Brace yourselves. Our first official vacation . . . drum roll . . . went pretty well. Yeah. Sigh. Nothing utterly terrible to report, I'm afraid. But I'll report anyway as we did have a rather splendid time.
As I might have mentioned at another time, we've never taken Gabe on a real holiday. We have gone out to visit my parents several dozen times, but that's it. In the past, Gabe has not been what you'd be tempted to call a natural traveler. He rather hates being in the car--it's the being stuck in one place part that he hates the most. Being one of nature's runners, he finds being strapped to a baby seat an abomination upon his very being (wow, three uses of "being" in one sentence, very original). And he's not much for sleeping in the car either. So, usually, after ten or fifteen minutes, he's losing his mind with boredom and spends the rest of the trip crying and begging to be entertained. Thus, we (and by "we" I mean "me") weren't terribly excited about the prospects of keeping him strapped in for extended periods.
So we decided to start off small with this trip to Great Wolf Lodge. It's a quite nice hotel in Kansas City that has a built in water part. Yeah, not just a water slide, an entire water PARK--and a fairly impressive one at that. Now, I'm not an expert on water parks--I've only been to Oceans of Fun once, and that was almost 20 years ago. And I've been in my own hot tub probably 500 times. And that's about it. So, maybe the park inside the hotel wasn't that big of a deal. Here, you decide.
Water spouts in the middle of the floor. This was located near the life jacket station and was, it seemed, more of an afterthought than anything. Someone saw a bit of empty floor and decided to fill it with spouting water.
The kiddie area. The water is only about a foot deep through most of it. This was a pretty basic feature compared to the rest of the place.So, it turns out that I didn't get many pictures of the bit central water feature. I was stranded most of the time guarding the baby at our table, so I couldn't really get many good pictures, and the lighting in there was terrible. But here's a video of the 1,000 galon bucket that dumps every 5 minutes. I really hoped one of those kids would get knocked on their ass for the enjoyment of anyone watching this video. But, alas, they all had sound equilibriums. Drat.
What you can't see behind this massive water maze thing are most of the slides. The kiddie area had three small slides, but on the back side of the place there were two or three big slides. One of them looked to go outside at one point, even. I didn't get to see where they went personally, or if they were any good, but I was told they were awesome. It's just as well that I didn't get to ride them, though. I have a low tolerance for awesome.
Besides all the slides, the huge thing in the middle, and the kiddie area, there were two big pools and two small-pool-sized hot tubs. All in all, a MASSIVE use of our fresh water reserves and truly a testament to the kind of fabricated extravagance and wastefulness that we can achieve when we're really putting our minds to it! I mean, we could have watered several villages for a year just with the water that was used in the 24 hours we were there! America! Fuck yeah!
Actually, they claim to be a "green" establishment, though this claim might only be based on the in-room recycling that they make available.
Besides the water park, there were a number of other distractions for kids and adults (though, not adult movies--I checked the pay-per-view, and there wasn't anything even moderately racy available. Probably the draw-back of staying in kid-oriented resort hotel). There was an arts and crafts room, where Gabe and Finn painted two plaster magnets. There was something called Magiquest, which was for the older kids. Sadly, since we didn't have older kids, and didn't feel comfortable BEING the older kids, lest we be labeled pervert weirdos or worse, we didn't get to see what this was all about. I did spot a few treasure chests scattered throughout the hotel that could only be opened with one of the Magiquest wands. I was sad that I'd never know what probably lame magicks awaited inside.
Let's see. What else. Restaurants, gift shops, an arcade filled with the best video an carnival style games that 1995 had to offer (which I can't really hold against the hotel--I've not seen an arcade with new games in it for almost a decade now, which leads me to believe that there AREN'T any new arcade games anymore), and a massage parlor/beauty salon (that was the "for adults" feature, which, I found out the hard way, isn't the same as an "adult" feature. Man, you should have seen the look on that little old sixty year old ladies face when I asked her how much a "happy finish" would cost me in addition to the massage. She nearly got the vapors!). And I guess that's it.
So, a pretty impressive place, I thought. A bit on the pricey side, not surprisingly, but quite maybely worth it.
But now, bed. It turns out that sleeping in the same room with a two year old and a three month old is not very conducive to actual sleeping. Every hour, Norah woke up to suck her fingers and snort and snuffle a bit. Then Gabe would start laughing in his sleep or wake up frantically searching for his binky, blankie, or his Trucks book. And through it all I was hardly more than half asleep. So, early night for me tonight. I'll try and post more about Gabe's time at the park (with some pictures and video) tomorrow.
Besides all the slides, the huge thing in the middle, and the kiddie area, there were two big pools and two small-pool-sized hot tubs. All in all, a MASSIVE use of our fresh water reserves and truly a testament to the kind of fabricated extravagance and wastefulness that we can achieve when we're really putting our minds to it! I mean, we could have watered several villages for a year just with the water that was used in the 24 hours we were there! America! Fuck yeah!
Actually, they claim to be a "green" establishment, though this claim might only be based on the in-room recycling that they make available.
Besides the water park, there were a number of other distractions for kids and adults (though, not adult movies--I checked the pay-per-view, and there wasn't anything even moderately racy available. Probably the draw-back of staying in kid-oriented resort hotel). There was an arts and crafts room, where Gabe and Finn painted two plaster magnets. There was something called Magiquest, which was for the older kids. Sadly, since we didn't have older kids, and didn't feel comfortable BEING the older kids, lest we be labeled pervert weirdos or worse, we didn't get to see what this was all about. I did spot a few treasure chests scattered throughout the hotel that could only be opened with one of the Magiquest wands. I was sad that I'd never know what probably lame magicks awaited inside.
Let's see. What else. Restaurants, gift shops, an arcade filled with the best video an carnival style games that 1995 had to offer (which I can't really hold against the hotel--I've not seen an arcade with new games in it for almost a decade now, which leads me to believe that there AREN'T any new arcade games anymore), and a massage parlor/beauty salon (that was the "for adults" feature, which, I found out the hard way, isn't the same as an "adult" feature. Man, you should have seen the look on that little old sixty year old ladies face when I asked her how much a "happy finish" would cost me in addition to the massage. She nearly got the vapors!). And I guess that's it.
So, a pretty impressive place, I thought. A bit on the pricey side, not surprisingly, but quite maybely worth it.
But now, bed. It turns out that sleeping in the same room with a two year old and a three month old is not very conducive to actual sleeping. Every hour, Norah woke up to suck her fingers and snort and snuffle a bit. Then Gabe would start laughing in his sleep or wake up frantically searching for his binky, blankie, or his Trucks book. And through it all I was hardly more than half asleep. So, early night for me tonight. I'll try and post more about Gabe's time at the park (with some pictures and video) tomorrow.
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