One of our many fun activities this summer was a trip to Great Wolf Lodge in Mason, Ohio. This was a two night stay and our kids absolutely loved it. Honestly, this trip will hopefully become one we do annually it was just that much fun.
Paul's parents wanted to do a mini vacation this year with Dave and Denise since they were unable to go with us last year to Myrtle Beach. They were very generous and picked up the cost of the rooms for two nights for us. We originally were going to go with a Queen Suite bedroom. What we thought this room consisted of was two queen beds. We have the sleeping in hotels down pat from our trip to Texas so we really thought this would be no problem. Original plan was a pack and play for Ally. I'd sleep in one bed with Sam and Paul would have the other bed. However, upon checking into the room we found that it wasn't a double Queen room, it was just one queen bed and a pull out sofa. I went to go speak with the front desk to ask if they had any double queen rooms available because we really thought when we called that was what we were getting. They were absolutely amazing and ended up giving us a free Wolf Den suite instead. This is the suite that has a Queen bed and pull out sofa and then a little den that has a pair of bunk beds and a little twin bed with it's own tv. The kids absolutely loved it. For the first time in a long time Sam wasn't scared to be away from us. He had one bed and Ally had the other. They watched tv and played and went to sleep without needing one of us in the bed with them (usually at hotels they would be a bit scared but not at all here). Paul and I could say our bedtime prayers and night and then just go into our part of the room and watch a movie and the kids were so content to stay in their own area. It was awesome and I definitely won't go back without booking those exact same rooms.
Here a few shots of the room. Please excuse the bad photos. For some reason this weekend I couldn't get any great shots on my camera. I really needed to switch it over to manual but I just wasn't taking the time to do it properly. So I was on automatic but at times Paul would accidentally switch it over to automatic without flash so they didn't always turn out so great! Also, we have a mix of an old point and shoot camera, the iPhones, and the nice Canon.
You can see the kids little area behind Paul. It has the ladder for the bunk beds and then on the other wall is the single twin bed. We put Ally on the one under the bunk bed because the ladder provided extra protection so she wouldn't fall out of bed. This was the first time she has ever slept in a big girl bed and you could tell she loved it. She slept like a champ while here. Part of it could be the pure exhaustion of nothing but play time but part of it was also she liked having her brother near her.
Ally on her little bed. She is eating a snack and watching the tv that was in the room.
Sammy's side of the den. He loved his little bed area as well. Seriously... best rooms ever. If you go to Great Wolf Lodge spend the money on these rooms in you have young kids!!
The main area of our room. This was so nice because our patio overlooked the outside pool area and King's Island was directly to our right. You could sit on the patio at night and watch the fireworks at night over the amusement park.
We arrived on a Saturday. The nice part is you can check in your room at 4:30 but go to the waterpark anytime after 1:00. So we left early to arrive and found out that our rooms (the original ones) were ready so we could go check in and change into our swimsuits. Well, after we got the room change those were ready as well so we went ahead and changed into our swimsuits so we could get a few hours of water time in before dinner and bed.
The kids absolutely loved everything about the water park. I think because they go with my mom so often to the pool that it really helped them not be scared of the water. The only thing they didn't like was the water coming down over their heads. But I can understand that because a) it is loud and b) the force of some of that water is a bit hard for their young age.
What I loved about this water park is that the lifeguards are on it. They are in the water and constantly sweeping the bottom of the pool with their eyes. They do not stand and talk to each other at all. If you ask them a question they don't even look at you when they respond. It's not that they are being rude, they are just so focused on their jobs. I really felt like we were safe there. And even though you can bet Paul and I kept our eyes on our children at all times (we divided them up and would call to each other if we were switching, so I'd always be watching one while Paul was always watching the other) it was nice to know we had lifeguards as back ups. Also, they were very strict with the rules. If you were over a certain height you did not go down the kids slides. It kept the children's area free from teenagers and really helped the kids have fun.
There are so many different areas of the park it is hard to explain them all. The kids favorites would be the water slides, the wave pool with fountains, the outdoor pool, and the lazy river. I think the slides had the most of our attention. Sam is getting so big that he would go down all of the slides on his own. He would very carefully walk up the steps and pick out a slide. A couple of them are pretty fast so we always made sure we were at the bottom to catch him. Ally also loved the slides. She was still a little young to get on the slides herself so either Paul or I would need to carry her up and get her in place. No matter what slide she went on we were at the bottom to catch her. Here are some photos from the slides. Again, the photos are pretty bad quality but with the humidity in the pool area I just couldn't get the best photos and the lighting was all off. Plus some are taken on a point and shoot and iPhone.
