My husband and I ended up staying at the Kalahari ...

My husband and I ended up staying at the Kalahari last month at the last moment when we had a terrible experience at the Wilderness and needed to find lodging suddenly at 9pm. At that time we were traveling across WI to see a specialist and choose Wilderness based on rates. I will NEVER make that mistake again. We can't imagine going anywhere else but the Kalahari, and just got home from our second visit, this one was 3 nights and we brought all of our kids. The first time we stayed for two days in the Royal African Queen Suite and had THE BEST experience! It was so great that we brought our entire family back last week (Combination Suite) for a much needed family vacation. It's been a hard year for us and I can say that we only wish we could have stayed longer at Kalahari. Every staff member from the life guards to the management was wonderful! Within minutes of being there one of my disabled children locked us out of one of the attached rooms. The security guy showed up fast and impressed us with his speedy trick to get us back into the room. And had the same "It's ok, no problem!" attitude that each staff member shared. Then, during the first night we had the unfortunate experience of rooming downstairs from "Jersey Shores", or as we came to call them "Michigan Shores". Boy, were those guests rude and loud! We are not big complainers at all but security handled it great and management helped us figure out a remedy that helped improve our stay. The last night we were there my son fell into the stomach flue and housekeeping showed up at 2am to help us clean and sanitize the room. (God forbid my other children or guests get sick!) The housekeeping was a very nice gentleman that was kind and reassuring, he let us know that there is an urgent care across the way if we needed it and told us a nice little story about his children. So, you can see that we had one of those types of vacations that had some setbacks, but I can tell you that time and time again the staff was wonderful, friendly and reassuring. As a small business owner I think that whomever is running this facility has amazingly exceeded at producing a resort that offers wonderful attractions, reasonable rates and pricing, and a fantastic staff of professional, friendly and simply GOOD people! The lifeguards always helped me get out of the water tubes after a ride (I have mobility issues), the guy running the slushy machine even got to know us, and even the shuttle drivers were gentleman- and real lifesavers when our legs were tired! Attached is a picture of my kids with the concierge Kellie, she was handing out free cookies in the lobby and remembered us from the month before (she took a picture of us on the big elephants last month). I guess this review is really long. We just are so thankful for the good experiences we've had and hope other families can enjoy Kalahari too. PROS: Excellent quality stay, and real life tigers in the lobby! CONS: We blew our budget by about $300 because the fun is addictive. The Bowling alleys are a little wonky, and the new ride "Screaming Hyena" feels like getting water hosed up the bottom. I don't recommend it if you've had children and carry any extra weight unless you want to remember childbirth.