Lake Erie / Great Wolf Lodge – Part 2 can be found here.
Up bright and early at 7:30 am the next morning so that we could hit the buffet restaurant at 8 am and make the waterpark right when it opened. Although official open time is 9 am, the waterpark will typically open 10 minutes early. This is a great way to get in some extra runs on the ‘big’ water slides like the Niagara Rapids water rollercoaster, the Woolly Mammoth family raft, and the Canada Vortex giant drop-in bowl, which uses the blue tubes.
(The yellow tube slides and the bodyslide slides were fairly accessible throughout our stay, so those were less of a priority.)
After about 30 – 40 minutes of waterslides, the bigger slides began to fill up – so we’d head back to the cabana to read and relax, while the kids would go off and again cycle through Fort MacKenzie, the wave pool, and our cabana hot tub.
Drink and food service open at 11 am. You have quick access to a cabana attendant if you’d like to order anything, though I generally prefer to order directly as it makes it easier to customize the order – this is particularly the case with the tacos, which have many, many options available.
The buffets and the waterpark restaurants are all good enough, but we’ll be skipping the meal plan next time around. It’s just as easy to order off the menu at the same (or lower) costs, particularly once you put the occasional pizza in the mix.
After lunch, our son went off to shower and play some MagicQuest. For those not in the know, this is a kind of live-action role playing game in which players interact with physical items throughout the resort to complete quests and solve puzzles. It’s a lot of fun, though there are only a limited number of quests – so after the third or fourth visit it can start getting a bit stale.
Even so, our son has played for a few hours this trip, while our daughter played for even longer. It costs about $20 before tax, and includes unlimited play for each stay.
The rest of us eventually headed back to the room to shower and change, and then we all met up to go play mini golf.
We last visited in January, so the outdoor mini-golf wasn’t open then. It’s a well-done course, and much easier than the one offered at the Hungry Putter. There’s also quite a bit of shade – which we needed, as it was exceptionally hot outside.
We’d received a loyalty gift from Great Wolf Lodge, which we elected to trade in for a round of laser tag. My son particularly enjoyed it, so we elected to get all-you-can-play lasertag for this stay at $25 per person (so $50 for both of us).
My wife and kids then went off to hit the arcade and play a bit more MagicQuest, while I went off for an afternoon nap. We met up again at 4:30 pm and headed off for an early dinner at the buffet.
Again, tasty but not necessarily less expensive than just ordering off the other a la carte menus.
They were running a round of bingo in the great hall, so my son went off and played a few rounds – where he ended up winning two extra games of bowling! He was quite pleased with that.
Wife and daughter went back to the waterpark – where they had virtually free run of the slides, particularly just before close – while my son and I played a few more rounds of laser tag and went through his free games of bowling.
The following day was virtually identical, except that we elected to order breakfast from Barnwoods instead of going to the buffet. (We figured we’d save the last buffet for our final morning, when we could have a bit of a sleep-in.) This meant that the kids could sleep in until 8 am, which they appreciated. We ran into a minor technical hurdle when their computers locked up, but they were able to process the orders manually.
Then back into the whirlwind – early waterpark open, lots of slides, chill / relaxing time, vouchers for lunch, son departs early and then we all meet up for golf.
Golfing today was at the brand-new Ripley’s Crazy Golf – an indoor miniature golf course. It’s smaller than the outdoor course – 9 holes vs. 18 – but it includes some really creative elements, including a swing that players sit in as they try to drop the ball into the hole, a pool table where they use the back of their club as the cue, and a beer pong table.
The kids really enjoyed it, and we’re looking forward to playing through again when we’re back in January.
Back into the mix – MagicQuest / lasertag, dinner, bingo, and then splitting up once more so my wife and daughter could max out their waterslide time and my son and I could get in some more laser tag.
And there we were – two nights gone, and the third winding up. We keep thinking that the kids will outgrow Great Wolf Lodge or get sick or it, but it hasn’t happened yet. And I think they’ll continue to enjoy coming here for a few years yet to come.
**it should be noted that by the time my wife finished the last waterslide on our 3rd day she had climbed more than 114 stories or higher than the CN Tower over 3 days. For future trips we’ve decided 2 days is enough.