[The birthday crew ready to hit the water slides]
A few months ago I asked Parker what he wanted to do for his 7th birthday. He told me that all he wanted to do was hang out with his cousins and play video games. Since this was a big party year (we only have big parties every other year), I decided to give Parker what he wanted but BIGGER. We booked two suites at Great Wolf Lodge and invited all of Parker's boy cousins for a weekend of swimming and gaming. We asked everyone to keep it a secret but in the weeks leading up to the party the boys kept slipping up and giving Parker hints. By the time his birthday rolled around he pretty much knew what was going to happen but that didn't put a damper on his excitement. Keep scrolling to see photos and videos from our weekend at Great Wolf + my honest review of our experience.
Happy 7th birthday, Parker! Keep being the brave, funny, compassionate boy that you are. We love you!
[Thanks for the recap video and for coming along to help out, Tania!]
The Family Suites have 2 queen beds and a pull out couch. We booked two and each was about $275 a night. We paid for late check out on one of the rooms so the boys could swim a little later the 2nd day and we wouldn't have to rush to pack and check out. The comfort of the beds is just so-so but these boys hardly slept so it didn't matter.
As soon as we were checked in and everyone changed, we hit the water park. The first thing you notice when you enter is the aggressive chlorine smell. I get that this is an indoor waterpark but holy moly it was strong. My nephew, who is sensitive to chlorine, developed some small spots on his skin after swimming. Definitely pack goggles if you have some. We established a meeting point with the boys and let them run wild. I mostly stayed in the little kid area with Harrison.
I don't have a ton of photos from the water park but you can see in the video above that there is a lot to do! There are multiple water slides, a lazy river, a wave pool, play structures for big kids and little kids, it goes on and on. The kids swam for roughly 4 hours before we rounded them up for dinner. Tip: Don't forget to return your pool towels! Great Wolf charges $15 for every unreturned towel. We had a mix up with the towels since I checked them out under one room and the kids returned them under another room. Luckily, customer service was able to reverse the charge for me without too much hassle.
We knew from personal experience that the hotel's food is 1. not tasty and 2. expensive, so we let Parker pick somewhere offsite for dinner. He picked In-n-Out (his favorite) and throughout the meal, the boys discussed that snacks they needed for g-fuel (that's gaming fuel for you bots that don't know anything about Fortnite).
There's a very large Target down the street from Great Wolf. We took the boys and told them they could pick out whatever snacks they wanted. This is what they picked. Not pictured: about 3 gallons of Gatorade chilling in the mini fridge.
While the boys settled in for a long night of gaming, Harrison did his best to distract them. Can you believe they stayed up until midnight playing Fortnite and Roblox? I took Harry to the other room around 8 PM to sleep.
The next morning I went downstairs to grab coffee for me and Tuan and donuts for the boys around 8 AM. BIG MISTAKE. The line at Dunkin Donuts was crazy long and only got longer as I stood in it. It took almost 45 minutes to get coffee and donuts. This is reflective of the service level throughout the property.
After breakfast, the big boys went swimming for another 3 hours and Tuan and I took Harry to the arcade where we spent $10 for a tiny plastic backscratcher. Yay for prizes!
Late check out was an additional $60 but worth it for these kids to get to play a little longer. Here's the crew sad to leave. We headed back to my sister's house for pizza and cake with my whole family before heading back to San Diego for dinner and cake with Tuan's family. So much to celebrate, so little time.
Even with Tania's help Tuan and I were so tired after just a couple of days with 7 boys. We're never having anymore kids! I think it took me 2 days to recover from all the fun. At the end of the day, only one thing matters though. Parker had fun and made some great memories with his cousins. He's already asking when we will be going back again.
