The three of us are at Great Wolf Lodge for a weekend to preview their Summer Camp-In programming. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, Great Wolf is revamping their entire entertainment schedule to include an array of camping-themed activities.
My 6-year-old child is losing her mind.
She’s in the back seat of our car, jumping out of her seat as much as the belt will allow, chanting “PARK THE CAR!” until we find a spot. The 90-minute drive from Fall River was a portrait of serenity, even if she periodically asked — even before we left our own block — if we were “there yet,” because she’s basically a cartoon character. But now that we arrived in Fitchburg at Great Wolf Lodge, my daughter has abandoned reason. This is New England’s premier resort destination for kids, featuring 68,000 square feet of water park, 11 water slides, indoor playground, a rope walk, games, yoga in the morning and stories at night, macaroni, cheese, waffles, an arcade, splashing, running, not having to change out of PJs if you don’t want to, people in costumes, bubbles. This is her favorite place in the universe. My wife and I will have to use a putty knife to scrape her off the ceiling.
The three of us are at Great Wolf Lodge for a weekend to preview their Summer Camp-In programming. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, Great Wolf is revamping their entire entertainment schedule to include an array of camping-themed activities. We’re talking s’mores, group games, face-painting, cool crafts, campfire ceremonies — everything you’d want out of the camp experience.
But it’s indoors, so there are no bugs. This is the perfect idea for city people like us. We don’t like bugs — and my kid can take or leave being outdoors, but she definitely wouldn’t sleep there. Give us air conditioning and a nice comfy bed every time.
CHECKING IN
We’ve been to Great Wolf once before, a year earlier, and I remember check-in being a bit rough — long lines, being jostled by road-tired parents wheeling 800 pounds of personal possessions for an overnight stay, that kind of thing — but since then mobile check-in has alleviated that issue in a big way. The three of us, however, are here on behalf of The Media, so we skip the lines and are treated to personalized service and a rundown of the weekend’s events. They give my daughter a complimentary furry headband with wolf ears. Every kid who comes to Great Wolf gets a wolf-ears headband. You’re not required to wear it at all times, but you might as well, because why not?
My kid has been torn for weeks on what she wanted to do first. Splash around in the wave pool? A little Ten Paw Bowling? The Howlers Peak rope course? If you could see her thoughts at this moment, you’d see pink wolficorns (half-wolf half-unicorns) riding a rainbow water slide made of cotton candy.
She runs through the lobby, past the Buckhorn Exchange gift shop, past the Build-A-Bear Workshop with make-your-own stuffies of the Great Wolf Lodge characters. She runs past the Scooops kids’ spa, a pink relaxation palace where they offer ice-cream scented skin treatments and mani/pedis on a banana split throne for princesses and their moms (probably dads too if you wanted that — I didn’t ask). My kid runs through the casino-like Northern Lights Arcade, what seems like acres of dazzling neon with dozens of games played for tickets on a reloadable game-card. She runs past both pool areas — yes there are actually two enormous water parks here, each one packed with fun features, with different levels of splash-play for everyone from toddlers to adults. At Howlin’ Timbers Play Park, at last she slows down.
She has settled on 9 holes at Howl at the Moon Mini Golf.
My kid plays mini golf like it’s field hockey — she drags the ball with the club from the tee to the hole. I know she’s 6 and we’re not keeping score, but come on. My wife is off her game and whacks one into the rough. By the time I’m lined up to putt, I realize my kid has left us behind and is already on the fourth hole. She’s sinking them and running to the next hole as fast as she can. “This is not a race!” I say. “Take your time!” My wife and I skip a few holes just to keep up with her, because now she’s on Hole 7. My wife takes a shot and it lands in a blue-carpet water hazard. Who cares — my daughter sinks her ball in Hole 9 and is handing back her putter. Seventy-two seconds.
“That was so fun!” she says. “Let’s do something else.”
CAMPING INDOORS
The best way to start the morning of a camping trip, I think we all agree here, is not beef jerky and a granola bar but chocolate brownie cupcakes and a stack of mini-waffles fresh off the iron, eaten standing up at a table because you’re too excited to sit. We’re at Lodge Wood Fired Grill, the main restaurant at Great Wolf, which features both buffet and a la carte dining.
A day at Great Wolf is as packed or as leisurely as you decide. At all hours between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m., there is something designed to blow children’s minds happening somewhere. The spacious main lobby is the hub of their seasonal activity. For the Summer Camp-In season, which runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day, Great Wolf is doubling its entertainment staff for camp arts and crafts like making bracelets and buttons, painting faces, and leading them on scavenger hunts to earn badges. They’ll be playing camp games like hula hoop contests, ring toss and cornhole, telling interactive stories, holding campfire ceremonies, dancing, limboing, and meeting the Great Wolf characters. The water slide will become a rubber ducky race course. It’s simply not possible to be bored.
