Travellers Tales 2012 Supplemental: Great Wolf Lodge Sandusky, OH

I’m recapping our trip to the Great Wolf Lodge over Labor Day Weekend… nearly two months later. Next up, I’m talking about the room and the actual hotel rooms and water park.

King Whirpool Suite with Fireplace and Patio

The room was, according to my wife, awesome. We had a King Room Whirlpool Suite with a sofa sleeper for my daughter. There was a gas fireplace, two televisions and a patio outside our room. Not too shabby. At Splash Lagoon we had to walk pretty far from a connecting motel to the actual park. Here, it was simply down the hall and down one floor. After driving for four hours, we wanted to decompress but the kid was jumping on the bed, “Let’s go! Get our swimsuits on, come on!”

Now, Splash Lagoon also had several slides of varying levels of thrill. There were ones for younger riders and then there was the pain hole that I tore myself up on over and over for two days. No such luck, here. It was very kid friendly. They had a small kids area with some little baby slides and standard buckets and fountains to get the little ones wet. In the middle of the complex there was the fort. It was a giant tree house looking structure with lots of rope climbing areas and various pipes and levers to squirt water out at people. Then, every few minutes, a bell rings and a giant bucket drops water on everyone.

Attached at the top were two slides, one that went in the dark and one that didn’t. In the back of the park, there were two kid slides, a couple more tighter turn slides that emptied into pools and two inner tube slides that went outside the building but were still enclosed. On the left side of the building was a pool with basketball hoops, a general swimming area and a small ropes course, and on the right side was the family and adult hot tubs.

Outside, you could go lounge at the pool which had lots of chairs and umbrellas and some basketball hoops in the water at one end. It was nice that they provided lockers at a fairly decent rate per day. The only issue was that the key was your standard locker key on an elastic wrist band. While trying to keep up with my kid, who insisted on climbing up to the top via cargo netting, I snagged the key on the netting and ripped it right off the band. I managed to find her and tell her to stay put while I climbed all the way back down to the floor and search for it. It doesn’t help that there is rushing water everywhere with a giant bucket dumping 1000 gallons on you every couple of minutes. Luckily, I found the key and my kid hung back until I was able to reach her.

After you’re done seeing the park you can get a pretty good, but slightly overpriced meal at the restaurant and even some ice cream. For breakfast they had a pretty decent buffet with omelet station. The thing is, after one day, you’ve pretty much exhausted all there is to do at the park. Splash Lagoon kept us busy for a couple of days but I was pretty much just standing soaked with nothing to do on day two.

After a long first day, we decided to settle down at the lobby and watch the Chuck E. Cheese style show with a bunch of woodsy creatures and a really bad Native American get up straight out of grade school Thanksgiving coloring books.

Clocktower Show

I wanted to download some pictures of the event, so I ran out to the car close to midnight to retrieve my laptop bag which had my microSD adapter in it.  Remember, I don't have a smart phone; just a lowly old LG Cosmos.  On my way out to the lot, I caught a glimpse of something interesting.   Lo and behold there’s one of the local police force parked outside. “Son of a bitch”, I thought. Of course, I had to get a picture of it because, well, if you read any of my Outer Banks posts from this summer you’ll understand why I am a little gun shy when it comes to vacations and the police. The next day, I had asked the server at the breakfast joint and they said the police are here often. In fact, they had an evacuation before we checked in the day before. Gives you a great sense of security, right?

Perkins Township's Finest 

One of the last things we did at the hotel was go into the game room. That was a huge mistake. First of all, the child does not really play video games with any skill or coordination and the first thing she wanted to play was Dance, Dance Revolution.

“You have trouble walking in a straight line. No.”

Then she wanted to win something which is always a joke. After working at Cedar Point for a year we realized how bad the redemption games are. You spend obscene amounts of money for tickets to buy something worth a fraction of the price. Listen, the reason why people always win the Scale Games at amusement parks isn’t because the guesser sucks. The scales have nothing to do with your ability to fool someone. You are the fool because you play. If you see someone win, you are more inclined to play. So, you spend $2.00 on a game and win a prize worth about $0.20.

