Last weekend we went to the Great Wolf Lodge with the family. It was lots of fun, here’s a quick review. First off – it’s a 1.5-2 day visit, MAX. They have amazing slides and pools, it’s really heaven for the kids and most of it is indoors. They have a roller coaster, slides, a wave pool, smaller slides for smaller kids and all sorts of fountains and stuff to walk on, under, and so on. There is an outdoor pool, which isn’t deep, but is decent sized and a nice relief from the chaos of the indoor fun. The indoor fun is fun, but something for moderate sized doses at most. The indoor pool funhouse is warm and steamy, you can taste the chlorine. It’s warm indoors, and the water is a decent temperature, but it doesn’t taste nice or feel refreshing. It’s not gross, and trust me, I’d say it if it were, but it’s just something that gets to you. Couple that with the staircases you need to go up over and over to get to the top of the slides (in many cases, carrying a one or two person tube) and you get tired. I think I was sweating, between carrying a two person tube up 50+ stairs in a warm and humid indoor arena, and I’m not in the worst shape of most of their clientele. The food isn’t real good, but it’s a short drive to better vittles. The rooms are lots of fun, we had a suite with a “wolf den” – which means bunk beds for the kids. They loved it! It had a flat screen and a little cabin-like feel. Some pics to give you a feel for the den…
Flat screen TV – nice!
Enter the den at your own risk!
Boys love bunk beds!
- the grown up tv crashed 
However, outside of the room – there’s another story to tell! The hotel used RFID all over the place! How?! Well, when you checked in, you got a normal-looking wristband, but the underside of the wristband revealed an RFID chip! Texas Instruments appears to manufacture it. So, I asked myself, what can this do? Well, this is what I found it did:
- Enter your room
- Charge an Americano at Starbucks
- Charge any meal at any of the on premises restuarants or cafes
- Make it so you never needed to take anything – no keys, no wallets, just a suit, flip-flops and a smile – how cool!
This is what it looks like:
Appears normal, but turn it over…
Like my dog, I’ve been chipped!
To wrap it up, it was a fun trip and we spent the right amount of time there.. I’d go back and suggest it for anyone with kids under 12-14 or so.. It’s fun older than that, but not much. Also, it does feel safe, so it’s a place I’d let the kids run around and roam. They have a “MagicQuest” game over the premises, where the kids use a wand ($15) to play games. They also have a nice game room and a kids spa for young girls to get mani/pedi’s – cute. I did read that the day we left a girl almost choked the death, but she was saved, so I guess all the lifeguards we saw on duty do know what they are doing.
