Have a howling great
time at Great Wolf

Kids Stuff
By William Feldman

Welcome to Kids Stuff. Today’s column includes a great weekend/weekday family fun idea.
Do you remember how you learned about the seven natural wonders of the world? Well, number eight is man-made. It’s Great Wolf Lodge, located in the Poconos at 1 Great Wolf Drive in Scotrun, Pa. (just off Route 611).
I recently came back from visiting this truly amazing 78,000 square-foot, 90-foot tall indoor waterpark. This is truly the best-kept secret. Since this is an indoor waterpark, it does not matter what the weather is like outside.
It consists of 11 waterslides, six pools and a four-story treehouse full of water activities. The best part to this whole experience, there are no lines. You read this right — NO LINES — and you can go on the rides over and over again. This is a private waterpark for lodge guests only, not like other waterparks where the lines never end.
If you don’t like getting your hair wet while just having pure family fun and relaxation, STOP, don’t read any further. If you like fun, keep reading for the details.
There are currently eight Great Wolf Lodge resorts and two more are under construction. Great Wolf in Pennsylvania opened in October 2005, after breaking ground in June 2004. Creating water rides and water parks is an art. There are only a few companies across the United States that you can consider an expert in that field.
Great Wolf stated they need to be selective and have the best when constructing an indoor waterpark; it is not something you can cut corners on, because you have air flow and the chemicals.
As an example of how they search near and far for the best products, Great Wolf’s air handling units is state-of-the-art technology from Germany. The air turns over several times per hour and the system regulates the heat to keep the waterpark a balmy 84 to 86 degrees every day.
Safety is the No. 1 concern to the management of Great Wolf. There are a total of 401 all-suite guest rooms. The total of its indoor entertainment area is 91,000 square-feet, not including MagiQuest (more about that later). They keep up to date with expansion projects for the repeat visitors, so there will be something new.
First, you walk into this large lobby with this humongous fireplace, three stories high, and an interactive performing clock tower that comes to "life" and sings the lessons of the "Rhythm of Nature." It plays five different songs with 12-minute shows.
I read after the 8 p.m. show, families can sit by the fireplace where storytime takes place. It’s a place where family togetherness is encouraged and the lost art of actually hanging out and enjoying one another’s company is restored. Also, Wiley and Biko, their mascots, come out to visit. I thought I was too old to attend this.
By the way, the lobby is 6,000 square feet. It reminds me of a lodge in the wilderness. What else is cool is that all the lamps and accessories have very detailed hand-carved bears.
Anyway, after you check in, you are given a colored wrist band. They vary in color depending on your family situation. However, this is not your ordinary wrist band. It has a waterproof electronic chip, RFID technology. This is not only your door key, but this enables everyone in your family to have freedom and not keep taking turns checking on someone’s wallet left in your backpack sitting on the lounge chair.
Now, you are probably thinking, well if I am hungry I need to go back to the room for money. No. You just go up to the food stand and angle your wristband up to the scanner and presto, the food is billed to your room.
Next stop, the waterpark. When you walk in, your mind is absolutely blown. You actually feel like you walked outside, when in reality you entered an indoor waterpark, because it is so spacious. The air temperature and the water are kept at 84 degrees. The air smells fresh and does not have a musty, moldy odor.
First, you are greeted by someone handing you clean towels. Then the conundrum is which ride to experience first. First we scoped out a few lounge chairs and made this our home base. Then, a large blue tube raft ride, Hydro Plunge, caught my eye. I had never been on a water ride that not only has curves, but has a motorized conveyer belt, which allowed the raft to ascend and descend.
This is where middle school science came into play: This system allowed the rider to store more potential energy, which in turn leads to more speed. The unique feature of this ride was that it was like a roller coaster. This was truly my favorite ride. I can’t even count how many times I went on this. Next target, Slaptail Pond, which is a pool that became a wave pool every 10 minutes. When this happened, you felt like you have been lifted from a swimming pool to an ocean.
Next I was off to the tube rides, which emptied into a lazy river. Coyote Cannon tube slide was a vortex that reminded me of a funnel. The 12-level water treehouse was constructed of bridges, cargo nets, web crawls and more. This also had a nearly 1,000-gallon tipping bucket suspended from 48 feet above. Watch out below! There was also a pool with four basketball courts, plus a whirlpool for adults, which has higher temperatures than the whirlpool for the under-21 age group. Also, for hot summer days they have an outdoor pool called Raccoon Lagoon, along with a food bar.
When you have kids of all ages near water it can be dangerous if you are not paying attention to safety. All of the lifeguards at Great Wolf Lodge are nationally certified by Ellis & Associates, the world-leading aquatic safety training company. If you remember reading my column from two summers ago about their lifeguard-training program, you know they are very well trained. The guards are certified and must be tested every day.
As stated above, Great Wolf uses the state-of-the-art technology. The water is filtered and chlorinated just like any other commercial pool in the U.S., but they also use UV Technology (ultraviolet light) which is an additional method to disinfect and keep the water in pristine condition for the guests. Even though the filtration, chlorination, and UV systems are automated, they still double check the systems by testing the water by hand every two hours along with the air being re-circulated several times an hour.
Need a break from the water? You can roam into the Northern Lights Arcade with all the latest video games, as well as skittle ball. P.S. Skittle ball is an English game. This question was just on Who Wants to be a Millionaire.
For all you Harry Potter fans, Great Wolf has this area called MagiQuest, which is a totally interactive game/scavenger hunt.
Kids are sent out on nine different scavenger hunts, termed "quests." The quests lead to the adventures. The adventures include fighting goblins and dragons. Kids collect various items that they will use when they fight the dragon, which is the ultimate goal of the game, which takes approximately four to six hours to complete. The game does not have to be completed at one time, because the magic wand is able to store information in its data base system.
Also at Great Wolf are the Iron Horse Fitness Room, which is for family members of all ages, not just adults, and an arts-and-crafts room, which will soon have more of an ‘edutainment experience’ and will have a junior lifeguard class so kids understand the safety aspect of it plus more programs about nature. It will be like a camp atmosphere. The training will begin this fall and the programs should begin in 2008.
Also, girls can get a pedicure while eating an ice cream sundae, in Great Wolf’s new kids spa called Scoops, while their moms are in Elements spa next door. And if your stomach is rumbling and saying ‘feed me,’ you can visit a Starbucks, Pizza Hut or the Bear Claw Café. Bear Claw, by the way, had great fudge and desserts.
Trivia: Approximately 6,000 hotel and pool towels are used each day. Can you imagine washing all these towels?
The bottom line: Great Wolf Lodge is worth the trip. P.S., the facility is handicapped accessible. For more information call 1-800-768-WOLF or visit GREATWOLFLODGE.COM
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Answer to last week’s cryptogram:
DON’T JUST SIT BACK, EDUCATE YOUR MIND
Columnist William Feldman can be contacted by e-mail at wmkidscolumn@aol.com