Great Wolf Lodge (Gurnee)
1700 Nations DriveYou thought after all these recent trips I might get back to writing blogs about Southwest Michigan, didn’t you?
My bad.
We’re on the road again. This time it’s personal.
We headed to the Illinois/Wisconsin border for a figure skating competition in Pleasant Prairie. It’s one of our big trips that have become an every year thing. The Southport Summer Classic at the Pleasant Prairie Rec Plex is one of our favorite competitions.
This year B got to come along and compete too.
L’s events were Thursday, Friday and Saturday while B’s events were only on Saturday. A lot of his friends didn’t make this trip so he didn’t really have anyone to hang out with at the rink. I figured that was going to be the case and several months ago, I booked a room at Great Wolf Lodge. I figured we could all enjoy the water park Wednesday night then he and I could hang out at the water park after L competed on Thursday.
The Great Wolf Lodge in Illinois is in Gurnee. The indoor water park/hotel is on Nations Drive just around the corner from the I-94 interchange with Grand Avenue and just down the street from Six Flags Great America. As wild as this sounds, J and I have actually been to this resort before. It was built as a Key Lime Cove in 2007 and operated as such until 2017. J and I joined my brother and his family along with my parents for a Christmas time trip in 2011 just a little over a month before L was born.
We’ve taken the kids to the Great Wolf Lodge in Traverse City a few times and while the theme of this resort is the same, it’s much, much bigger than the Traverse City lodge.
We pulled up to the main entrance around 3:30 on Wednesday afternoon and we went inside to check in and get our wristbands. The lobby is huge but it’s also kind of empty. Whereas the Traverse City lodge has a lodge feel to it, this one is kind of cavernous. It’s just a big empty room with the check in desk on one wall and windows looking in to the water park on the other. There is a restaurant on one side (that’s another blog post) and a floor to ceiling fire place that acts as a divider to a retail area. There’s not a lot of flow to the space.
We got checked in and got our wristbands. The thing I really like about this location, and Key Lime Cove was the same way, is that the wristbands are also the room keys. You can get bands that aren’t keys for the kids but the adults have not only the keys but the option to put a credit card on the band so you can pay for things throughout the resort. We chose not to do that and just paid as we went so we could keep track of our spending.
There is one thing that just absolutely pissed me off about this stay and I’m still kind of steaming about it. I know that Great Wolf Lodge is going to be expensive. I know they charge for pretty much everything because it’s hard to tell the kids no so they want you to spend money. But there’s a $15/night charge to f&^%ing park at this lodge. This isn’t a downtown hotel where parking is at a premium. This isn’t in a city where you could take public transportation or a cab to the hotel. This is a tourist destination with enough surface parking to accommodate a NFL stadium and they still have the balls to add on yet another charge once you get there. There’s no other option. You have to drive to the resort and you have to park somewhere. So they have you over the barrel with yet another charge that you will find out about when you check in.
Our next frustration was trying to find our room. The lodge has two “towers.” We were in Tower 1. There’s no place to park close to Tower 1. It’s on the backside of the property. We had no way of knowing that though as we were never told where to park. We ended up parking at the end of Tower 2…which is closest to the parking lot and walking all the way through the tower, then through the lower level retail area (with all of our stuff) to get to our room in Tower 1. We eventually realized if we could find a spot near Door 1, that would be the closest we could get to our room but that was right at the very beginning of the parking lot so finding a spot was tough.
The rooms were…..fine. They’re actually exactly how I remember them from Key Lime Cove. They’re decent hotel rooms but they are much smaller than the rooms in Traverse City. There is still a pull out couch but there’s not a whole lot of extra room for bags and things.
The first thing we did when we got settled was walk around the property to see where everything was at. As I’ve mentioned, it’s much bigger than the Traverse City Lodge.
We headed to the Buckhorn Exchange first to pick up our Wolf Ears. We’ve always gotten those at Check-in on previous trips, but at this lodge they make you go to the Buckhorn Exchange gift shop. Why do they do that? Because they try to upsell you wolf ears. We just took the cheap, grey ones that are free with the stay.
