GREAT WOLF LODGE IN WILLIAMSBURG OFFERS UNIQUE FAMILY EXPERIENCE

Our family recently traveled to Williamsburg, VA to experience The Great Wolf Lodge, a family hotel with a 55,000 square foot indoor water park.  With three kids, ages 3-13, it can be a challenge to find a destination that will provide fun for everyone.  The Great Wolf Lodge was a Grand Slam Home Run for our family. 

Located just five hours away from South Charlotte, The Great Wolf Lodge provided a perfect three day escape for the family over the recent school break.  In addition to the waterpark, we made a side trip to Colonial Williamsburg for the kids to see American history first hand.  Anytime a child can see history with their own eyes versus the textbook, we believe it’s an advantage.

Moving back inside the waterpark where the temperature is always 83 degrees.

With many locations nationwide, each Great Wolf Lodge features a couple of different attractions.  The Williamsburg location features a super-fast family raft slide, two extremely quick inter-tube waterslides, a large water fort with two body slides, a relaxing a 98,000 gallon lazy river, a wave pool,  a toddler pool and slide,  two hot tubs, a 77,000 gallon recreational pool and couple of other water activities.  During the summer, guests can also enjoy an outdoor pool area. The state-of-the-art facility utilizes nearly 300,000 gallons of water that is splashed, sprayed, waved and played in by both kids and parents alike.

The hotel rooms are also part of the attraction for The Great Wolf Lodge.  Each of the rooms are "themed" rooms. Our family stayed in the Kids Cabin style room. This room featured two bunk beds inside a log cabin within the room. Hannah, Will and Tyler grabbed the bunk beds.  The room also included a television and video games for the kids. Our hotel room also included a Queen size bed and a pull out couch.  A gas-log fire place added the final touches to this wonderful hotel room.

Once we were settled in Will, Tyler and I raced to the waterpark and the fun began. My wife Grace, and Hannah were a little behind, but within minutes we were all inside enjoying the attractions.  Each child had a favorite attraction. 

Tyler, age 3, enjoyed Fort Mackenzie  This is the four story interactive tree house water fort featuring 12 levels of water-based adventures interconnected with suspension bridges, cargo nets and web crawls. Two body slides that twist and turn all the way to the bottom and end with a splash! A 48-foot tall water tower bucket dumps 1,000 gallons of water every few minutes. Over the course of our stay, Tyler went down the waterslides over 100 times.  Everyday since our return, he has asked, “Daddy, when we are going back to Great Wolf Lodge.”

 
Will, age, 10, enjoyed Alberta Falls.  On this attraction, guests climb to the top of a landing and choose from two tube slides covering 687 feet. The slides twist inside and outside the Lodge before dropping into a pool below. The slides provide a thrill for all ages and like most fun rides, provide enough of a scare to make the kids go back for more.

Hannah, age 13, enjoyed The River Canyon Run. On this attraction, up to four guests can climb into a raft and enjoy a 461 foot plunge through an enclosed tube, landing into a pool below. 

The water park opens at 8:30am every morning and closes at 10:00pm.  We stayed inside the park for a large majority of those hours.  The Great Wolf Lodge also features planned kids activities throughout the year in the Cub Club, a 1,200 square ft. children’s activity room.  Our kids also enjoyed the Northern Lights™ Arcade, a 7,000 sq. ft. arcade and redemption center.  The Lodge also features Elements™ - An Aveda® Concept Spa.

A new attraction at The Great Wolf Lodge is MagiQuest, the first live-action adventure game of its kind at a resort.
Appealing to everyone from very young children to older adults, MagiQuest is designed to immerse you into a world of Renaissance-style fantasy propelled by modern-day technology. MagiQuest works like a videogame in the sense that it challenges you – the “Magi” – to complete quests, accumulate powers, and proceed to higher levels of the game. However, unlike a video game you won’t be confined to a computer screen.

With three restaurants and a general store inside, our family had many choices for each meal.

As a family, we have been lucky enough to travel to a lot of fun destinations.  For over excitement from start to finish for the entire family, we have places The Great Wolf Lodge at the top of our list.  We recommend a 2-3 day stay at the resort with a trip to Colonial Williamsburg. To plan your trip, we offer a couple of tips.

The room rates vary, naturally weekends and holidays are going to bring the highest rates.  Take advantage of teacher workdays to plan a nice 2-3 day trip.  The waterpark will be void of lines and the room rates will be the lowest of the year. 

Our kids seemed to be the perfect age to take full advantage of the resort.  You may want to hold off until your youngest reaches the age of three.