Great Fun at Great Wolf Lodge Niagara Falls
Written: Nov 13 '07
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: - fun for all ages, clean, very family oriented
Cons: - food is expensive
The Bottom Line: A lot of fun for all ages in a safe and clean environment.
|
|
|
| jqqj's Full Review: Great Wolf Lodge Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada |
My family (husband, two sons 2 and 5) visited Great Wolf Lodge in Niagara Falls for the first time last week-end. Everyone in the family had a lot of fun. We would definitely do it again.
We stayed one night (Sunday night) and had a special rate of $149/night for a family suite which also included entrance for 4 to the water park.
Some of the highlights of our stay:
Check-in/Out
The outside of the hotel was quite grand with 4 huge totem poles holding up the front canopy of the entrance. The lobby is decorated like a lodge with log furniture, a large fireplace that had animated wolves perched on the mantel. There is a display with animated talking tree, bear, moose and other creatures that can be activated by kids by placing their hands on a handprint switch. The display is also the gathering point for the evening story time (more on that later).
Rooms are available at 4pm but they will let you check in if your rooms are ready earlier. You also have access to the water park at 1pm even if your room is not ready. When we arrived at 1pm, there were about 25 people ahead of us in the line up to register. We waited for about 20 minutes and it was hard for our young kids who were excited but had to stand in line with us. Our rooms were not yet ready but we got our bracelets to go to the water park first and then at 4pm they just activated our bracelets to open the door to our room. They could have had more people working at the front desk to check people in (there were 4 people at the front desk)
If your room is not ready and you are heading to the water park first, make sure you pack a separate bag with stuff for the water park so you can leave your luggage in your car.
There were only 2 elevators for the whole place (there are 4 levels) so it was a lot of waiting around for the elevators when everyone was trying to get to their rooms.
Check-out time is 11am but you can stay at the water park until they close at 9pm. So again, we packed a separate bag for the water park and loaded our luggage in the car after we checked out. To avoid the rush, we checked out a little before 9am and when the water park opened at 9am, we spent another 3 hours there before heading out for lunch and then home.
Food
There are several restaurants and snack bars in the resort but we found it rather pricey ($17 Cdn for a medium pizza at the resort, we ordered out and got a large deluxe pizzas for half that price). We also found playing in the water made our family exceptionally hungry so bring plenty of food and snacks for your family. Food from the outside is not allowed in the water park.
Rooms
The rooms are equipped with a microwave (bring popcorn!) and a bar fridge. We had a family suite which consisted of 2 queen beds and a pull out sofa that was partitioned by a half wall. There are also themed rooms that have bunk beds like a tree fort or a log cabin for the kids. The rooms were very clean. I found the bathroom a little small but the sink was located out in the room which made it convenient. Our room had a balcony that overlooked the back of the water park. There was also a safe in the room to keep valuables.
Water Park
Bear Track Landing Waterpark – the water park was spectacular with lots to do. The changing rooms could be made bigger to accommodate people who could not yet check in. It was only about a 15’x15’ space with two rows of lockers, a couple of showers and 4 toilet stalls. The bracelet activates the locks in the locker rooms which makes it quite handy. If you forget which locker you have, the kiosk with the towels can check your bracelet and tell you. The instructions for how to activate the lockers were posted high on the walls above the lockers instead of on the locker so it was not very obvious at the beginning.
Towels are provided for water park use only so you may want to bring your own towel or cover-ups. You should also wear flip flops or water shoes. They also have limited life jackets of various sizes for children.
I was surprised by the number of things to do for all ages at the water park. There was a large splash pad with spraying nozzles of all sorts, a wading pool with kiddie slides and a wave pool where the deep end is 5ft and it slopes up to zero depth. My 2 year-old enjoyed splashing around in the shallow end of the wave pool. There were several water slides for bigger kids and adults (had to be 42” tall). One of them you go down on a raft that can fit up to 4 people. Another one had a vortex where you swirl around a “toilet bowl” a couple of times before continuing the slide down. There were 3 smaller ones that you go down in a inner tube, it was enclosed. Part of the slides continued outdoors but since the tubes were coloured, you couldn’t see that you went outside. They should have made it transparent. There is a hot tube outside that you can access via a water channel for adults only. They had a lazy river that was 3 ft deep and when you sit on an inner tube, the current propels you around the river. There are things that squirt water at you, a bubbly part in the river, a dumping bucket section where filled up buckets of water will dump on your head as you pass by. People also swam in the river without an inner tube.
The water was very warm and even after coming out of the water, I didn’t feel cold.
There was a whole series of water works above the splash pad and main entrance where kids can play with nozzles, dump buckets, sprayers, etc… It was built like tree houses with bridges joining the different sections. There was a water lily pool where kids can try to walk across the pool on floating lily pads while holding on the ropes above their heads. There was another pool where people can play basketball in the water or play with floating devices.
There are some really strong chemicals in the water (which I am glad they have to kill all the bacteria and germs with such high volume of people) but it really dries out your skin and stings your eyes. My 2 year old had irritated eyes and his eczema flared up.
Other Activities
There is the Northern Lights Arcade where there are token games where kids can win tickets and trade them in for prizes.
At 8pm, all the children gather in front of the animated display with the talking moose for story time. There are songs and stories which both my kids enjoyed immensely.
The Cub Club is a large open space decorated like the woods where children can go and do various activities like crafts, drawing, build blocks, etc… When children join the Cub Club (just ask the coordinator at the desk), they receive a free bracelet, news about Great Wolf Lodge and kids specials.
The Trading Post is a gift shop that has some unique gifts and some touristy things like t-shirts, caps, mugs and other trinkets.
Next time, we would stay for 2 nights which would have made our trip less hectic and allow more time to enjoy everything.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
jqqj
|
|
Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 0 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.