You may have heard of the place Great Wolf Lodge before. It sounds like something in the mountains but it’s an indoor water park with many locations around the US. We have currently been to two of them, Georgia and North Carolina.
Great Wolf Lodge is basically a hotel theme park. It is amazing, but it is not cheap, but it is doable even for a homeschooling family on one income and a budget. Here are my tips.
Book Early and Off Season
As homeschoolers, we are not subjected to school holidays and can vacation anytime we want so I move the dates around to find the cheapest week. They also often have a deal if you book 3 months in advance, the room is cheaper. Once you get e-mails from them, you will get more notifications of their deals. Our last trip happened to be available on Groupon. It’s an indoor water park, so you can go any time of the year! It’s heated!
Maximize Waterpark Passes
Each room size comes with a number of water park tickets for the room size that is sleeping. Use them! We get the Wolf Den which has a queen bed, a little room with bunk beds, and a pull-out couch. This room gave us 6 tickets! We only need 4, and we have always planned to bring someone.
These water passes start at 1 pm on your check-in day. So plan your arrival. Don’t pay for the night if you aren’t showing up until dinner. You will not have time to enjoy the park. Try to arrive at 1 pm. We made a pit-stop at a motel on our way to NC and enjoyed a local zoo so that we could leave in the morning and arrive at 1 pm. Most of the time your room is also ready, but if it’s not, just make sure you have your bathing suits in a separate bag so you can just change and swim until it is. The pool passes also work for your check-out day, so don’t plan on an early morning getaway. Pack everything up and go play in the pool!!!
The water park includes slides, a wave pool, a water jungle gym, kids zone. GA which is a newer place also had a lazy river. The girls were initially disappointed to find the NC did not have one but they got in the wave pool and did not care anymore.
Bundle and Save
Great Wolf Lodge also has meal plans if you don’t want to leave. If you book them with your hotel it’s cheaper. We enjoy leaving to eat out at least once too because we have always had a vehicle. But we typically enjoy breakfast and a pizza there. And the inhouse coffee at the ones we have been to is Dunkin Donuts, so budget for coffee and donuts if you’re like us. Mama needs a good coffee in the morning and sometime in the afternoon.
Other Fun
You can have enough fun at the water park but that is not all that Great Wolf Lodge offers. They have a variety of fun passes for the kids. For our first visit, the kids were younger and we got the pup pass.
The Pup pass and they get
- A build a Bear
- A cup of candy
- A scoop of ice-cream
- $5 at the arcade
For our last trip, we got a Wolf Pass
- A magic quest o Shadow
- Quest Game
- A wand
- A cup of candy
- A scoop of ice-cream
- $5 at the arcade
- Mining Experience
- Round of Mini Golf
- A movie
- A bowling game
- A game at Atomic Rush
- Laser Tag
The passes also have some discounts attached for various items are their stores. The kids are responsible for a percentage of these fun passes if they want them because we like for them to understand that things are not free.
Great Wolf Lodge also has a daily timetable for other events like crafts, storytimes, and dance parties! There is so much fun to be had at GWL that I am sure everyone will ask to go back again.
What is Magi Quest?
Magi Quest is the best exercise you can give your kids. They pick out a wand at the magic shop that they can use to make the screen wake up and send them on quests along with the floors of the hotel near the main lobby. There were four floors in NC and we were up and down stairs because they did not want to wait for the elevator. I have terrible joints so after Evie got a hang of it, I just sat myself down in of the chairs with a book and let her run up and down all the stairs and check in with me periodically. She probably did 100 flights and 10000 steps in an hour. Just look at how happy here face is.
Kids Review: When can we go back to GWL?
Parents review: well worth it. We had fun and we enjoyed watching them have fun. We hope to visit other GWLs in the country over the next few years.