Swimmers

This year Andrew turned 8 and as he has a summer birthday we decided to let him pick what he wanted to do.  We gave several options of things he might like and the big winner this year was going to the Great Wolf Lodge.  He loves the water and it was for sure what he wanted to do.

On the actual day we just did a small celebration of cake and a few presents and then got ourselves packed and ready for our 2 days of indoor water park fun.  Andrew was counting down the days till it was time to go.  He was soooo excited.

We did some fun back to school shopping up at the outlets while we waited to check in to our room.  We were still about an hour early but the park let us do an early check in.  After a quick change we hit the water.

I have to say it wasn't as crowded as we have had it in the past.  It was kind of nice to have only about a 10 minute wait for the main water slides.  I think we hit those main slides up over and over while the lines seemed short.  After about an hour we had probably done just about everything there was to do.

Andrew loved the slides and the Lilly pad pond.  I think we spend a large chunk of our time in this little area.  Both kids loved climbing on the floating toys and going across the lilly pads.  Megan found she was a little taller than last time and tried different ways each time.

It was kind of strange having just our family there on that first day.  We found ourselves a little bored after about 2 hours.  This is crazy for us but it is kind of what happened.  I mean after season passes at Wild Waves this place just didn't seem to have enough to keep our attention.

The kids were happy to get into our room and look at dinner options.  We had just gotten ourselves dried off when we were exploring and came across Ken & MarGene.  They came to wish  Andrew a happy birthday and get set for MarGene to join us on the 2nd day.  It was perfect timing and we all went out to dinner.

After that we bought our souveniers and headed to the room.  We tried to get the kids to go to the puppet show or dance party but they were both pretty much tired and didn't want any part of more activities.  We ended up calling it a night and just hung out as a family in our room.

We were up with the sun the next morning and ready to roll.  After getting our stuff repacked and set for the day we headed out to explore some more while we waiting for the park to open and MarGene to join us.

MarGene was able to score us some wands to do the treasure hunt quest thing.  When she came to visit us the day before she saw some people who live in her community who had just done the wand thing.  They were more than willing to let us borrow them and enjoy.

Once we got MarGene all set and the park opened we were off and running for our last day of fun.  We of course went straight to those main slides.  It was awesome to have maybe 5 minute lines.  It was all those stairs that made them a killer but super fun.  I think we hit those slides up again as much as possible.

We then ended up in that Lilly pad pond again.  My kids just loved to hang out there  It kind of made it a bit boring for adults.  There isn't much to do but keep an eye on the kids.

We only lasted till lunch time when we all voted to change to dry closes and go for the wand quest.  After filling up on some fun food and getting changed we hit the main lobby.  We used MarGene's wands to try and get a quest going.  We quickly learned that this stuff was a little more difficult then it originally seemed.

I think the way it works is that you pay for a wand and then a game.  The wand gets wiped clean and you go to the main tree and get going to find stuff.  Since our wands were active but already used we seemed to have issues.  We'd try to find stuff and we'd get the stuff saying "you have already found this item" then one wand would work but the other one would not.  It got increasingly frustrating trying to figure out what we needed to do and what was going on.

The kids did enjoy going and finding stuff but kind of wished it was making more sense and we could start from scratch.  I think we had spent an hour before we finally figured this clue out.  At that point none of the adults really wanted to go in and get the wand reset to start all over.  We just wanted to find stuff and move on.

I'm not sure that we enjoyed that quest stuff very much.  Maybe because we didn't have a clue what we were doing but it was really a bunch of back and forth up and down hunting.  Not really too fun in my book.

We were really happy to have had the chance to try it out.  I think every time we have gone the kids have wondered what it would be like to try it out.  Now we know and have some idea of what to expect if we go again and decide if we want to invest in trying again.

All in all we had a great two days of water fun and family.  We loved to go and have such a great time.  It was a bonus to celebrate Andrew's birthday and we loved making his desire to go come true.

Not sure when we'll be going back again.  It was great fun but we might try to come up with something different next year.  Maybe something new with water fun.  Who knows what we'll come up with.  Fun times as always.