OT--Wisconsin Dells

[jack'smom]

We are going to spend my son's 3rd birthday in December at a Wisconsin Dells indoor waterpark. We are debating between The Wilderness and Great Wolf Lodge. Anyone have suggestions?
I know The Wilderness is pretty spread out. Do we need to walk in the cold, snowy Wisconsin weather to get to the waterparks?
How are the kiddie/toddler areas at each of the waterparks? We did Great Wolf in Michigan and my son loved it, but we are willing to try new things. He is not hugely adventurous and hates the whole "huge bucket is going to dump on everyone" thing, but does love pools and small slides.
We are probably only going to go one day/night and then stay for most of the day the next day, so boredom probably won't be a factor.
Also, Great Wolf Lodge is about $50 more than the Wilderness. Is it worth it?
Thanks for any help!

 

[ERMama]

been to the wilderness and you can walk inside. as you said it is spread out.
our last trip there one of the indoor areas/kiddie areas was under construction so that kind of sucked.
i think no matter where you go you will have fun.

 

[Laurabearz]

I have been to the Great Wolf in the Dells. It's also spread out. It's like every other year they build a new building with a water park in it.

One building has the wave pool and some slides in it, and a small childs area (no bucket)

One building have the giant bucket drop thing, with smaller slides and such and I think the Cone Of Death (our name for it not theirs... it's cyclone something, height requirement, heavy raft, near death expereince)

And one building has like the main area. There is anoterh stucture with slides, the lazy river, a lily pad area, small childrens area with small slides, hot tub and a pool with things you climb on, kinda like animal rafts.

All is connected via the main walk way. There might be more... somewhere there is a indoor out door hot tub...

Food onsite was... ok.

 

[hickchick]

We have not been to Wilderness, but have enjoyed Great Wolf as well as Kalahari. Kalahari's indoor waterpark is one HUUUGGGE room, compared to the others being split up in different rooms. Since they are all competing for your hard-earned $, I'm sure they are all very comparable and you will enjoy any of them! Have fun!

 

[aladams2]

We have been to all 3. Kalahari we loved, all in one room. Wilderness was very spread out and we had a cabin in Jan. Not a smart move. We had to bundle up and drive to the main building and then go in. Before we could leave we had to do hair and change before going back outside in the FREEZING cold to the car and then to our cabin. Didn't prefer that. But you can get a standard room, but you WILL be walking to get to the different parks and that was NOT fun. The Great Wolf was a blast. We liked the waterstuff along with the inside Kids area (Wylies something). They had tunnels and ball fights and pizza. Very cool. We definately want to go back there again. Plus everything is connected here. So it wins my vote!!!

 

[jack'smom]

Kalahari is not available for the night we want...so that's out.
If we stay just in the hotel portion of the Wilderness (there's only 3 of us), is that connected via inside walkway to the water parks?

 

[thewesterberg]

We went last April to the Wilderness with a bunch of friends and all our kids. We stayed in the hotel portion and while things were spread out, it wasn't all that bad. We stayed 2 nights and so the day we got there, we went to one park, the next we went to another park, and the day we left we went to the 3rd one. It worked out great for us as it felt like each day we were at a new place.

Everything was accessible by the indoor corridors. We did cut through the parking lot a couple of times as it was quicker, but it was nice out.

We liked it enough that we're going back this next April again with all our friends!

 

[angwill]

We've been to most of the hotels in the Dells. My preference would be Great Wolf. Last time we went to Wilderness we didn't like it at all. We stayed in the building that had a walkway to the main building and it was a long cold walk down the hallways. We ended up running outside in the cold to the little bus they had and taking that to the different parks.

One other thing is that Wilderness sells waterpark tickets to people not staying at the resort and Great Wolf is only for hotel guests which usually makes it less crowded.

HTH

 

[becca011906]

We stayed at wilderness the glacier canyon side of the resort so we had some LONG LONG walks to the indoor parks but it wasn't so bad we had our 4 y/o and never used a stroller but that could be an option too. It's all indoor walkways you can use or the busses to take you to and from differant areas. My kids really really loved it there and asked when we're going back all the time, sorry we're doing disney first! LOL

 

[WisconsinDisneyGirl]

We like Wilderness.