Great Wolf Lodge

On Thursday we went to The Great Wolf Lodge in Concord to celebrate Sam's birthday. Since the boys were out of school on Thursday and Friday I thought it would be less crowded to go during the week than on a weekend. I apparently didn't consider that there were 130,000 other kids out during these same two days, because it was still pretty crowded. These days, though, with homeschooling and year round schools, you never can tell what your gonna get. Judging by the parking lot it could have been a lot worse. The waterpark is for resort guests only, so you have to stay to play. I'm not really fond of staying in hotels, and staying in one 30 minutes from home seemed weird, but the boys find it fun. I would have been fine with going home to spend the night and going back the next day, but whatever. The lodge was really cool, and we had a great time. I did, however, have one issue with the "theme" rooms. When I booked the room I found out that if you put the word "SCOUT" (Sam is a Boy Scout and I had never heard this, but I found the coupon code online) in the promo box you got a standard room at a rate of $159. This was $60 off of the online rate, and this is what I booked. The scout rate only applied to the standard rooms, not the theme suites. Now the theme suites are pretty cool if you are a kid, they have kid sections within the room that are set up like log cabins or tents, with bunk beds and their own tv and video games. It would have cost way over $100 more for the theme room. I figure what the kids don't know won't hurt them, and it was only one night, they need to be in the water park, I'm cheap, and so on and so on. Anyway, so we are walking to our standard room (which by the way was pretty nice, it had 2 queens and a separate sitting area, a mini fridge and a microwave), and all of the doors are signed with "KIDS CAMP" "WOLF DEN" "KIDS CABIN" as to what type of room you have. Now, they are still cleaning rooms, since we got there early, and the doors are open and my boys can see into the rooms with the tents and log cabins and are getting excited. We get to our room and there is no sign, just room #2019. I tried to say that we got a Scout room, we're scouts, we don't need fancy cabins, they were like WHATEVER. The lodge might as well put a sign on the standard rooms that says "Mothers who don't love their children enough to pay for a good room." But they were fine with what we had. See, if you don't overindulge your children, they learn to appreciate whatever they get. I didn't even have to say "Not all kids get to go to the Great Wolf Lodge" which I was fully prepared to do. The water park was awesome and they had a great time. Sam is more into extreme rides that are super high and fast, which these weren't, but even he thought it was great. I don't think he will want to go much past the age of 12 or so, but it sufficed for 10. They had a special Halloween event in the evening that Ryan and I went to. Sam wasn't willing to give up waterpark time. You got to wear your costume and Ryan is dressing as Paul Stanly from KISS, but we forgot his wig, which meant the world was coming to an end for Ryan. Somehow I got to take the blame for this, as usual. But I spiked his hair and he just went as a generic 80's rockstar, which seemed to placate him, until someone asked him if he was John Travolta in Grease. He doesn't even know who that is, but he still got pissed. But all in all, a good time was had by everyone, and I think we will start a new family tradition and go at least once a year.