In addition to the Buckhorn Exchange, the upstairs retail area has a Baskin Robbins ice cream shop and a Dunkin Donuts. It’s also the area where most of the ropes course is located. You start on the bottom level but there is a three story ropes course that comes up to the second level and goes up right in the middle of the space. The ropes course is $15 and you get one voyage through the course. B did it on Thursday while L was still at the rink and he loved it. It took about 10-15 minutes to make it all the way through.
The bottom level is where most of the retail and games are located. In addition to the aforementioned ropes course, there’s a mini golf course, a climbing wall, and a mining activity. All cost a little extra. We only did the climbing wall which was $8.
There’s a big area to eat right in this area too. There are several dining options and if you don’t want to eat in your room, there are tables to hang out at.
There were a lot of people that were just grabbing pizzas from Hungry As A Wolf which is located in this area. We did that once in Traverse City. The pizza is…fine. It’s quick, it’s convenient, and it’s overpriced. But more importantly, this lodge is located near Chicago so there are much better pizza options (another blog coming later). We passed on this trip.
There is a giant arcade down a short flight of steps and I knew this would be hard to keep B out of. They have the typical ticket games where you earn tickets towards cheap prizes.
I let him play $20 which didn’t get him a whole lot of play. Each one of the games was like $2-$3 so his money went pretty quick. He was bummed it didn’t go further but I told him before we went down there he was only getting $20 and he didn’t argue with me when it was gone but I could tell he was disappointed.
There’s also a small bowling area at the far end of the arcade. J had mentioned maybe doing it one night but we never made it back down that far.
Once we got the lay of the land, we headed back to the room to change in to bathing suits. Our room was really close to the water park entrance which was nice.
The water park is massive. It’s much larger than Traverse City which is how I remember it when it was Key Lime Cove. A lot of the toddler area is right up front when you walk in and there are deck chairs and tables all around the edges of the various pools.
The centerpiece is the massive climbing structure in the middle. When the kids were younger, they’d spend all day on this but they’ve both grown to the point they can do all the water slides so I don’t even know if they made it this part of the park.
There were two places for slides. Both of them had a three story climb up wooden stairs to get to the top. One section had four slides. Two you needed tubes, which you had to haul up yourself, two did not. They both rode these slides multiple times not really preferring one side over the other. The other two slides had massive five person tubes that were brought up via a conveyor belt. They got me one these slides a couple of times but I’ve always hated water slides. They got a few rides out of me but not as many as they wanted.
There’s a lazy river that goes around the climbing structure and the toddler pools. You can float, walk, or swim. I did hop in here for a while and floated around but I’m really not a water person.
The kids surprised me by never getting in to the wave pool. I really thought they’d run over there when the horn sounded that waves were coming but I never saw them do that.
Finally, there’s a small outdoor pool which actually felt pretty good. It’s so hot and humid inside the water park that it felt nice just to go sit outside for a while.
You can’t bring food or drink in to the waterpark but there are plenty of options inside to purchase food and drink.
You can get tacos from Timbers.
Or you can grab burgers and sandwiches from Buckets (separate blog post coming)
Both of these are accessible from both inside the water park and outside in the gaming area.
For the adults, there is a bar located by the wave pool…but as you can imagine, prices are high. They don’t even list them on the menu. I glanced at it once but didn’t see anything I had to have or anything I’d want to pay that price for so I moved on.
B and I spent a lot of time at the water park over the two days and he had a blast. He was really the reason we booked Great Wolf Lodge and it was worth it for him. L didn’t come back on Thursday and go swimming but she had fun Wednesday night when we got there.
Great Wolf Lodge is….a lot. The kid obviously love it. What could be more fun than a hotel with a massive water park for a kid? This Great Wolf is at least double the size of the Traverse City lodge. There are some plusses and some minuses for that. All the cool stuff they have that TC doesn’t have just ends up costing me more money.
I don’t know if we’ll do Great Wolf again when we go back to this figure skating competition. B will be starting dance soon so he will have less down time. It worked out great this year because of all the downtime he had. The hotel itself really didn’t cost me much more than a Marriott or Hilton but it’s all the extras that add up….and you can’t go to Great Wolf Lodge without all the extras.
The parking fee still pisses me off though…..
SW Michigan Dining 