With redemption games, you pay $0.50 for a game of Skee-Ball, only to get enough tickets to get an eraser or $0.10 piece of candy. Now, the first two games of Skee-Ball ate my quarters, so I had to go get the attendant to refund me. That was a joke. One poor girl manning a counter with each side filled with people. There was no order, no line, no sense of organization. Quite frankly, I was happy to be out of there.

Next up, Marblehead light house and East Harbor State Park

Travellers Tales 2012 Supplemental: Great Wolf Lodge Sandusky, OH

Only a month late on this… I had to break it up into parts as to… um.. not… ramble….

Yeah, I’m doing that trick where you used to expand the spacing to get an eight page paper to look like a 10 page one.

So… the long time coming, hardly anticipated post is here.

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Labor Day Weekend of 2011, I took my wife and daughter up to Erie to visit Splash Lagoon. We take our normal summer vacation in the first week of June, but it leaves a lot of summer left without a getaway of any kind. Labor Day Weekend is the last chance to have any fun before the pool closes and it gets all rainy and chilly around our place.

This year, Splash Lagoon was booked, so I turned to my old stomping ground of Sandusky, OH. I spent two summers working at Cedar Point. And for a moment, I thought about saying, “Let’s just go there.” However, with a five year old in tow, it seems like an awful waste of money to go to a coaster heavy amusement park and spend your whole day in Kiddieland. Yes, they do have a water park on site, but it’s outdoors and even though the weather was still warm, it rained or was cloudy most of the weekend. So, we opted to go to an indoor joint, instead.

Great Wolf Lodge is another one of those indoor water parks like Splash Lagoon. This one has a forest theme, complete with log cabin motif. As I started to look for the best deal, my wife chimed in saying, “You better get a King room with a whirlpool.” Now, this is the same girl that was all gung ho to go camping and sleep on the ground the week before, stating I was being a sissy for having some reservations about sleeping in a tent. The fact that I had to book a King room for her, just proved my point.

The trip has been a point of excitement for my kid who has been chomping at the bit to go. She just started kindergarten and was excited to get away for the weekend. I was, too. I think we all were. That weekend was also her parents’ wedding anniversary and that’s still a sore subject after losing her mom two years ago. We felt bad, at first, leaving her father at home. He had been sort of sedentary all summer with a bad leg. We had no idea what we were coming back to with that. But, he put on a brave face and said go. I’m sure my wife had some pangs of guilt about leaving him at home, but after two years, the pain is more like a dull ache that acts up every once in awhile.

After getting on the road we wanted to stop for a restroom break and decided on the Portage service area on the Ohio turnpike. We had thought about Boardman as that is the closest exit to the border, but I ballsed that up and missed the exit. We ended up on a back road near some college and said, “Screw it! Get back on the turnpike. Boardman IHOP will just have to be skipped.” After that roundabout we realized that we desperately needed lunch, as our kid’s mood was starting to reach critical mass, so we stopped at the next service area which was 27 miles away. As we pulled in, my kid says, “Great, we’re back where we started!” We had to explain to her that most service areas on the turnpike are almost identical.

We had a pretty decent meal as I had opted for Panera. Gotta love the Bacon Turkey Bravo. I had even got some chuckles from the guys working there as they noticed I was wearing my Callahan Auto shirt. I really had no ulterior motive to wearing it into Ohio. It had just came up in the rotation of shirts. Still, I did the “business card” thing and gave them one to go and get their own. After that we were on the road towards the Great Wolf Lodge.

You can always tell when you’re close to Sandusky. The quarry smell sort of gives it away. After awhile you become indifferent from it, but I can always tell when I’m close to being back there. Some of it looked different. I guess 15 years will do that. The Great Wolf Lodge used to be called The Great Bear Lodge when I worked at the Point. Eventually, they got absorbed into a corporate location and now operated as Great Wolf, though I’m sure that most of the exterior resembled what it used to way back when.

