This year's family vacation destination was Great Wolf Lodge, an indoor water park and adjoining hotel that caters to families with kids. Our boys are bigger now, increasingly active and decreasingly dependent--so the idea of a contained environment--heavily staffed with lifeguards and equipped with poolside access to draft beer and boat drinks--seemed like a good fit for this stage. We chose the Williamsburg location, not so much for the thrilling, high-speed water slide attractions like "Howling Tornado" that populate parents' motion-sick nightmares, but more-so for its "lazy river" feature (which they refer to as Crooked Creek). Here, the idea is that you and the kids kick back in giant inner tubes and float along an enclosed circuit of carefully calibrated chlorine while your worries waft away like the pungent scent of pool chemicals... We did thoroughly enjoy our stay, including an attraction or two that tested our intestinal fortitude--and took full advantage of the river feature... but just as every adult understands that there's no such thing as a "free lunch", most parents will agree that a "lazy river" is never as lazy as the beautiful picture you had in your mind. Here are a few less-than-lazy observations from my clear plastic inner tube on Great Wolf Lodge's Crooked Creek:
The family of four that nearly threw their backs out trying to pile into the same double float that they then rode for about 10 seconds before the two-year-old announced she had to pee. The new dad trying to give mom a break by taking the 4-month-old for a relaxing ride by himself--not anticipating the extreme level of difficulty involved in boarding and disembarking an inner tube while supporting the head of an infant with questionable neck muscles. The unsuspecting adults who mistakenly bought into the "lazy" concept and started to actually relax...only to be intermittently water-boarded by strategically placed water features that randomly dump buckets of water on your head or blast you in the face with the equivalent force of a busted fire hydrant.
The 3- and 5-year-old brothers (aka, my kids) who were too small for the big floats, but whose negligible body weight and unsinkable puddle-jumper buoyancy allowed them to zip past their parents' wonky inner tubes. The mom frantically paddling upstream against the current (aka, me) because she's temporarily lost sight of her kid. The pair of 10-year-old boys swimming around the course with giant goggles on, the better to see you and everyone else from the least flattering viewpoint, as they snorkeled through the succession of taints and bums awkwardly protruding from the underside of inner tubes. The mom of a special needs child putting on the happiest face she can in the attempt to convince her struggling kid that "This is fun, right?" while he practically walked on water in his effort to escape. The log-jam of empty transparent floats that built up during peak times and reminded you of the jellyfish scene from Finding Nemo (but kinda felt like your last visit to the Customer Service line at Walmart). The moment you realized your kids are safer in the lazy river than they are in your own Civic, with not one, but TWO hyper-focused life guards pacing the pool deck and poised to pounce at the first sight of a struggle. That Wednesday night window when the lazy river is lazy enough for you to float along undisturbed as you observe the aforementioned struggles of others (and artfully dodge the pounding of intermittent water features). The triumphant victory lap around the river the morning you check out, when you and your spouse ungracefully beach yourselves in a double inner tube and celebrate how many fewer times during this year's vacation you had to threaten the kids with FedEx'ing them back home to the grandparents. Like any family vacation with young kids, tense moments are par for the course. But with the convenience of a hotel room just down the hall, that family of four with the incontinent toddler could bail out and be "home" as soon as they had enough. And that new dad could dive into beer and pizza from the parlor in the lobby once he wrestled his bobblehead baby back to mom. And with the persistence of any mom on vacation, the smile of that special needs mother eventually went from forced to genuine as her kid gradually began to enjoy himself, and I watched as they both waved happily to the dad sitting poolside with a sleeping baby on his chest. Meanwhile, my kids got to make the treasured memory of Daddy screaming the length of River Canyon Run because he hates rides (but loves his boys enough to try it--twice). And I ultimately got at least 10 uninterrupted minutes to myself on that lazy river Wednesday night, catching Ray's eye as my float pin-balled around the corner, just in time to see him nod and smile at me over a sea of empty clear inner tubes...right before a random bucket of water nailed him square in the face....
It was another classic vacation for the books! Happy travels, friends!
 |
| The boys, enjoying their daily sprint down the hotel halls |
Comments
Post a Comment