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Family, Food, Photo-A-Day, Travel, Vlog

Great Wolf Lodge Adventures 2016 – Day 1

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Howling Tornado at Great Wolf Lodge New England
Photo-A-Day #4115

Right off the bat let me explain the disclosure on this one. My company was running a 50% deal to stay at Great Wolf Lodge. I found a Wolf Den room which is the only way we’d be staying since a family suite won’t cut it for us anymore. The kids need their own little space and the Wolf Den is perfect for that. So I paid for this trip and two Pup Passes for the kids. However, I contacted the PR person from Great Wolf Lodge and let her know that we would be coming and that I’d be making videos and doing blog posts about the trip. I asked if they could do anything for us. Well, when we got her they had made us VIPs, upgraded the Pup Passes too the next level of Paw Passes and we checked in right at 1pm. The Director of Guest Services came out and greeted us as well. They even left a complimentary cheese plate in our room. Does this influence these videos and blog posts, no. Opinions I have of the place are 100% my own as always.

We drove up after meeting with our Real Estate Agent. We made an offer on the house that we feel in love with. That offer was countered and now we have to decide our next move. We’re going to sleep on it.

Then we drove to Fitchburg and had a nice lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings. This turned the kid’s attitudes right around. You see, they don’t like not knowing what is going on. We did not tell them that we were going to Great Wolf Lodge. Rather we packed up the night before and just got into the car. Allison blames the attitudes on the Bennett Hangrys. If I don’t eat I do get Hangry. Eva does as well and Andrew just feeds on whatever anyone else is going through. But lunch was something that turned everyone around, plus we were mere exits away from our destination.

The reaction from the kids was priceless. They were so thrilled to come to the park. They were even more thrilled to find out that we would be staying in a Wolf Den room. We saw one of them during our first visit at the Grand Opening two years ago. It has taken us this long to get back.

We had a great experience at check in as I mentioned above. Then we went right to our room. The kids decided that one night Andrew would take the top bunch and the next night Eva would have it. We were delighted to see a beautiful cheese plate with prosciutto and a couple of cheeses plus a backed cheese item on top.

We changed and headed to the water park. We did the River Canton Run slide first because the whole family could go at one time. Andrew is just too little for the Howlin’ Tornado (Today’s Photo A Day) but that is okay, next time. We also hit the wave pool and the two kid pools, the lazy river and the hot springs (giant jacuzzi). Eva and Andrew also did this thing where they climbed across wobbly platforms while climbing hand over hand on a rope net. They liked that a lot. Allison helped Andrew do his.

Andrew got the biggest laughs getting me wet in the big playground with kid sized water slides and more. He was giggling like crazy.

After the water parks we went back to the room and got changed up and ready to grab dinner. We were going to grab a pizza and take it back to the room. We checked to see how long that would take and found out it was only a couple of minutes so we poked around at some of the shops because the kids had their Paw Passes with them and they wanted to get their MagiQuest wand toppers. I ran back to the room to get the wands and we got the game started and the kids got their wand toppers. Eva got a harp and Andrew got a Red Dragon. We went to start a quest. Well, both wands were programmed for Andrew so we went all the way back and got that squared away. By the time we did that the pizza was ready and Allison had it waiting for us back in the room. We ate dinner and then did four of the quests in the game. Eva is determined to finish the whole of the quests before we leave. So we’ll see how that goes. We got the kids to bed and then I got to work. The video below is of our day. I shot it on my Samsung Galaxy S7 and used my XShot Float Handle for GoPro & Action Cams With Internal Storage. I also unboxed the Mouth Bite Grip Kit for GoPro with Floaty and Lanyard. I’m not sure if this is the place to use it. I didn’t use it today. The XShot products were given to me back in October after IZEAFest. Opinions of those products are 100% our own.

Family, Photo-A-Day, Travel

An Action Packed-Day at Great Wolf Lodge

An Action PAcked Day at Great Wolf Lodge
Photo-A-Day #3345

My family and I attended the Grand Opening of Great Wolf Lodge New England. We were provided a standard family suite for one night, meals, admission to the park (which is included in hotel stay), a paws card for the arcade, and additional fun items. Opinions of the experience are 100% our own.

We woke up pretty early this morning even though the kids were a bit wiped out from yesterday’s experience. I brought milk and cereal for our breakfast because I knew that our family suite had a fridge. Breakfast was not included and I figured that we don’t eat that much in the morning anyway and one of the things I always loved about vacations as a kid was having special sugar cereal on vacation. So when I saw them in the store I picked them up. While we had breakfast we watched some kids shows and built the Lincoln Logs (a gift I bought for the kids based on the theme of us going to a lodge). Andrew is loving playing with the Lincoln Logs. Eva spent her time writing in a special Great Wolf Lodge notebook that I received in the mail and the wooden pen that looked like a stick. She wrote about the things that she liked about our trip. Meeting the characters was her most favorite thing.

Things don’t really get going in the resort until around 9am. That is when some of the shops open up. The arcade is always open so kids can play those games (as long as you have the paw points). We received a paw points card and the kids loved playing with those games. Before we left Eva picked out a few items for herself and something for her brother from the prizes based on the points that they earned playing games. If I was there specifically to have a vacation and not to cover a media event I would have liked to have been able to get into the water parks a bit earlier than 9 or 10am (I’m not quite sure the opening time). I do know that the Howlin’ Timbers Play Park does not open until 10am. This makes sense because there are guest rooms on the outer perimeter of the play park. So it makes sense for that to open a little later so people can enjoy sleeping. Continue reading An Action Packed-Day at Great Wolf Lodge →