Great Wolf Lodge

Last week Great Wolf Lodge (which I have dying to take the kids to for a long time!) advertised on their facebook page that they were having a 48 hour sale. This sale gave you just about half off of their incredibly expensive price, which made it much more feasible for us to go. You could book anytime from now until July, but it was cheapest during the weekdays of May, and since Alan is "off" on wednesdays, we decided to go for it! As soon as Alan got off of work on tuesday afternoon, we checked the boys out of school early (and they got to miss the following day, which was thier last day of school, they were so excited) and we headed to Texas!!


Can't go to Texas without stopping at Dairy Queen!



















They give you wristbands when you get there, and the wristband actually is your room key, you just wave your hand in front of the door. You could also just charge everything to your room that way, at the stores and places to eat, they just scanned your bracelet to buy stuff, so you didn't have to carry around a wallet or purse....brilliant!

We had booked a family suite, which had 2 full size beds and a pull out couch. I wanted the kid cabin room, but it was $60 more a night, for the kids to have their own little enclosed "cabin" in the room. They also had wolf den rooms where the kids have a encolsed wolf den, super cute. But we knew we were going mid-week and school wasn't even out yet, and our friend Lori said she had heard if you ask on slow nights to be upgraded to a bigger room, they would do it for free, so that was our hope. Much to our suprise when we got there, Alan didn't even have to ask, they offered a room upgrade and we got the kid cabin! Score!



The kids LOVED it! it had 3 beds in it, and it's own little tv and stuff, so it was perfect.



































we had our own little private balcony/patio

























A legoland discoveryland had just opened up down the road, and they had an advertisment inside the lodge, which was The Great Wolf Lodge built with legos! it was really neat.





The waterpark was giant!! They had 9 different slides, 6 different pools, a wave pool, a lazy river, a giant 4 story "tree fort", a kiddie area, an adults only pool, a hot tub.....

see that crazy thing? it was part of the twistin' tornado slide, it was insanely fun, I loved it. You would go down this crazy steep hill and get spit out into this funnel, and it threw you up and down the sides of it, like you were going to flip all the way over, it was so crazy, it was fun! By far my favorite ride there.



We picked a great time to go, it wasn't crowded at all, and there were never any lines, as soon as you got up to a slide, you could go down it!














The kiddie area





















The wave pool







This was the main lobby. Our room was on this floor, which was the the floor the main entrance brings you onto, but it is actually the 2nd floor, and you go downstairs to the waterpark and arcade and all of that stuff.







They had a clock Tower show, that played 2 times in the morning and 2 times at night. When we got done playing at the water park and into our jammies we went and checked it out!






her head hit that pillow and she was out.....




There was tons of things to do there...



They have a starbucks, a pizza hut, 2 other restaraunts, a sweet shop, a teen hangout, a kids spa, an adult spa, an arcade, a kids club with arts & crafts & activities, a magiquest game & store, it was incredible....





























The coolest part of the lodge was this intertactive wand game they had called MagiQuest. (They also had another game called compass Quest, but we didn't play that one)

Daddy took the boys to the MagiQuest store, and they picked a wand, a really cool dragon topper for it and a belt to hold it.....



We just got one wand to share for the whole family, Starla was upset, she wanted a pink glittery one.... :)





there were signs telling you not to use the elevators for the games (I'm guessing it would tie them up too much) so instead you had the "hidden" stairwell. There were 8 floors, and the game would take you up & down and all around, it wore me out!! There were like 9 quests you had to go on before you could fight the dragon at the end. And you had to go down to the bottom level to this certain tree to choose a quest, and then you followed the clues to finish it, it might take you ip 2 flights, back down one, up 4 , down 2, lol. It was alot of fun though.





there were a ton of "props" for this game everywhere, even pictures on the wall that you didn't realize were part of the game until you pointed your wand at them and they started talking to you! And if you weren't on a certain quest and didn't need that particular prop or person, it would tell you about it, lol.








We would play at the water park for a while, then go play the game and take a break from the water, then go back. it was nice to have lots of different things to do.







it was so much fun to watch Starla's eyes light up after her wand made something happen!





even daddy did a quest and had some fun with it!







I loved all of the fairies involved in the magiquest game.....




This was fort mcKenzie, or something like that, the giant 4 story tree fort with tons of water fun and a double slide.



It also had a giant bucket that dumped down on everyone every 6 or 8 minutes or something like that....









here's the big bucket, which holds 1,000 gallons, dumping on Alan & the kiddos....




Starla spent alot of time at these 2 slides, riding them over & over again. They were fun, all of us slid down them several times, but the boys liked the bigger ones much better....



here's starla & me on them together....




Starla liked the big yellow slide, she rode it several times with daddy....





the big green & white one was a lot of fun, after several hills and turns it spits you out into that big bowl and you spin around & around the sides until you go into a tube in the middle, like a big drain, down another big slide and out of it.





look at allllllll of those stairs!! those stairs kicked my booty!! I guess all this time training on the stair stepper was getting me ready for this, lol. Up these stairs were the 5 big slides. They had one, that all 5 of us could ride at once. Starla rode it once with all 5 of us, and it's got some pretty steep drops, and it makes you go up the side pretty far, almost like you are going to tip over. She buried her head in my lap and didn't look up or open her eyes the entire time, lol, which personally I think has to be scarier, since you have no idea what's coming next. So I was surprised when we were done that she hopped out and said "let's do it again!" and so the next time she rode it with just me & alan, but she still buried her head and closed her eyes, and after that ride decided she didn't want to ride it any more, lol.






swimming pool basketball....





daddy helping starla across the frog pond.....





hot tub time!










coming out of the twistin' tornado funnel....









Alan on the lazy river....













before we left town, we stopped for dinner at fuddruckers....



where we met our friends, The Jones' Family, who live in Texas.

Starla & her betrothed, carter. :)



It was soooo much fun, and I'm glad we got to kick off our summer this way!

The next day the kids went to stay with Nanny & papa at the lake for a week!! It's been quiet the last few days....and amazingly, when I clean something it stays clean....weird how that works. :)