Live so that when your children think of fairness and integrity, they think of you. The highest courage is to dare to be yourself in the face of adversity. Choosing right over wrong, ethic over convenience, and truth over popularity ... these are choices that measure your life. Travel the path of integrity without looking back, for there is never a wrong time to do the right thing.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Drew's Birthday Weekend Part 2:

The Great Wolf Lodge!

This year for Drew's Birthday, he opted not to have a friends party and come to Wolf Lodge as a family after the traditional Mariner's weekend! This place looked super fun for kiddos and it exceeded their expectations! :) When we drove up we couldn't believe how huge it was. Once inside, it was all the grander. They really thought of everything, so user friendly! You can have your credit/debit card linked to your bracelet for the water park which also acts as your room key so you don't have to worry about cash or debit while in the water park. It was so nice to be able to go from water park to restaurant to arcade and back to the room without carrying any $ or room keys, etc. around.
Drew was so so so excited! When we arrived at the room he had a surprise banner awaiting him on the door! He felt super special :)
Once inside, he opened the info. for the rest of his extra birthday surprise package!! An ice cream from the candy shop, a magi quest birthday package, and more...
We splurged for the cave room inside a room suite and he was so super excited! Haliee was a trooper oohhhing and awwweeeing up her digs for his sake :)

The room was super cute although you don't spend any time there :)
Inside the lobby everything is interactive. They have a story time by the fire which reminds me of the splash mountain ride through the brier patch at Disneyland. All of the animations come to life and the kids loved it (even my kids to pretended to be uninterested and too old through dinner and finally gave up the act to run over and see what it was all about)!

The fireplace was HUGE like 3 levels high, I tried to snap better pictures of it unoccupied several times, but someone was always there.

The water park was actually quite fun! I thought I brought my camera along once to snap pics, but apparently not, I was having too much fun playing with my family. Here is the only pic I have looking from inside the lobby into the water park :( SAD! They have 4 slides and 2 family rides which were pretty fun. It wasn't crowded at all and we were able to re-ride as quickly as we could climb back up the stairs. Our kids were on the older end of the activities but we all still had a blast. Everything is a competition for our family so we had a basketball (pig) competition as well as a leap frog competition. They have this little jungle gym activity of 6 or 7 lily pads with a rope across the top so you are able to stabilize yourself and hop across them. We competed on several levels as to who could cross without falling {fastest, standing no rope, lying on your tummy, no hands} you name it, we competed. SUPER FUN! I was the best....according to Drew he was...nevetheless we were quite entertaining for onlookers lol!
They had this little teen club complete with a cover charge area called "GR8 Space". It was totally cute for teens only with wii's, a dance floor with black lights and disco balls, couches, lounges...Haliee thought she was "too cool" for it, although I am sure she would've loved it with a friend. We kept teasing her to try & see if she would go in.
The arcade was pretty standard and of course a hit (although Drew barely went in as he was all counsumed with MagiQuest I'll explain below) It was all too convenient to slide your wristband & receive $5 worth of tokens...DANGER! Haliee beat me at Skee-ball (BRAT!) This is my favorite and I usually dominate! It was also full of blacklights and they had tons of fun.
Ok now on to MagiQuest....which is a post in itself...GEEZO!

Ok...so...Drew found this on the website when we booked our reservations. It looks like an interactive game where you do through a room with a tour guide of sorts finding clues, etc. They had a birthday package where you could play, choose a wand, etc. so we surprised Drew with it thinking he would go though this hour room and have a great time. Now, there are several of these places around the US this one just happening to be inside the hotel.

Drew was elated to say the least. We took his voucher into the Storefront and it was good for 1 round of the game which actually is good for 3 days at this location, a wand of your choice, and a wand topper of your choice. They had outfits (thankfully Drew was too old to want one), a variety of trinkets, wands, toppers, belts, etc. He could choose from any topper and any wand (there were more than a dozen toppers to choose from) except these 2 specific ones which were about $15 additional....wanna guess which ones he liked the best...YEP! Along with this $15 felt belt to hold your wand and we were ready to play! :) Now the game itself was quite elaborate. You could choose to be as involved as you would like. When they sign up and choose a name and their booty though, they are given a brief guide and told if they complete all 12 missions they can return for 3 additional special missions and upon completion of those can receive a special award certificate and button. Which was all Drew needed to hear...Well this entire hotel is 1 huge game. It is not a room like others...So through the hotel you go, there are 5 floors and after about a zillion trips up and down the stairs and elevators, we were not so impressed with the Magi...LOL! Drew was insistant upon completing his "Mission" So we played day and night in between eating, water park, arcade, candy shoppe visits, we were on the Mission of the stinking Magi! We played as a family and took turns putting up with Drew's relentless conquest...The clues were vague at best and it was way too involved not to have adult assistance. Alas, we completed his mission staying hours after checkout and breaking it up with some waterpark action!




All in all this place was a blast, they make it so user friendly and it was fun for the whole family. Our kids keep asking to go back even though I think it would be ideal for ages 6 - 9. The restaurants were super yummy and quite reasonable which was a pleasant surprise for Mommy & Daddy! :) Happy Birthday Drewy! I can't believe you are already 10, I hope we made all your little 10 year old birthday dreams come true my little prince!

1 comment:

haliee said...

btw the magical questy thingy was a pain in the B-U-T-T!!! just putting that in there haha(: