Larry G. Irwin II

Review of Wilderness Resort in Wisconsin...

Visited both the Wilderness and Great Wolf within ...

Visited both the Wilderness and Great Wolf within a week of one another. In what was almost certainly the off-season: the outside was closed.

Check-in at the wilderness was _infinitely_ better than the Great Wolf. And Wilderness did not have any potential fire hazard events... but I think I would still prefer the Great Wolf - and dont get me wrong - Great Wolf is not 5/5.

The snack centers are not always open, which at the main campus might be ok because there are others, but at the "on the lake" location (which is were my son loves) that meant that the _only_ snack place (that I was aware of) was closed. Note that it closed early one day, completely closed the other day.

The water park at the Wilderness is huge - but that means that walking/traveling to use the slides. And when you are with a 4yr old, doing all the slides can be a priority - and thus here we are walking over the place. And in the end, very few slides are one he can go on. Further, one of the few slides that he could have used was open on Sunday then inexplicably closed on Monday. No signs about when it was open or anything.

Some of the rules at the Wilderness seem more relaxed than at Great Wolf. Case in point: the rope & lily pads at the "on the lake" The rule at the Wilderness is one person (?) per lily pad. But that leaves the person to grab and manipulate the rope - which clearly impacts others. And as one's weight grows - so does that impact. Finally, in what I now see as parents worse than those that treat locations as baby-sitters - are parents that are completely oblivious to the world: I saw parents "playing" with their kids on the lily pads - completely unawares of the other children further down the obstacle. There was NO corrective action from the life guards.

The staff at the Wilderness seem distant. I am not sure that I spoke, or made eye contact, or that any of the safety staff interacted with anyone in my family. And before you think that maybe they had more important things to do - I agree. But at many points my son and I were the _only people_ in the pool area.

Also, it is worth remembering that this place is like a time-share resort. So the booth marked "information" is actually people trying to sell you condos. Do they know things, probably. But based on the few questions I asked, they knew as much as someone with google would know. So, I would skip it.

Finally, the food was terrible and over priced. This was the second in our double trips to the dells and we either found places closed for the season or went to the locations we had picked out the first trip. So, this time we decided that we would eat about the resort. We had pizza at a snack shop, lunch at the bar/saloon near check-in, and breakfast at the restaurant near checkin. Not again.

If you do decide to go wandering into town - one more bit of fair warning... maybe not go too far from the tourist strip and get into "downtown". On the first trip to the dell, we did that. We ate at a bat that served breakfast and had a kids menu. There was also some clearly inappropriate discussion (sex, racism, homophobia) that I have not heard in quite some time.

For me, in summary - this last foray into the Dells has me seeking alternatives.

Good Luck