Great Wolf

We spent the weekend in Great Wolf, a hotel/water park in Williamsburg, VA.  CJ's best friend (and his family, of course) invited us to join them to celebrate Beckett's birthday.  We had never heard of Great Wolf but are we glad we went!

We left work early on Friday afternoon.    It was probably a mistake going in to work on Friday morning but I had so much to do.  Oh well.  I always manage to get a ton done right before a trip, which makes me think I need to get away more often, but boy is it stressful!

We were on the road a little after 3pm, not bad considering that Maki and I worked a little more than a half day and we had to finish packing.  We would have been fine with traffic if we had used the HOV lanes, but we took 2 cars so Maki could come back early to attend his Mount Vernon radio club meeting on Sunday.  So we got stuck, stuck, stuck on 95 going down to Richmond.  Good thing CJ is a good traveler. He likes listening to his music and he's now a great conversationalist.

We stopped at McDonald's for dinner, then got to Great Wolf around 7pm.  We met our friends at the water park immediately after checking in.  Wow, what an intense place.  The water park is indoors, of course, which I guess is why Great Wolf is such a great winter destination.

There are lots of things to do at Great Wolf (kids club, magic quest, story time, etc.) but the big attraction is the water park.  It's a giant room with all kinds of water activities, including:

• a wading pool with small slides
• a wave pool that makes waves every 20 minutes or so; it's fun to sit on a floatie and get carried back to shore
• a twisty maze that takes you to the top of several water slides
• 4 giant slides where you slide down on single-person and two-person floaties
• a balance pool where you hold on to a net above while stepping on moving logs
• geysers everywhere that spray water
• contraptions that spray, splash and dump water
• an artificial surf maker that CJ and Maki went down; they did a great job!

In other words, there is water everywhere.  Surprisingly, the water park seemed very clean, not moldy at all, yet not too antiseptic as well.  I got out of my comfort zone and went down the blue and yellow giant slides on a double floatie with CJ 10 times.  After the first couple of times, CJ and I were asking the lifeguard to give us a push down the slide, then we would scream all the way down!  CJ event went up one of the giant slides (without floaties) with his friend Beckett leading; they even had to climb a net to get to the top!

Food options were slim.   There is a restaurant that has a breakfast buffet and a decent lunch, a Pizza Hut, a snack bar in the water park, an ice cream shop, and a coffee shop.  We did the breakfast buffet once and had lunch at the restaurant the day we left.  Otherwise, we left the property for lunch and dinner.  CJ enjoyed making his own kid pizza at Pizzeria Uno.  And the mini-dessert of a brownie with ice cream was big enough for an adult!

CJ wants to go back and since he's such a fan of water, I suspect we will return.  My suggestions for our next visit and for those who want to go:

• Leave the house early and get there by 12 or 1pm so you have the rest of the day to enjoy the water park.
• Get to the water park early to reserve a table and grab a floatie.  There are lots of floaties and they're reasonably easy to come by, but you know how impatient kids get.
• Bring your beach shoes.  We brought CJ's Crocs and they were perfect.
• The water park is least crowded after dinner.
• The rooms have coffee makers, small refrigerators and microwaves, so next time, I'll bring cereal, milk, fruit, bowls spoons for breakfast.  The breakfast buffet gets crowded and I'd rather spend the money on lunch or dinner.
• Don't bother bringing beach towels. The water park has plenty of towels and they're often just out of the dryer so they're nice and warm.
• So as not to go too crazy in the water park, I'll schedule time at the kids club or story time for CJ.