Great Wolf Lodge

Well, we had talked about it for a long time.....and finally this year we made the trip to Great Wolf Lodge for Frankie's 13th birthday! He got to invite his best friend Blake (who has never missed a birthday since they were in kindergarten!) and we also invited some good family friends to go as well. The only problem, at 13 and 10 the kids are getting a little too old to fit comfortably in the back of the car for an extended  trip! lol It's pretty bad when one of the boys suggests the quiet game!

 

So you can imagine their joy when finally they saw the sign for GWL!!!

We got the room that had the KIDS CABIN..... so they had their own space and their own tv! I thought it was very cute!

The boys took the bunk beds.....

And Gracie took the daybed.....

The lobby was all decked out for Halloween! Very fun, but we were one week too early for the Halloween activities.....Not that there isn't plenty to do any other time. It is definetly designed with kids in mind. A mystery game, an arcade, a kids spa, etc.....

The views from the lobby windows, but unfortunetly, it did not capture the full enormity of the place!  There were so many different pool areas, and several places for little bity kids and it was just so big, you could not see the whole place unless you were up on the stairs waiting in line for a slide.

The wave pool is where the boys spent most of their time. Every 10 minutes a wolf woud howl and the waves would start up like you were in the ocean! Then there would be a brief lull in the water where it was calm and the pool would clear out for the most part, and then the wolf would howl and they would all came a runnin again! 

When one kid would be in there, you would send another kid in to retrieve the first one and neither one would come out! It was more like the Bermuda Triangle than the Wave Pool, for once they went in, you never saw them come out!!

 

What made for very comical action was if you fell trying to get out. Every time you would try to stand up, another wave would come and knock you down! The boys actually liked this effect and would attempt to crawl out and therefor get the effect!

Frankie finally emerging! He used the ladder instead of tring to walk out the other side! lol

Then there was the Lazy River! Now THAT was more my speed! You could sit or lay on a tube and let the current take you around! The only problem, it was so shallow, unless you sat in the tube, you risked scraping your toes or knees! Ha! Ha!

The Rollercoaster Slide! It's the long blue tunnel! It also always had the longest line. It went so fast, Chris and Gracie caught a little air on it! It litteraly lifted them off the slide for a few seconds!! There twords the bottom is a big ol' bowl like slide....we nicknamed it the toilet bowl! It was very much like being flushed down a toilet! I allowed Gracie to talk me into going on it! Frankie was right in his description of it....FAST! Let's just say as we were going down I think the whole waterpark learned Gracie's full name!!!  

One of the very few things I can complain about the place (which is NOT very many) is how many stairs you have to climb to get up to the slides. And if you are afraid of heights, and you have to stand in line for any length of time....not pretty! And if you DON'T have to stand in line, you don't get a chance to stop and catch your breathe before being plunged down the slide!!! It all makes for a very light headed experience!  

So Chris and the kids convinced me to go on "The Family Slide". Such an innocent DECIEVING name!!! The kids went on one raft before us, then Chris and I in the second. He was supposed to make it so I went down facing front, however his insistance that I get in first, along with some probable conspiring with the guy who gave us the heave ho down the slide, put me going down backwards!!! I still get a headache thinking about it! No I did NOT enjoy the ride, in fact I felt motion sick for much of the rest of the day! However Chris and the kids loved it all day, so that is what counted!

Chris and the kids coming down "The Family Slide"....... above and emerging from it below......

Gracie in all her glory!!!

The "Toilet Bowl" to the right of this picture, and where you emerge from it in the middle  of the picture. Then, I guess as a consolation as to how your gonna feel afterwards (literally hard to walk) it takes you right into the lazy river!

 Finally, on the way home, it was a much more quiet ride ! Except for the time we sat still in traffic due to an accident, the trip home went much faster than the trip there! Doesn't that always seem to be how it is. I wonder if part is due to the anticipation of where your going!