Great Wolf Lodge

Our family and another family went to Great Wolf Lodge in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania for a weekend. This place is amazing. The resort is a chain, but the one we visited had to be pretty new. The room was brand new, the furniture, the carpeting, it was all brand new. The whole place is themed like the "American Wilderness", with wolves, bears, moose, deer, and beavers everywhere ... from the decorations in the lobby, to the logos on the literature, to the wallpaper in the rooms. The restaurants were named "Critter Cafe" and "Loose Moose", the theme was everywhere.

Even the furniture was impressive. Following the "wilderness" theme, the beds and dressers were made of heavy wood, the bedposts were huge logs easily 18 inches in diameter, even the mirrors were framed in knotty wood.

The place features an amazing indoor waterpark. I thought, "indoor waterpark, it's probably small". But this thing was huge. I counted about ten water slides, a huge wave pool, lazy river, the whole nine yards. One of the water slides goes UPhill in several spots (aided by jets of water which shoot up the slide!) Very impressive. And since it's the Pocono mountains, you get the juxtaposition of 18 inches of snow outside, 85 degree waterpark inside. I got some photos of my family in the water, and a window in the background showing off the snow. Messes with your mind.

Maybe this is a sign that I don't get out much, but much to my surprise they sold liquor in the waterpark. I don't recall being able to buy beer at other waterparks. And they had bottles of beer in both plastic and aluminum bottles! I've never seen a plastic bottle of beer before. It was the same size and shape, same brand (Bud), but it had a screwtop lid, and was recyclable plastic. Am I just a homebody or is this new?

And then there were some aluminum bottles. Not cans, but bottles. Again, same shape, but totally aluminum. And again, something I've never seen before.

So in the old days, when you check into a hotel, they gave you a key. You know, a real key, made of metal? Then came those card systems, where you swipe the card in the door slot to get into your room. Great Wolf has something new: a wristband. The wristband is your entry to the waterpark, but it also has an RFID chip in it. You wave it in front of your door, and the door opens. Pretty slick. You're stuck with the wristband for your whole stay, which can be annoying, but the cool factor outweighs it if you ask me.

And it doesn't stop there. Since the wristband has the RFID chip in it, you can use it all over the resort. Go to the cash machine, wave your wristband for cash. Pay your dinner bill with your wristband. Pay for gift shop stuff with your wristband. Buy arcade tokens with your wristband. Go to the "internet kiosk" to use their computers to send email, and use your wristband to gain access. Pretty wild.

By far the coolest thing was MagiQuest. You buy these magic wands, plastic things really. Inside the wand is an infrared transmitter, just like your TV remote is an infrared transmitter. You can see the little "electric eye" at the end of the wand. And there's no buttons on the wand. To activate the transmitter, you flick the wand, just like if you were using a real magic wannn..... no, there are no real magic wands.

Anyway, around the whole resort are about 60 ... I guess you'd call them "stations". You flick your wand at them to do things. Walking down the hallway to your room, there's a painting of a sword on the wall. Flick your wand at it, and it lights up and talks to you. There's about ten "treasure chests" placed throughout the resort, on end tables. You flick your wand at them, and they open up to reveal "gold" inside.

When you get your wand, you personalize it with a "character name". And then you begin one of about ten "quests". They start out easy, and get harder. All the quests are in a booklet, each quest is a poem. The poem leads you on a journey, you have to guess from the poem's clues which "stations" you have to visit, and in which order. The system knows which quest you've chosen, so if you flick your wand at the "green crystal" (for example), and the green crystal isn't on your quest, it says "come back later", or "your magic doesn't work here!".

If you do the right things, in the right order, you finish your quest, and you get points. Remember, there are about ten of these quests. We did two of them, and they took about an hour each. We sure got our exercise. Each "clue" leads you to the other end of the resort! So you crisscross the place, and the whole time you're running past kids going the other direction looking for other clues, flicking their wands at anything and everything. And you have to be sharp! Some of the "stations" are in the ceiling, and you can easily miss them. Some of the decorations in the lobby (ex: the carved wooden bear, the stuffed howling wolf) are "stations" and will animate when you flick your wand at them.

During the day you can go to the MagiQuest kiosks and check your status. You flick your wand at the screen, and it shows you who you are, what quests you've finished, what quests you haven't finished, what "stations" you need to visit to finish your current quest, and how much gold you have. At the end of the day you can go back to your room and compare your gold points against everyone else in the hotel on the television!

And the wands work at other hotels that have this system, although I don't know how many have it. You can bring your wand back forever, it will still work.

The downside is that they sock you in the pocketbook. About $20 for the wand, and that's just the basic wand. If you want to decorate your wand (arts and crafts paint), that's $5 more. If you want some frilly tassels, or a light-up gem, that's another $9. It's really slick the way they did this. The whole place is crawling with kids flicking wands everywhere, and of course your kid is going to want one. But I have to admit, deciphering the clues and muttering "now I know I saw a suit of armor around here, where was it?", that's pretty fun.

Another downside is that the quests take place any time you like. So even if you choose to go to bed at 9pm, you're going to have kids running past your room on quests. It got pretty bad both nights we were there. There was a lot of noise in the hallways and we had to call the front desk both nights. 11:30pm should be late enough for the kiddies, don't you think?

And the place is truly a resort, they really go out of their way to make it a total package. There's story time every night in the lobby. They have free arts and crafts each day in the Cub Club (we made St. Patrick's Day hats!). They had a free scavenger hunt too, even though it was all just a big marketing ploy (ex: How many games of skeeball are there? What animal watches over you in our huge buffet?)

The place got over a foot of snow the night we arrived ... I was impressed that the bellboys and maintenance actually dug patrons out the next day. Nice job.