Once we arrived, the kid could barely contain herself, but we were too busy checking out the digs. The lobby which looked like a log cabin as if a log cabin was built by Donald Trump in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The huge fireplace took up almost one wall and the chimney went floor to ceiling, three floors high. There was a huge set piece in the lobby which we weren’t sure what to make of when we saw it. Apparently, they had some kind of animatronic show, a la Chuck E. Cheese. That would be a nice wind down moment for our kid after dinner.

And with that we went to our room. Next up… the amenities.

WUMF: August 2012 Edition

It’s the end of the month. You know what that means?

Hurricane Isaac
NOLA just can’t catch a break. Almost seven years to the day from Hurricane Katrina, Isaac comes knocking on New Orleans. Meanwhile in Tampa, the RNC is holding their event and unless Governor Christie comes out onto the beach in a speedo, telling everyone to GTFO, I think they’ll be fine. Even if Isaac becomes a Category Cantore, it will be OK for them. Now, not that I want anyone to be harmed by such a destructive force, but it begs the question that if the Republican Convention were to be hit by the full force of the hurricane, would Pat Robertson say they deserved it? Somehow, I think not.

And Isaac? Come on, Isaac is not a hurricane name. Isaac is a cruise ship bartender. He’s a scientist. He’s not a hurricane. Just like Andrew, which was a really destructive storm was not a good name. “Hey everyone, Hurricane Andrew is coming.” No one flinches. “Hurricane Katrina is coming!” You get your shit and move. Hurricane Bill? That sounds like something you get from the insurance company.

Fat Guy At the Water Park
This weekend I will be going to Great Wolf Lodge in Sandusky. Now, last year, at this time we went to Splash Lagoon and I think they might have recovered all of the lost water. You can always tell when I am next on the water slide. Just look for the water to stop flowing at the bottom. Then comes the sound of a submarine collapsing under the pressure of the deep water. Then, you see the tsunami appear at the opening of the slide and WOOSH!

Now, my wife insisted that I book us a King bedroom with whirlpool tub. This is the same woman that drug me camping in a tent last weekend and now we have a fireplace in our hotel room. Go figure.  BTW, Is it coincidence that they just aired a Fat Person On A Waterslide segment on Here Comes Honey Boo Boo Child?   People are going to be looking at me, all judgmental and shit.

Kindergarten Blues
My daughter started Kindergarten this week. Now, there was a lot of hesitation and nervousness about going to the bus stop, getting on the bus, spending a whole day at kindergarten, and then riding the bus home, hoping to get off at the right stop. But, a brave front was put up and only a few tears were shed over the whole event. My wife got through it. :)

However, I’m not exactly sure I like all these new rules for school kids. I understand, 1980 is a far cry from 2012. The kid had homework the first day?!?!? Granted, she had to color in stuff. She does a good job of staying inside the lines but she did have one bad screw up.

 

Now, the handbook was pretty strict about absences and such which got my wife and I a little miffed. The kid is only five. If she were to miss a day, not due to illness, she might not learn that Friday is the last weekday. I think we can make that lesson up at home. However, there was a lot of speak about records and courts and I was thinking, “This kid is going to have a record because we went on vacation a day early?” I can see her future, “You daughter cannot be admitted to Harvard because she missed out on Yellow day back in Kindergarten.” So, apparently, there are five year olds smart enough to skip school and go do Pixie Sticks under the stadium bleachers. How do you punish a five year old for what their parents did? I guess, ask the folks who think the deportation of illegal kids brought over the border, by their parents, is a good idea.

Tekkit
OK, so I have already talked about my Minecraft addiction. But, as of late, the game is somewhat lax in exciting features. Don’t get me wrong. It’s still an awesome game and some of the latest features, like temples and trading with villagers is really cool, but having to start over on a new “world” to get these things to generate is a bit problematic.

