The calm before the storm.
It’s 8:30 a.m. and we are first in line staring through the glass doors that are still 30 minutes away from opening. We arrived yesterday and realized that during prime time seating is very limited. Tables are a coveted commodity. Don & I have adopted a strategy of divide and conquer. My surveillance skills of eavesdropping on my neighbors has revealed their strategy: send in the kids. The small children have been told to run in and get a table. The children closest to me have received their intructions and are anxious to engage in their mission. I already know that I will be successful. Most of the kiddos near me are very small boys. I know that during this half hour wait time they will lose interest and then when the doors do open they will all scramble to the nearest tables. Don and I have set our sites further back to an area that has fewer tables that are not in the splash zone. Now all I have to do is sip my Dunkin Donuts coffee and wait.
Let me go back to the beginning which was Christmas. Last year we gave a trip to Walt Disney World/Universal as a Christmas present to my grandchildren. We opted for memories over merchandise. It was such a success that this year we decided to continue in that spirit and booked a weekend stay at Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg, Virginia as our Christmas 2017 present.
A short while after opening.
The Great Wolf Lodge chain is basically a family-centered resort anchored around an indoor water park. When you book your stay your daily admissions to the water park are included in the price. There are varying levels of rooms ranging from standard, premium and themed suites. There are numerous free events that are scheduled throughout the day mostly designed for the very young children like morning yoga, the Great Clock Tower Show, character meet and greets, crafts, dance parties and bedtime story time where the kids attend in their PJs. The add-on extras (read: money makers that the older kids will want to do) range from an arcade, mini bowling alley, 4D short movie theatre and the wandering wand adventure known as MagiQuest. They also have separate kid and adult spas and in the nicer weather outdoor rope courses and mini golf. A big plus is that they allow incoming guests to access all facilities from 1:00 p.m. on the day of check-in & all day on the day of check-out. They have lockers, showers and changing facilities to make this extra access an attractive option.
Upon arrival you are issued bracelets that serve as your room key, entrance access and allow you to charge items to your room to be settled at check-out time. (This feature was immediately disabled for obvious reasons – No, I wasn’t worried about the kids I was worried about Don at the bar.) We were also issued limited release Easter themed wolf ears which seemed to be highly prized as the usual wolf ears are grey.
Looking particularly foxy in my wolf ears!
Despite initial complaints the boys donned their ears.
In order to accomodate our crowd we opted for a Grizzly Bear Suite which featured a fireplace, small balcony, huge waterfall shower in one bathroom and jacuzzi tub in the other. Every room comes standard with microwave, small coffe maker and mini-fridge. The rooms are not so much designed for comfort as they are to provide you a place to collapse, exhausted after spending all day engaged in activities.
Image courtesy of Great Wolf Lodge. Instead of the window, we had a sliding glass door that led out to the balcony.
As much as I love natural water: beaches, lakes, rivers, streams I am not a big fan of water parks. This one is very reminiscent of the one at Massanutten Resort. I think this one is bigger. The noise level is deafening and you have to scream to converse with someone sitting right next to you. Kids are running wild everywhere. The Lazy River should be renamed The Crazy River. There is nothing lazy about it as kids are literally running through it with or without tubes, diving through tubes, onto others tubes, you get the picture. While I was attempting to float and mind my own business my own grandkids assaulted me and boarded my tube like pirates with the expected result of capsizing us all into the current.
Pirates masquerading as innocent children.
The Crazy River. Note more than half these folks have no tubes.
There are numerous water slides with the premier attraction being “The Tornado”. Don renamed this ride “The Toilet” because it is exactly what one must experience if one were being flushed down a commode. Two to four riders (weigh limit 700lbs) sit in a raft and are launched down a tube that dead drops you into a big bowl which you fly back and forth in until you circle the drain, so to speak and then complete the flush into a pool. My son Steve, who is 6’4″ and definitely outside the design parameters for this ride was banged and bruised. Of course, this never stopped him from repeated flushings.
Kim, Mike and Zac at the end of the flush.
6’4″ does not flush well.
There are pools for basketball and obstacles, there’s a wave pool (when it gets ready to start it is announced by a pack of howling wolves, which illicits screams from all the pool occupants), there’s a wave riding simulator, large kiddie pool area with lots of splash features, a huge fort-like thing in the center for climbing, sliding and dumping water onto unsuspecting patrons and most importantly for me: a hot tub that doesn’t admit anyone under 21 years of age. A snack bar and actual bar completes the water park area.
Dan getting ready to sink one.
Steve and Zac’s forceful ejection.
Damian negotiating obstacles.
Damian wave riding.
Although it clearly states “No Outside Food or Drinks” on the doors of the water park no one hassles you for having some snacks you brought from home to munch on during the hours you’re sitting there. In addition to their snack bar they have a pizza place (I called to have 2 pizzas ready for me to pick up at 7:30 p.m. for the kids Saturday night as the adults were retreating into Williamsburg proper for a decent meal in a nice restaurant: Corner Cafe. Tell Tony we sent you 😉). There is a buffet type restaurant on premises, ice cream and candy shops, gift stores and a full service Dunkin’ Donuts and an express. We brought breakfast and lunch supplies from home and even were able to pull off hot dogs and burgers with fixings our first night with the help of my portable electric griddle. Another plus is you never have to venture outside to get to any of the areas in the resort. From our room it was a short walk to anything on premises. The longest line I encountered anywhere was trying to buy some coffee in the morning after we ‘sprung ahead’.
Don loading the kids arcade cards with $.
The kids starting to amass a great quantity of tickets which they traded for copious amounts of junk.
All in all despite the dated animatronics you encounter with the Great Clock Tower and MagiQuest all the kids I observed seemed to be having a great time. I saw very few kids crying or carrying on. The biggest threat we faced were people trying to make off with your chairs in the water park. Typical interaction: “Are you using that chair?” Well, let’s see, I put all of my stuff on it because I’m not using the chair? Kim encountered one woman who actually asked her “Do you really need all those chairs?” Uh, there are 8 of us so YES. Get yourself down here 30 minutes before opening like my stupid in-laws if you want a chair! (Note: Kim would never say that last sentence. How she’s tolerated us all these years I’ll never know.) Management and check in staff were great! We encountered a few small problems with our room and they went out of their way to make it right. Kudos to them. I felt like a weekend was just the right amount of time to spend there. Since Michael is 18 and a very able babysitter it allowed us to go out to dinner with Steve & Kim and just reconnect on an adult level. The kids roamed between the arcade, bowling alley and the ice cream palor. They arrived back to the room just minutes before we did and got to spend some time together without the old folks interference. Our time together is always time well spent.
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