The theme continues in the rooms — upgrade to a themed Camp-In room and you get cute pillows and pennants on the walls, but more importantly an indoor teepee. Kids are like cats, happiest fitting themselves into confined spaces.
Beyond that, there’s still the rest of the lodge for fun, most notably the water parks. This is where I find my wife and kid after I return from a media tour, bobbing in the wave pool. Both the water and air are continuously 84 degrees, and the pool areas have private cabanas for rent, mini-bars and a burger joint right on the pool deck. My kid dares me to do the Howlin’ Tornado, a colossal enclosed-funnel water slide, or the Wolf Tail, a 20-foot free fall, both of which terrify me beyond description since I’m phobic of both swimming and heights. I instead submit to the gentle lapping of the wave pool with them, then flee in a panic when it turns out there’s waves in there.
HUNGRY LIKE THE WOLF
Swimming continuously from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. has left them spongy and exhausted, so they dry off with a few rounds on Howlers Peak, a two-story-high rope course where you’re tethered to an overhead steel rail and cross rope bridges. This is much higher than it looks from the ground. I climb the stairs, take a close look at the first obstacle, then climb down the stairs. We play some arcade games, where I cheat at air hockey, and then some Camp-In crafts and activities, where my daughter cheats at cornhole.
We’ve also worked up an appetite. The Summer Camp-In experience is not just overhauling the entertainment but also the menu. Great Wolf treats us to a preview of the barbecue buffet visitors can expect in the summer, with succulent pulled pork, ribs, succotash, frankly stunning Brussels sprouts, and macaroni and cheese with or without bacon and fried onions. They’ll make regular ones too, but a new twist on s’mores made in foil packets with quinoa is a revelation.
The food in general is shockingly good, from the custard French toast, eggs benny and smoked salmon I had for breakfast (“They smoked it last night,” I’m told) to a charcuterie board they offered me with blueberry elk sausage and “cave-aged cheese.” I’ve never had cheese aged in a cave before. When they offer you whipped cream on your waffles, it’s not a spray can — it’s a bowl of cream that someone personally whipped. The selection at their s’mores bar includes gourmet marshmallows from New York that taste like passion fruit. Many of the products are local — Great Wolf has recently added the Wachusett Brew Barn to its restaurant roster, stocked with an assortment of craft beers from Winchester, the next town over, and shareable snacks like Vermont cheeses, sausages, and pretzels made locally. All day, grownups have unfettered access to booze — and at night their Wine Down service will send a cheese board or chocolate truffles and a bottle of vino to your room. You may need it. The days are full, the children still excited.
NOT READY TO LEAVE
One of the first things my daughter did when we arrived days earlier was find the scratch pad of paper by the phone, and make her feelings clear: “I wishs I sta here evrey day.” She suggests several times through the weekend but most urgently on this our last morning, that maybe we could just, I don’t know, I’m thinking out loud here, possibly live here? At Great Wolf Lodge? Forever? I remind her she has a cat at home who would miss us. Yeah — but this place has wolves.
We head down to a special breakfast where we and the other media families will meet some Great Wolf mascots — another feature of the Summer Camp-In promotion is personal appearances by their characters. On our way, I peek into other conference rooms. Great Wolf Lodge is not only a family destination — lots of people use the place. They get about 20 weddings a year, I’m told, most recently the day before yesterday. Servicemen use Great Wolf to say goodbye to their families before going overseas, or to return to them. Local Scouting groups and sports tournaments meet here. There’s a scrapbooking convention going on right now, the manager tells me — sometimes they’ll go for 24 hours or more, he says. This one utterly fascinates me. Overnight scrapbooking marathons. Throughout the weekend I’ve been a busybody, and yes, every time I checked there were ladies in one of the conference rooms huddled over paper and scissors. That is hardcore. Editor: Please send me to a 24-hour scrapbooking convention next.
The staff is sweet. We keep being asked if we’re OK, if we need anything, if we want some more dessert, if we want to go make a cool bracelet. They seem to genuinely enjoy being around kids and understand how cute this all is, like kind aunts.
They lead into the room Wiley, Violet and Brinley. They are a wolf, a wolf and a bear. A curious thing is how Great Wolf Lodge’s mascots have a pop culture reach limited almost entirely to within these walls. When you visit, the entertainment staff refer to them as if you already know who they are — but they repeat their names a lot, and pass out trading cards with pictures and vital stats. It takes new kids almost no time to fall profoundly in love, and it’s pretty adorable.
Just before it’s time to leave, my daughter walks up to the three of them bashfully. She loves Violet the she-wolf best — both of their favorite colors are pink and purple. All three extend their arms in friendship, and my daughter brushes past the boys to leap into Violet’s arms, and they hug for a very long time, in a way that suggests my kid might not ever let go unless asked politely yet firmly.
We’re going back in September.
Email Dan Medeiros at dmedeiros@heraldnews.com.