Great Wolf Lodge Water Park | Minnesota

We got reservations with mixed feelings. We had some friends with good experiences here and other with not so good ones. Let me tell you, I'm so happy that we decided to go and have the Great Wolf Lodge experience for ourselves!!. Great place, everything about it screamed Family friendly which is exactly what we were looking for. The room was clean, and had bunk beds for my boys, the hotel had restaurants, bowling, arcade, ice cream shop, zipline course, and of course, the waterpark!. It was cool, the kids loved it! It's like 4 minutes from Mall of America, so there's tons to do outside of the hotel. We had a fabulous family time. We are definitely visiting again.

Having read other reviews about sketchy charges we proceeded to this place with caution and I wanted to share what we learned from using the waterpark. We got a day pass we purchased online from their site prior to arriving. I believe hotel guests can check in at 1 and unfortunately that’s when we arrived so the wait time was over 30 minutes to get our wristbands to go to the waterpark because it’s the same check in for everyone. Everyone at check in is being sold a million gimmicks so every check in takes 5-15 minutes per person. Despite what the website says everyone is now charged $15 per day parking (16.35 after tax) so if you can park off site that would be cheaper. A charge is placed on your card for incidentals at the waterpark even though you’re not staying at the hotel, what incidentals those would be, I have no idea. Towels are available inside the waterpark with a swipe of your wristband but the $15 fee for “stealing” them kept us from even bothering. I recommend bringing your own towels if you don’t want to worry about erroneously being charged. Next there’s the lockers, locker rental starts at $15 for the day for a locker you can open and close endlessly (thankfully) outside the locker rooms in the pool area. This felt unavoidable since we had car keys at a minimum to lock up and keep dry. We knew food was a extremely overpriced and didn’t partake in food on site. I was pleasantly surprised that water in a jug with cups was available at the towels window. On this day the largest raft water slide was not working, not sure how long it’s been that way or will be that way. Otherwise overall the place is loud and busy as expected, there’s about one tube per 4 people for the wave pool or lazy river. We saw a lifeguard jump in to rescue someone at the wave pool which was reassuring that they take their job seriously. The lazy river is fast but fun, the other slides we tried were good. The bathrooms were constantly being mopped and cleaned which was surprising and awesome so bathrooms weren’t a swamp by the pool. The changing station in the women’s locker room does need replacement, it sags so low your baby slides off but the counter by the sinks could also be used instead. There were some chairs to be found on this weekday so we had a home base for sandals and towels. Weekends I imagine they’re pretty full. Overall we had a pretty good time, not sure if we’ll ever come back. The hotel stay situation would definitely be too gimmicky for us, we’ll try Wisconsin Dells instead. Look for discount codes online and give it a go at your own risk. I checked my credit card and the charges are fine currently, we’ll keep an eye on it for the next few weeks and update if anything wild happens.

Kids bunk bed sheets kept coming off and looked stained or dirty. See attached photo for reference. Kids just slept in my bed since they didn’t want a dirty bed. No area to unwind at night or in the morning. You could hear people jumping around in the room above ours and running the halls until late. (Quiet hours 11-7 or 8?). Shower temperature was difficult to regulate and pulsated, they offered to fix but we declined and recommended a service order after we leave. A worker randomly nocked on our door and had no idea what they were doing and kept saying front desk, there was a language barrier. The worker looked spooked to see me. It was very odd. Hotel said they had new workers. We kept our no cleaning sign on the door when this happened too. Overall staff were very friendly, hotel could use a designated place for kids and adults to unwind, hotel charges for everything and anything. In the future we would stay at another hotel and purchase a swim pass, save money and have a nice room. It was a lot of fun and a mostly positive core memory for the kids thanks to the activities we purchased. Even with the pros and cons and massive bill for so little time, I don’t regret our stay at great wolf lodge as the memories are what matters the most.

What a disappointment!!! Here are the positives: The location is great. The facilities look as though they are kept up. The pools and slides are pretty nice. The body slides need better seams as they pinch a little at each seam. The disappointments: The room... the kids bed sheets were too short for the bed (we tried remaking them) so the mattress pad was well stained below (disgusting). The blankets were also 1/3 the length. The rooms are very loud. You can hear the conversations and steps in the hallway and all around you. Every tiny item dropped above is highly audible. We called for extra blankets and pillows and they never came, even after multiple calls. It is a very location totally focused on charges at every turn. I was disappointed given other resorts have many more things included. I would recommend looking elsewhere to drop 400-700/night for a very basic, under-dressed room and decent pool system... and don't forget the $15 parking charge per night for the open lot 😉

Poorly set up. Only 1 side entrance. Parking was terrible. Our TV buffered the entire time. Very loud constant sound coming from the closet the whole 3 days we were there. There weren't any luggage carts and had to carry our bags in pouring rain from the back lot to the very front. Have to pay for parking. There's a $100 hold Per day on your card. Water park is poorly set up also. Have to walk over bridges to get to kids area, etc.