Great Wolf Birthday

When Kate was trying to decide what kind of birthday party she wanted, I started pricing various places to host parties, checking into character appearances because she wanted Elsa and Anna at her party at one point, and realized that for the same money as throwing a party with a bunch of kids and people and clean up and stuff, we could take her for the night to Great Wolf Lodge and have a mini vacation. I gave Kate the option: regular party with all her friends, or Great Wolf Lodge. She chose the latter, so I booked our room and Nick even took two days off work so we could have some fun.

We spent Thursday night because it was cheaper than a weekend night. That place is expensive, let me just say that right away. I found a Groupon the day I was going to book our room, so we saved about $40 on the room. I don't really see how families afford to stay out there 2 or 3 nights. Honestly, one night was pretty much enough for us and we didn't feel cheated out of any experiences because the only thing we did was the water park. All of the extra stuff, the arcade, Magic Quest, laser tag, etc - yeah, that costs extra.

We arrived around 3:30 and got to our room, which was upgraded for free because the hotel decided our original room wasn't ready after all (it seemed fine to us) so we stayed in a Kid Cabin suite with a log cabin and bunk beds for Kate and Trey to sleep in. Fine by me!

We changed and got to the water park just before 5 pm and stayed in the water until 9 pm when it was time for the park to close for the night. There were hardly any people there besides us. It was pretty awesome - there were several instances when we were literally the only people in the whole lazy river, or wave pool, etc. Even on Friday morning when we got back to the water park after breakfast, it wasn't crowded by any means.

We swam on Friday until around 2 pm, and honestly by then we were all tired and getting cranky and pretty much over the water park experience by then. Well, all except Kate. She was perfectly content and probably would've stayed in the water until 9 pm again if it had been her choice. It was starting to get a little more crowded by Friday afternoon, and as we were leaving there were several people checking in for the weekend. I was really glad we decided to do a weekday night for our stay. It was quite perfect.