Great Wolf Lodge
My folks had a great idea this past Christmas - they gave us a family gift in the form of a visit to Great Wolf Lodge in the Poconos. Great Wolf is a resort hotel with a huge indoor waterpark. The first one opened in Wisconsin about ten years ago, and there are now several of them around the US. We've been wanting to go to the one in Pennsylvania since it opened in 2005, and we were all very excited finally to have the opportunity.
When you're slogging through winter in the Northeast, it's really good to have this sort of fun available to you:
We reserved a room for Thursday night, so we pulled the kids out of school around mid-day on Thursday and drove up there in the afternoon. (Took about two hours to get there.) The hotel is set up for families, so the room we reserved had space for seven people. Longtime followers of this blog will recognize right away that with room for seven in the hotel, and room for seven in the minivan, we couldn't pass up an opportunity to bring extra people with us. So we had two honorary Spergers along with us: Nick's friend Will, and our cousin Maddie.
We arrived around 4:00, and checked into our room. Because of the waterpark, Great Wolf has a funky room key system. You wear a bracelet that counts as your admission pass to the waterpark, and it contains an RFID tag that serves as your room key. You simply hold your wrist up to the doorknob and your door is supposed to open. We had to, um, practice a little bit before we managed to get the door open:
Soon enough we were settled into the room, changed into our swimsuits, and headed down to the waterpark:
We stayed in the waterpark until just before 9:00, when we headed back up to the lobby for an audio-animatronic show at the clock tower. This was a little weird - kind of a farm-league Disney knockoff - but I think Anna enjoyed it:
We all crashed for the night soon after that, and got up and did the same thing on Friday. One nice feature is that even though we were only staying one night, we had access to the waterpark for the whole day after we checked out. We played until dinnertime, washed up, and hopped in the van to head home.
Thanks again, Mom and Dad!
When you're slogging through winter in the Northeast, it's really good to have this sort of fun available to you:
We reserved a room for Thursday night, so we pulled the kids out of school around mid-day on Thursday and drove up there in the afternoon. (Took about two hours to get there.) The hotel is set up for families, so the room we reserved had space for seven people. Longtime followers of this blog will recognize right away that with room for seven in the hotel, and room for seven in the minivan, we couldn't pass up an opportunity to bring extra people with us. So we had two honorary Spergers along with us: Nick's friend Will, and our cousin Maddie.
We arrived around 4:00, and checked into our room. Because of the waterpark, Great Wolf has a funky room key system. You wear a bracelet that counts as your admission pass to the waterpark, and it contains an RFID tag that serves as your room key. You simply hold your wrist up to the doorknob and your door is supposed to open. We had to, um, practice a little bit before we managed to get the door open:
Soon enough we were settled into the room, changed into our swimsuits, and headed down to the waterpark:
We stayed in the waterpark until just before 9:00, when we headed back up to the lobby for an audio-animatronic show at the clock tower. This was a little weird - kind of a farm-league Disney knockoff - but I think Anna enjoyed it:
We all crashed for the night soon after that, and got up and did the same thing on Friday. One nice feature is that even though we were only staying one night, we had access to the waterpark for the whole day after we checked out. We played until dinnertime, washed up, and hopped in the van to head home.
Thanks again, Mom and Dad!