However, I’ve been watching the Yogscast videos for a long time and apart from being hilarious, they’ve got me wanting to try Tekkit. The idea behind this is that I thought, “Man, wouldn’t it be awesome if I could build some kind of power plant, only primitive.” Nothing like a nuclear plant, but perhaps a water wheel to generate power for furnaces and mine carts. Redstone mechanics still escape me.

So, as I got into the later videos, I saw that they were starting to build stuff in Tekkit, which is a collection of mods, I guess. One of them is called Industrial Craft. These mods, bundled with a launcher and a kick ass texture pack like Sphax BD Purecraft have made the game extremely fun, if not infuriatingly complex.

It took forever for me to remember how to build some of the machines like a piston or enchanting table and now, with a whole bunch of new ores and minerals, it’s like learning chemistry all over again with a third grade level education.

You can literally automate an entire process of macerating an ore block into dust, smelting it into a bar, and placing it into a chest with a few cables, pipes, and basic engines. Not only that, but you can automate all of this further by building a quarry that will dig a large hole in the ground, sucking up all the blocks, passing them through pipes that can filter out items like dirt and rock from Iron and Diamonds and then pass them through the process or into chests.

It sort of breaks the game, though. There is a lot of setup to doing all of these wonderful things, but once you accomplish setting up a quarry that runs on fuel derived from an oil well or volcano and it automatically processes everything into chests, you don’t have to leave your house. You don’t have to fight monsters. You don’t have to mine. It’s like playing an RPG and once reaching level 20 or so, you go back to that first area that kicked your ass with your leather helmet and dagger and you say to the little bug monsters, “Who’s the bitch, now?”

Still, I will probably waste a lot of hours doing all this. If you are even the least bit interested in this, look up the Tekkit Wiki and go watch these videos.

Duncan is a member of the Yogscast and even though I do recommend watching the funnier Simon and Lewis or Sips and Sjin videos devoted to Tekkit, Duncan is more focused on showing you how to setup all of the machines and wiring associated with Tekkit.

OK, I’m out like a light. Have a good Labor Day.

I'm Too Old For This Shit

I hold a particular standard when it comes to beaches. To me, a beach is the sandy or rocky or general coastal area next to a large body of water. That body should usually be an ocean.

Now, being a former resident of Fayette Name, we had our own beach in South Connellsville which bordered on the Youghiogheny river. This is the same river that forks at one point and if you go canoeing or tubing down the wrong path, you’ll eventually have to pick up your flotation device and walk a bit. I don’t consider that a real beach. I consider it a lie we tell ourselves in order to feel better about not having a real beach around.

My wife likes to think that Presque Isle, in Erie, is a beach, complete with somewhat dirt based sand and rocks jutting up out of the water of a lake that, at one point in history, caught fire. I wouldn’t be too quick to take a dip in that. OK, actually, it was Lake Cuyahoga that caught fire back in the 60s, but as my one coworker put it, “Have your dog take a dump on your kitchen floor. Then have your mom clean it up, using the best possible cleansers and bleach. Once that floor shines , have her make you a sandwich and then drop it on the floor where that steaming pile was ten minutes ago. Would you still eat it?” Regardless of how much time has passed, that crappy, flammable water still ends up in Lake Erie.

So, going forward, Lake Erie does not have a beach. It has a shore. It has a park. It does not have a beach. END OF LINE.

Since we’ve settled that, I wanted to relate to you my trip to Erie over Labor Day weekend. Because we are perpetually procrastinating everything, my wife and I have been doing some spontaneous summer stuff to kind of break up the long haul towards next summer and the ‘REAL’ beach trip.

My kid’s been wanting to go to a water park and because of the weather, I came up with the glorious idea to go to Splash Lagoon in Erie. It’s an indoor waterpark which is open year round. Doing a quick search on their site, I was able to get a night’s stay at an adjoining hotel and two days worth of park passes for the three of us for $250.

We drove up Friday morning and spent the afternoon drowning at the water park. We broke for dinner and then hit the hotel pool for a bit before going to crash in the room. The next morning we checked out and went back to the waterpark for a few hours, cleaned up and then did Presque Isle and Erie Not-a-Beach.