You can see Sam at the very top waiting patiently for his turn. He did great and listened to the lifeguards about when it was time for him to go even without one of us up there with him.
Sam coming out of the bottom of the slower blue slide. It still shot them out pretty fast so we were there to catch them. If for some reason he didn't come up there was a life guard at the bottom too which was a nice extra precaution.
The blue slide shot him out pretty fast. We were always ready for him on that one. It took him a few times to get up the courage to go down it, but once he did he loved it! I was so proud of him for how brave he was all weekend.
We kept Ally mainly to the little orange one. Just because she was still so little and not as steady on her feet as Sam is right now.
This is a shot of all the kid water slides. No adults are allowed to go down these slides with the kids. The far left is a yellow one that goes pretty fast. The two orange ones are super slow and let the kids stop before ending up in the water and then the two blue ones dump them out into the water.
I don't have any pictures from the Lazy River or outside in the outdoor water park simply because I didn't want to take anything expensive into the water park since we would not be near enough to keep an eye on it at all times. Another nice thing about Great Wolf Lodge is that your arm bands are your room keys. We could literally just leave our room in our swimsuits and need nothing else. The kids wore their bands on their ankles and it didn't seem to bother them at all. Ours were our room keys. We'd just swipe our hand across the door to be let in. And towels and life jackets were provided at the entrance to the water park. However, we did not use their life jackets and instead used our puddle jumpers which I love and would recommend to anyone who has a child that falls into that age range.
The Lazy River was actually pretty fast and was probably one of the best things that wore Sam out. He literally would run the river. I would float along next to him while he just ran as fast as he could through the rive. He loved it.
The other great part was the wave pool. At the entrance to the wave pool it had lots of little fountains that the kids loved running through.
Saturday:
- Arrived around 2:00, checked into rooms and changed into swim suits
- Played in water from about 3 to 5
- Dinner at the upstairs buffet restaurant (very expensive... not sure it is worth it to us because we don't eat enough at a buffet to warrant the prices, probably would skip this place next time)
- Relax in room until kids go to bed after dinner
Sunday:
- Eat breakfast in room
- Buy a paw pass and explore lodge
- Build their wolf pet
- Order pizza from lodge pizzeria and eat in room
- Swim after lunch
- Go to game room to play with kids
- Back to water park to eat dinner in the water park and swim until bedtime
Monday:
- Breakfast in hotel room
- Swim for an hour
- Check out of hotel by 11
The paw pass is an excellent purchase with kids. This pass let them get a pair of wolf ears:
build a wolf pet (if we didn't want to do this it wouldn't have been worth the purchase of the paw pass because the pass cost $40 and this would have cost $25 by itself):
Ally was scared of the machine so Sam stepped on the button to fill up her wolf.
We took her wolf away from her and she thought she didn't get to keep it. She was so happy to have it back that she kept hugging it and wouldn't let it go. You can see the tears she had when it was taken away.
Another part of the paw pass was tokens to the game center. This had a lot of your usual arcade games along with duck pin bowling. Honestly... their favorite part was just sitting in this bus that didn't move. Oh well it kept them contained and in one spot!
The kids trying out duck pin bowling. They stayed entertained for all of 3 balls and then were done with it so Paul finished out the remaining frames.
And a few other things that they played with. It's a really small arcade and you don't need anymore tokens then came with the paw pass. So the kids were happy and really it kept them entertained for about 45 minutes which was all we needed until dinner time.
The hotel had plenty of other free activities for the kids. There was a story-time with animals. They had balloon animals and these huge coloring books. Definitely helped fill time when we just needed them entertained for a few minutes.
And just to add, Sam finally became potty trained for everything! He had no problem telling us when he would have to go pee up before that weekend but would never poop on the potty. He would hold it until bed time. Two days before we left he finally went poop on the potty and hasn't had an accident since. He did great at the hotel. Went with no problems and had zero accidents the entire time. We were so proud of him.
The last day we tried to get a couple of group shots. The kids didn't want much to do with it. However, can I just say that I love the fact that the squirrel at Great Wolf Lodge is named Sammy the Squirrel!
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