Great Wolf Lodge

We are vacationing at The Great Wolf Lodge.

This fine "family-oriented" resort is one of 10 such "northwoods-themed" water parks scattered across the country (Connecticut, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, etc.). Wisconsin has the dubious honor of hosting two such, one at the Wisconsin Dells (a perfect fit), and a "nautical-themed" resort in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. We are in the first one west of the Missouri River, which opened late spring of this year. We are in Chehalis, Washington, about an hour from Seattle and an hour and a half from Portland.


The Great Wolf Lodge -- or at least this one -- is a 4-acre hotel complex with a 4-story water park attached. That is, a giant funnel with a 40 foot drop -- the "Howlin' Tornado Water Slide" (the outside of which is visible in this photo), three other water slides, a hottub/whirlpool, a playing pool with basketball hoops and things to climb on and slip off of, a toddler's pool with no curb, and a large wave pool.

For children who love to be wet, heaven.


In the LotsaWater Dumping Area, a very large bucket (and I mean, very large -- 6 foot tall, perhaps?) tops a structure full of water guns and spinning water wheels, and the starts of two of the tube slides. A pipe dumps water into it at a rate of several gallons a second; it is balanced to tip over every 3 minutes, spilling out hundreds of gallons of water, completely soaking, drenching, anyone at the base of the structure. This is HomoDomi's favorite water feature.

But wait, I'm not done. There are five restaurants, a Starbucks, several shops (gifts, Crocs, Swim, & stuffed animals), an Aveda Spa (massages, manicures and facials), a "kid" spa (manicures, pedicures and facials, all with cupcakes on a bright pink sofa), a Video Arcade, a "Gr8 Space" (several large televisions that serve as Wii and XBox displays during the day, televised football games when there is one, and "Teen Dance Hall" in the interim), and last but not least, a large lobby dominated by an 8-foot fireplace (curtained off this summer) and by a giant animatronic treehouse. The treehouse is peopled with lifesize (and larger) robots: Yellow Feather, an Indian girl, and her wild forest friends, Moose, Owl, Woodchuck, and Raccoon, and Simon the white boy, who is afraid of the forest -- until Yellow Feather and the animals sing to him. Every fourth hour.

We arrived at about 5:30 last night, in the midst of the changeover of guests at the resort hotel -- there was a line of 20 people waiting to check-in. FemmeDomi crossed the lobby with our room keys and water park passes, and said to me only, "This is so Not Us".

And it isn't Us, but it has been a good experience. The children are in heaven, overwhelmed by the constant stimulation, always with something fun to do. And there is much people watching.

You don't actually swim here. We splashed last night for two or three hours, mostly in the wave pool, but also doing most of the slides. This morning started slowly, with Starbucks coffees, and then a couple of hours of splashing, but then Boy-Child went to the Video Arcade and Girl-Child and I started playing a resort-wide game of High Tech Scavenger Hunt, which I hope to blog about tomorrow. We pulled the kids, kicking and screaming, back to the room for some quiet time in the late afternoon, and then met a friend (who moved to this area from Portland last year) for dinner at a nearby out-of-resort restaurant. Tomorrow we will have one last swim, and then head home. I think the kids would be happy here for perhaps another full day before getting bored, but always pull 'em out wanting more.

Which I hope to do with you, by ending this entry here.