Great Wolf Lodge • 2009

Wow. It’s been awhile. I promise we’re all still here and doing well! We’ve been doing a lot around home (crown molding updates to follow), a lot of nothing (summer break is drawing to a close), and a trip!

My parents (thank you thank you thank you thank you!) bought us a 3 day, 2 night stay at the Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine, TX to coincide with James’ fourth birthday this summer. Now that we’ve been home for a bit and David’s business trip is over and the pictures have been edited, I’m sitting down to gather my thoughts about the entire experience.

From the outside, it looks like just another hotel until you notice the water slides protruding out of the walls. Unfortunately, I did not get any pictures of the outside of the building. I was holding a camera but it was a video camera, believe it or not. (A video camera that we actually no longer own software to get the video from so I can’t share any of the footage with you. Hmph.)

We pulled up at a quarter to four (check-in is 4 pm) and I dropped David off and went hunting for a parking spot. The hotel only has about as many spots as it has rooms. Since you can show up as early as 9 am on the day of check-in to enjoy the water park and you can stay as late as 10 pm on your check-out day, there are, in the afternoons at least it seems, twice as many vehicles there as they have spots. I secured a spot next to an illegally parked truck (it was straddling a line, parked squarely in the middle of two spots), nursed Korben, and fielded questions from James. I was afraid that it would take David a very long time to check in but he said our room was ready and within about 15 minutes after getting there, we were hauling the first load from the van into the hotel room.

The boys loved exploring our room. It was a “Wolf Den” which was a single queen (it felt smaller, maybe because the ceiling was so tall and the room was pretty big and it was the only bed) with a little “cave” area which housed two bunk beds and had a window. I knew in advance that the cave didn’t have a door, so I brought a tension rod and a curtain from home to cover the doorway so Lowell would have an easier time of napping in the middle of the afternoon.

Our room keys were actually wrist band bracelets with the little chips in them – which was really nice – nothing to carry down and lose in the water park and they served as our admission into the water park. After David found a luggage cart and emptied the van, we put on our swimsuits and headed down to check things out. Golly.

The actual water park is indoors which is nice and not nice at the same time. Nice because it’s not 110ºF and in the blinding sun (like it is outside these days) but not nice because the chlorine smell hit you like a slap in the face when you first walk in. We all got used to the smell after a short while, so that didn’t keep us from having fun, but I imagine that if you’re sensitive to bleach this place is probably not for you. There were three areas that we visited and about six or seven areas that we did not visit due to the fact that we (adults) were outnumbered by them (very young children).

The kiddie pool was a nice little splash pool that was a foot and a half deep and contained different splash things that you had to either pull, twist, or squeeze in order to make them spray. At the far end were two small slides and these were great fun for the boys. Lowell went down the yellow one once. Sorry, no pictures of that one time — I was wearing Korben and had to literally push Lowell down the slide so he’d go and David was at the bottom to catch him. James went down the blue slide a few times and then decided it was time to conquer the bingh! bingh! slides! (Bingh = Big in Jamespeak)

And did he ever.

I only took three lenses and two camera bodies (I know, still overkill but it felt like I was packing lightly considering all that I left behind) thinking that the second camera body would be my “Murphy’s Law Insurance” and I ended up shooting mostly with the “backup” and ultra-wide angle. For future reference and since I feel like I’m writing a review of the place anyhow, a higher adult:children ratio would have resulted in the opportunity to have taken better/more creative pictures (I’m just sayin’)… I only got the ones I did because I wore the baby in the mei tai and was determined NOT to get wet and traveled around with a dry towel wrapped around the camera the entire time and I didn’t think about doing that until the very end. If I would have sacrificed getting wet/the baby having fun again, I could have taken the time to have my options available to me – for example: I borrowed my brother’s 24-70 f/2.8L and didn’t take it down to the water park long enough for it to get past the initial fog-up even though it is BY FAR the best lens ever. Well, the best lens ever for this trip.

There were lockers, but at $15/day, I just didn’t see how it could possibly have been worth it when the hotel room was, like, right there.

We ate at the restaurant the first night. (They also have a buffet restaurant on the 2nd floor and several eateries on the 1st floor) It was pretty good and since our room came equipped with a fridge and microwave, we zapped the leftover kids’ pizzas for lunch the 2nd day. If you go, take plenty of drinks to keep cold in the fridge. We went through juice boxes like there was no tomorrow. :-) Partly my fault, yes. The second night, we drove up a bit to a Chic-fil-A and then found a couple of boxes of Tylenol because my jaw. My jaw. Was Killing Me. I have got to get that checked out.

Oh! How could I forget the fountain! This was Lowell’s favorite part. That and the airplanes in the sky. (GWL is next door to DFW) The window had big rain drops on it, so don’t go thinking my lens is dirty (the sensor is another story, but I’m avoiding dust spots with big apertures for now).

We skipped the wand things and the Magi-Quest (pronounced Madge-EYE, not Mah-jih like I thought) — those kids were a little crazy! — but we did hang out in the arcade for a little bit on James’ actual birthday. He loved the whole thing. I think he wants to move there.

I can say that this trip was one that will not long be forgotten. I’ve left out a TON of pictures, so if you want to see them all, visit our flickr set slideshow, please.

Thank you, Mom and Dad. It was worth every penny.