Published
Great Wolf Lodge Adventure Guide
Everything you need to know before visiting Great Wolf Lodge
Great Wolf Lodge is a fun indoor waterpark resort where everyone leaves with a big grin (and maybe a pair of wolf ears). Check out these tips and tricks to get the most out of your stay. We’ve been to several different Great Wolf Lodge locations and want to help you have a howling good time!
Table of contents
- Booking & Planning Ahead
- Packing Essentials
- Waterpark Tips
- On-Site Activities Beyond the Waterpark
- MagiQuest
- Food & Dining
- Money-Saving Tips
- Final Thoughts
Booking & Planning Ahead
When you know you want to head to Great Wolf Lodge, keep an eye out for their deals. You can frequently find a great deal if you watch the Great Wolf Lodge website as well as Groupon.
If you’ve already booked, don’t worry, you can always call their support people and adjust your package based on a new deal that they’ve released.
Be sure to sign up for the Great Wolf Lodge Voyagers Club to rack up rewards points to be applied to future visits.
Packing Essentials
It’s a waterpark, so of course you’ll want to bring swimsuits, goggles, and towels. We also bring our own life jackets and floaties. They do provide some there at the resort, but we find it simpler to bring our own than mess with the ones there.
Another thing we have found useful is a folding drying rack. This may not be necessary for everyone, but for a large family like ours, we’ve been able to dry out our things better with a drying rack. If you want to skip the drying rack, you can also try hanging the wet swimsuits on the provided hangers.
For many of the dry activities, you’ll want to bring comfortable shoes. And if any of your family plans to do a ropes course, you’ll want to bring close-toed shoes (Crocs count!).
Waterpark Tips
You can get access to the water before you actually check in to your room. And you can still go after you check out, so you can plan to come early or leave late to soak up some extra fun.
While they do rent cabanas, we find that we’ll only spend an hour or two at the water park before returning to our rooms. We’ll always return later, after resting or taking part in some of the other activities. So we just use one of the many available chairs to plop our shoes & towels on while we are at the waterpark.
Based on your kids’ height, they may be required to use a lifejacket when participating on some of the different slides/pools. Usually, the attendant at the waterpark gate will measure your kid and give them a colored wristband. Some rides, like the tube slides, also have a minimum weight requirement. So keep an eye out for the ride signs they have posted.
On-Site Activities Beyond the Waterpark
So you are wet and tired of being at the waterpark for hours. What else can you do? Great Wolf Lodges come with a ton of other activities to participate in. Here are some of the ones we’ve seen at different lodges:
- Activities with an extra cost
- MagiQuest (more on that later!)
- Build-a-Bear Workshop, with exclusive Great Wolf Lodge characters
- Arcade with prizes
- Mining for gems
- Mirror Mazes
- VR Games
- Bowling
- Ropes Courses
- Mini Golf
- Free Activities
- Story Times
- Morning Yoga
- Crafts
Not all locations will have everything mentioned, and we might have missed some, so check with your location. The Great Wolf Lodge app gives you all the times for different activities during your stay.
As mentioned above, most activities have an added cost. Most of those costs are advertised on their website, so you can plan accordingly. They also offer different packages that bundle together the different activities. We don’t usually opt to get those as our kids have different tastes and interests (only a couple of them would go on the ropes course, for example).
MagiQuest
In our household, Great Wolf Lodge is synonymous with MagiQuest! If you plan on participating in the fun, be sure to pack a comfortable pair of shoes, as you will be doing some walking! With MagiQuest, your kids take a magic wand, and when they flick it just right at the different parts of the game, it’ll “magically” respond with sounds and light. Our kids love running around the lodge, completing quests, and collecting virtual gold.
MagiQuest Costs
MagiQuest can be a bit expensive to get started. You have to pay for the wands in addition to the actual game itself. But you can use the same wand for subsequent visits. My kids have been using the same wands for over 5 years! We just change the batteries before we go to avoid any issues.
In our most recent trip to Great Wolf Lodge (2025), they gave us a “group play” discount when we had 3 kids playing. I don’t believe this was a thing at our previous visits, and I’m not sure what the criteria for the discount is. But it is something to keep an eye out for when you’ve got multiple kids who want to participate.
In the MagiQuest shops, they offer several other things, all of which you don’t need to enjoy the game. In particular, they sell wand toppers, none of which are vital to playing the game. We found that they don’t add much to the “Evergreen” version of the game but are more useful for the legacy version (which leads us to our next section).
MagiQuest Versions
There are two versions of MagiQuest that you can play at Great Wolf Lodge: Legacy and Evergreen. They are both fun in their own ways. Plus, your wand works for both versions. In our experience, Evergreen is a more streamlined experience of the game. The Legacy game at the lodge we were staying at had us running up and down the 4 floors of the lodge, where more recent iterations of Evergreen are closer together on one or two floors.
MagiQuest Evergreen Tips
It has been a while since we’ve done MagicQuest Legacy, so we don’t have any specific tips for that version. We do have extensive experience with the Evergreen version, so here are some tips.
At the end of a quest line, you’ll face off against a boss. This will involve selecting different runes and flicking the wand at a large screen. There is one for each of the different Evergreen trees that you have to revive. But each location can be used in place of another. So if one has a line of kids waiting (or one is closer to a nice seating area, definitely not speaking from experience here…), just pick another, open location.
After you are given a quest, the computer screen will show you the general area where you might find the objects you are looking for. Sometimes you’ll need to look in these “picture frame” looking things. If the map highlights more than one of them at a time, it is because the item you are looking for travels between those locations. So if you go to each of the frames and still don’t find the thing you are looking for, backtrack, and you should be able to find it in one of the other frames.
Food & Dining
The food at Great Wolf Lodge isn’t usually anything to write home about. So, for the most part, we tend to eat out or get delivery. Many locations have one or two restaurants, an ice cream shop, and a Dunkin’. We’ll generally get some ice cream, but bring our own snacks and breakfast foods (which saves some money too!)
Money-Saving Tips
We’ve mentioned some tips elsewhere in this post, but here they are all together.
- Keep an eye out for good deals on Great Wolf Lodge’s website or Groupon
- Bring your own snacks and breakfast foods
- Have an idea of what other activities you want to pay for and set expectations accordingly with your kids
- Bring your MagiQuest wands back again.
- Pass on MagiQuest toppers
- Dine elsewhere or get delivery
Final Thoughts
Great Wolf Lodge is a great place where you can let loose, splash around, and make some wild memories with your pack. Whether you’re chasing magical artifacts with a wand, braving the biggest water slides, or just chilling with a scoop of ice cream, there’s something for everyone. So get ready for a howling good time!
