Great Wolf is Great!

We have returned from our adventure at the Great Wolf Lodge Waterpark, and we all had a great time! Of course, any family vacation should have a moment of review when it's over, and that's even more so when the vacation took place at a location that's only been open for three weeks... So for many - if not most - of you, here's the first hands-on review of the Great Wolf Lodge in good ol' Grand Mound, WA!

First, a little about the structure of the lodge/park. It's not like most waterparks, where you simply show up, pay your admission and get inside. This waterpark is firmly attached to the hotel, and is only open to hotel guests. This has both good and bad aspects:

Bad:

• The hotel ain't cheap. Our room was $348 for one night, plus tax. That did include waterpark access for all six of us though.
• Like I said above, being linked to the hotel makes impulse visits nearly impossible.

Good:

• Since the park is only open to hotel guests, they have a very clear maximum capacity, and they have built the park to accommodate everyone. When we were there, the hotel was completely booked, and yet the waterpark didn't feel overly crowded. We've certainly battled far worse crowds at Wild Waves.
• Although our hotel bill was $348, that included waterpark access for all six of us. Park access runs $30 per person, so that was $180 in access built into our room fee. That brings the base room fee down to a much-more reasonable $168.
• This is a hotel that was designed for families. And not just the "family of four" that most "family" things are geared towards.. Every room in the hotel is a suite that sleeps from 6-8 people.
• Finally, the hotel is very nice. Part of that comes from being brand new, but it's clearly built with quality in mind. Friday night as we went to sleep, I didn't hear ANY noise from either neighboring room, or the floor above. And the showerhead was actually high enough on the wall that I didn't have to stoop down to get under it and take a shower! (it shouldn't be such a big deal, but it seems like most hotel showers were designed for unrealistically short people)

So there is, in my opinion, more good than bad to this arrangement. So on with the review!

We got there at 1:00 pm. Officially, check in isn't until 4, but they let you start using the park at 1 even if your room isn't ready yet. Ours WAS ready though, so we got to go right up, get into our suits, and hit the water! Our 5th floor room had pretty good views. Here's the main thing we saw:

That's the same funnel slide I'd seen from the freeway four months ago, but seeing it from the inside was WAY nicer! Clearly the ground around it has been cleared for some yet-to-be-announced purpose, so I'll let the fact that it's not very pretty slide... for now... Here is another look out of our window:

Between the foreground trees and the background hill there are several lanes of Interstate, and a couple directions of train tracks. But we heard absolutely zero noise from either, another testament to how well built the hotel is.

Okay, so enough of the room - the whole reason you go there, is for the indoor water park!

Here are Ellysa, Kaylee, Tyler and Ellysa's best friend Karisa upon first hitting the waterpark. Behind them is the "fort" that most such parks have, with tons of squirting water everywhere, and a 5,000 gallon bucket on top that dumps every few minutes. Normally, I hate the fort. Despise it. Because I HATE the feeling of getting pelted with ice water, which is what it feels like at Wild Waves. But here, since the temperature in the park is 85 degrees every day, the water was downright pleasant! In fact, it was nice enough that Cindy and I decided to partake in the magic of a 5,000 gallon shower.

There's the bucket being filled...

Here's us happily waiting for our impeding drenching... Notice that Cindy's hair was still dry, so it was her first taste of water that day!

And what a taste! It comes down with so much force that even if you're standing far enough away to not get wet, there's a blast of air that's almost equally stunning.

Now that we were good and wet, I wanted to stand under this cool mushroom/rain thing.. It's a big metal mushroom that has water pouring down around it, but is dry inside.

...hard to see through the wall of water...

Peek-A-Boo!

Lots of fun, but like the hotel, we didn't come here for a watershroom or a fort with a big bucket. We came to slide!!!

The slides are amazing. I'm sorely lacking in action pictures, because I don't have a waterproof camera case. But trust me. Amazing. Truly. That funnel slide you see from outside feels way bigger than it looks, when you're swooshing back and forth, heading for the exit at the bottom. You enter the big end of the funnel from a near-vertical drop that, even when you know it's coming, takes your breath away. At night time, the slide takes on a whole new dynamic because the entire ride is outside, and without the light of the sun, it's VERY similar to the new Space Mountain at Disneyland. Like Wild Waves' "Zooma Falls", the Howlin' Tornado uses the big yellow 4-person raft/tubes. But unlike "Zooma", you don't have to carry your own huge raft up all the stairs. They have this awesome contraption:

The lifeguard at the bottom puts your raft into the raft elevator, which carries it to the top for the next trip. SUCH a good idea! They also have some smaller, 1- or 2-person tube slides, where you do have to carry your own tube up the stairs. One of them was okay, but the other one was worth doing again and again and again. And we did.

They have a play pool with basketball hoops set up, and kids (and grownups too) playing water basketball... And there's a rope net over the pool at one point, with floating lilly pads that you can use to help you cross the bridge. Kaylee and Tyler were both victorious!


There's also a baby area that has its own mini fort (with little one gallon buckets that fill and dump... pretty cute) and small slides with nice warm bath temperature water. Nobody in our family needs that kind of area, so other than passing through on our way to the locker room, I didn't spend much time there.

But the Wave Pool was the best of its kind that I've ever encountered.

That's looking at the wave pool (with the watershroom on the left). Back by the canoe shop in the background, the water gets to be 5'6" deep. Every ten minutes the waves start up, and they are serious waves. On our first encounter, Cindy and I were in a double innertube, and got washed all the way to the shore. On future runs, I got better at beating the waves, but it takes a lot of effort, and it's kinda fun to get swept away. The kids had a blast and spent most of their non-sliding time here.

They keep the pool nice and clean too, clearly spelling out what they don't want you to do:

Finally, how do they enforce the "hotel guests only" policy at the park? Wristbands!

The white ones were simply pool passes. The blue one has an RFID tag, making it our room key, pool pass, "charge to room" device, and all around cool thing. I keep realizing that I left stuff out, like a teen lounge that had a free dance from 8:30-12:30 that Ellysa and Karisa thoroughly enjoyed... the grand lobby of the hotel has a clock tower that performs an audio-animatronic show:

And the buffet restaurant was good, but very expensive. Upon leaving, we decided that on our next visit, we'd drive half a mile down the road to the mom 'n' pop restaurant for dinner.

Final verdict? WIN! Everybody go play! Just don't expect to get off cheap.

If you'd like to see all of our pictures, click here!