out with our family, but it was a bit spendy and I wanted to boys to be old enough to be worth the expense. My mom’s 60th was a perfect excuse to go check it out.

Originally, we had scheduled the weekend for January, but we got snowed out! After re-coordinating everyone’s schedules, we decided on March 11th-12th. You are allowed to enter the water park at 1pm the day of check-in so we piled in the vans and headed north Saturday morning.

When we arrived at Great Wolf Lodge it was a madhouse! Simon claims that you have to be a wolf to go there….an idea they helped him believe by giving all the kids wolf ears.

Eventually, we made it in to the locker rooms, got changed, and started having buckets of fun. The kid pool was amazing with a couple of slides that Simon wanted to go down over and over again. Even Caleb enjoyed going down one of them on Baba’s lap. There was a great wave pool, and some bigger slides that the adults and Elias were able to take turns going on while some of us stayed back with the littles. I couldn’t believe how fast some of the water slides go! On one of them, I was actually a little scared for Elias who was coming behind me. He made it down just fine, though, with a smile on his face and I no longer worried. They also have a great family raft ride that we went on a bunch.

We stayed for a little over three hours, then took a break for dinner. Against my better judgement, we decided to take the boys back down for more fun after dinner. Their usual bedtime is about 7 pm, and we went swimming from about 7-9 pm…on daylight savings time eve….when all three of them had colds. But you only live once, right?

We hurried up to our room at 9 and gave them a rinse off bath. Needless to say they were wiped out and fell right asleep. It was a restless night, and we lost an hour of sleep, but we got to wake up for more fun so it worked out! My parents took us to a great breakfast buffet as a thank you for taking them on the trip. Caleb tried his first french toast sticks and really loved them.

After breakfast, we had to get everything ready to check out before we headed to the pools. While Nathan, Auntie Kristy, and Baba took everything to the vans, the rest of us stayed and played upstairs. Uncle Scott came up with a fun game which involved the boys jumping/being thrown into a nest of pillows. It was right up their alley.

When we finally got down to the pools, Auntie Kristy let me borrow her phone case so that I could take some pictures in the water. We took advantage of the wave pool when the waves weren’t on. Caleb really enjoyed walking around in the water on his own.

And with his best buds.

When the waves started, Elias and Ama went to get to the biggest ones. Elias was really in his element the whole weekend. I think he could stay and play there forever.

Caleb didn’t like the waves, but he did like the fountains. Something about this one really made him tickled. He was laughing so hard!

We all enjoyed going down the slides with Elias because he loved it so much. Here is Ama coming down. Being 60 hasn’t slowed her down at all.

Simon, Caleb, and James mostly stayed in the kids pool but there was always plenty to do there. Here is Baba playing with them.

Alas, all good things come to an end. By lunch time, the three youngest boys were toast. While Elias could have gone all day, we decided to pack up and head home before the meltdowns really began. It was a wonderful weekend, and we really hope to visit again some day! Happy birthday, mom!