Great Wolf Lodge Water Park | New England

This is a good water park with nice activities for the kids. However, the service has gotten a lot worse. Let me start with the breakfast buffet. In prior years there was bananas but now they are gone. Or at least nobody is refilling the station where they are. Some of the other fruit was clearly old and smelled bad but nobody bothered to replace it. Then, the waitress asked me if I know I am eating gluten free toast. Let me make this clear: I was by the toaster when she walked up to me and asked me if I knew it was gluten free. Surely, there was a sign on it that said that already. When I said yes, she said: but you have a croissant on your plate and that is not gluten free. I had to tell her twice that the croissant was for my kid! What business is it of hers what I am eating? It’s a buffet. I picked up a plate with some things for my kid too. Then, the waitress at the water park asked me for ID for the kid’s drink I ordered. A watermelon drink that comes in a plastic cup with cartoon characters that glow. She legit thought the kids drink has alcohol in it! If I had not told her it is a mocktail, she would not have known and possibly brought me an alcoholic one. But the worst part is that they have a dude checking your bag as you walk into the water park. I had a bag with some allergy medication, eye drops and a tampon in it. He had to touch it all. I threw away the eye drops because he sticks his hand in hundreds of bags a day. No way I am putting that on my eyes. He did not have gloves! Couldn’t he wear a pair of just not touch my medication? You can tell what it is by looking. We pay $800 per night for the room to be treated like the waitresses and other staff are our bosses, not people who are here to make us have a pleasant stay.

TLDR: Proceed with caution. I am a local teacher and my husband and I decided to surprise our three young daughters with a trip to Great Wolf Lodge for February vacation. As one of our daughters has an allergy, I did extensive research on the facility and was beyond impressed when one of the chefs personally called me after I reached out regarding food allergy protocols. I was ecstatic for my daughter to experience some semblance of normalcy and felt confident in our decision to book with Great Wolf Lodge. Upon arrival, the parking lot was not plowed well which is a shame since you have to pay for parking. It was very icy and difficult to navigate with three young daughters and all of our luggage. We chose a Pup Den Suite and were impressed with the room, minus the fact it was not immediately available at the 4:00pm check in time. This is not ideal when traveling with three young kids and a variety of belongings as they have nowhere to store your stuff while you wait. Luckily, our approximately 40 minute delay was short-lived. The girls loved the bunk room and the accommodations were spacious. The shower was not cleaned out to our liking but the room was otherwise clean. Both my husband and I work in education and the cost of this trip is substantial on a teacher budget. As such, we had certain expectations associated with what we had viewed in the app and on the website ahead of the trip. Unfortunately, for our kids who are 18 months, 4, and 6 there was not much they could do in the water park, the main reason for booking a trip here. With major renovations taking place, there was very little for our girls to do in the water park. Outside of the water park, everything is expensive and you feel nickeled and dimed. The older girls got the wands and enjoyed the interactive displays. We also chose to get two “Pup Passes” for our older girls which were worth it, minus the fact that they did not have any non-contaminated gluten free ice cream available so we had to forgo ice cream after waiting in a long line. As a positive, the woman who worked in the candy shop was WONDERFUL and let my daughter pick out M&Ms instead of candy from the candy bar that could be cross contaminated. The arcade is fun but expensive. If you buy a pass, take advantage of buying additional credits at a very discounted rate. This deal is only good the first time you add money/credits to the card. Allergy parents: There is no option to order allergy meals ahead. You have to go up to an actual person at each food location or restaurant. Since there are computers available to place your own order at the quick service restaurants, some staff were annoyed with us when we asked to place an allergy order. I completely appreciate that the allergy meals are prepared in the main kitchen in a safe environment. Sometimes an “allergy” pick was included in my daughter’s food to signify it was indeed allergy safe. The issue lies in the ordering and wait time for allergy safe options. Pizza took around 25 minutes and GF chicken nuggets were quoted to be the same amount of time but took about an hour. I used the chat feature in the app to discuss this issue and our dinners were refunded which was generous and appreciated. Please be aware that while prepared in an allergy safe kitchen, food is handled by employees with contaminated gloves at pick up. I reached out to the executive chef after observing a staff member who had been touching cookies and regular gluten food handle my daughter’s allergy safe meal and drink with the same gloves. My daughter was most certainly glutened due to cross contamination and we had to leave early due to her symptoms and pain. I was told the pick up/delivery protocol would change to an allergy trained chef delivering the meal and will be interested to see if this policy is actually implemented for safety. Our girls had a fun time but we certainly would have waited until they were older with such limited water park opportunities for the price. Hopefully we can try to return in a few years.

I own 4 companies and strive for 5 stars for all my reviews. I never leave negative reviews even if I'm not happy. With that being said I need to leave a honest review. We show up for checkin and got to our room. We were happy with the size of our room and layout. We then went to look at the Waterpark. We have been to Great Wolf Lodge in other states and have ALWAYS been happy. This is our first time at this one. We were suprised that the water park was broken up into 2 different sides basically 2 seperate buildings with a walk way in between. That was very strange to us and thought it will be hard to find seats on both sides so we went to front desk and reserved a cabana for the next day. We had dinner at their BBQ buffet and food was ok but all 5 of us were done eating before we received our drinks. The waiter was nice and apologized and said the bar was very busy. When we got back to room we wanted to lock up valuables so not to lose them but the safe batteries were dead. We did not bother calling for batteries I'm sure if we had then they would of fixed it. Next morning I receive a text from the front desk ( I love this way of communicating and find it very effective so great job with that!) The text said they overbooked the cabanas so unfortunately we can't have one. I was confused with technology now a days how you can overbook when each booking goes through a computer and not written down on paper and sent around. The desk said that they would reserve 2 tables for my family. They also gave us 2 coupons for pizza and 2 large sodas. I felt they tried to fix their error. They also said we would have full cabana service . I asked that our tables be in the wavepool building but they said there was no room and the table would have to be in the other building which is not the side my kids wanted to spend the day in. A few minutes later I get a text from the server for cabanas and she said if I need anything at all just text. Again I was happy to have a way to communicate. After arriving at out table we asked for menus and she apologized we did not have any. At 11:49am we ordered our drinks and received them at 12:25. At 12:25 we ordered 1 large pizza 2 gluten free pizzas and some Boneless wings. At 1:25 pm we received our pizza. 1 pizza came out cheese instead of the 3 toppings we ordered. The other gluten free came out and was completely cold and cheese not melted. We showed the server who was very nice she apologized and I said if you want to feel it you can she said it was not necessary she would get 2 new ones made. So we just received those 2 it is now 1:54pm 2 hrs after they were ordered. We will 100% not ever come back to this location. We are on the fence if we want to go back to the one in the Pocanos or go to their competition down the road at Kalahari . It's also worth noteing that during the entire 2 days we stayed cabana 12 was not being used so that was a bummer and not sure why we could not of had it. Final update the cabana server informed me she closed out our bill and I appreciated that. Now it's the next day and we left I just received notice that the bill was ready for me to look at on the app. Upon looking at app I was charged almost $130.00 for the pizza lunch yesterday. We ordered 3 alcoholic drinks 1 large pizza 2 gluten free pizzas 1 order of Boneless wings 2 large sprites. We had received coupons for 2 free pizzas and 2 free drinks. We should of owed for extra toppings as the coupon was for 1 toppings. We owed for order of Boneless wings and the 3 drinks that should not of added up to even $60 so now I think we were charged for the pizzas and sodas or they charged us for the 2 pizzas they replaced as they were wrong. The app does not give a detailed bill so I'm not sure what it was from. !! VERY VERY Disapointed