My take on Splash Lagoon.
If you have kids I would definitely go there at least once while they’re old enough to ride the slides. If you have little ones, like I do and you do not plan on going on any slides, then it’s fine to go with small children. We’re in that period of flux where we are not exactly slide worthy anymore, yet our kid is not quite old enough to really tackle the slides on her own. That being said, I rode every slide to get my money’s worth and paid the price in injuries.

My wife only went on two slides out of embarrassment and risk of injury. My kid rode two slides and spent most of her time in the kiddie area. While my wife watched her, I rode the big kid rides and sustained many an injury.

The Rides
Splash Lagoon has seven water slides, three whirlpools, a lazy river, a pool for basketball and some obstacle stuff and the kiddie area.

Maui Wowie: Basic open body slide with circular pattern. It kind of hurts the back a bit, going over the pipe seams but my kid loved it. She rode it again and again all day long. I could only ride it a few times because it kept slamming my ankle into the turns.

The Black Hole: A similar ride to Maui Wowie, but completely in the dark.

Big Kahuna: This one is a tube ride that goes outside the building and then back in, ending in a splash pool connected to the lazy river. All three of us did this one, once. I could not get either my wife or kid to go on a second time.

Python Plunge: Another tube ride that seems to be a combination of Kahuna and Black Hole.

Shark Attack: Body slide that goes outside the building next to Python Plunge, has a longer ending due to speed.

Cyclone: A tube ride that drops you into swirling bowl that eventually plunges you down a slide into a splash pool that connects to the Lazy River. This one I liked going on a lot but there is a moment when you head towards the exit chute where you end up slamming into the barrier between the chute and the bowl which usually hurts. I usually dumped out of my tube at end, every time.

Hurricane Hole: Body slide, just Cyclone. I dubbed it the Pain Hole. You slide into a swirling vortex which ends in a giant hole that drops you into six and a half feet of water. It took some time to figure out how to not dump into the pool, head first. It’s also a bit jarring when you initially exit the slide into the bowl. I found that if you sat up you had better control and could actually maneuver yourself into going feet first into the pool.

Most of the slides where hard to gauge because there was no way to see anything. You managed to get water in your eyes and nose and mouth no matter how hard you tried. Because most slides insisted you ride with your legs crossed and hand behind your head you couldn’t guard against the splashing. So, telling someone that slide goes outside the building doesn’t do much for me because I can’t see anyway.

Probably the most notable part of the park is the Tiki Tree House which has various water cannons and buckets that you can spill on people as they climb. But at the top there is the huge bucket which spills its contents on everyone below roughly every ten minutes. An air horn sounds and like some Pavlovian response, people come running from every corner to wait for the deluge of water that drenches everyone and everything in its path. At first, my kid tried to get away from it. By the end, she was running towards it.

In all, it was fun. I guess they just opened an indoor wave pool, so we’ll have to try that next time. For me, it's hard to try and be the kid that didn't have these kinds of places around me, growing up.   I want to enjoy the rides and experience them with my kid but man I'm getting too old for this shit.   That's why I made that point about having kids of a certain age.  If you have more than one, close in age and over the minimum height requirement it's easier because they can ride together or at least run off and have fun, leaving you to lament the fact that you didn't lose that extra ten pounds over the summer.   And as a clumsy, 36 year old Mongo, it's hard to be graceful as you are being tossed about by water.  I gave Splash Lagoon the tagline:  "Every ten minutes they dump 1000 gallons of water and every fifteen minutes there's 1000 awkward dismounts." 

I felt the best part was going to a restaurant located in the parking lot, called Boston’s. I’d never heard of it before but it was pretty damn good food. My wife got an Italian sampler which consisted of chicken parmigiana, Fettuccine Alfredo, and a sausage lasagna.  How sad am I?

The only things we didn’t dare try were the family and adult only whirpools or hot tubs. I’d just assume not even go there. I know, consider how many germs were probably in that water, no amount of chlorine would make it safe, but it was probably safer than Lake Erie which does not have a beach. STEP OFF!