Great Wolf Lodge for Christmas--Using Miles and Points

We live close to Great Wolf Lodge. If you're not familiar with this resort, it's part of a chain of lodges with indoor water parks. The great thing about Great Wolf Lodge is that most of the rooms fit larger families of 6 or more. Woohoo! The one in our area has been open for 8 years, and we've only been there once. We went when we had just one kid...he was 4 years old and we were about to adopt our second child. Since our son had recently learned how to swim and we knew it would be hard to bring a younger child there, we decided to go right before Christmas in 2008. The lodge had only been open for a year.

We had booked just a regular room, but we were upgraded to a Wolf Den suite with bunk beds.

 

We stayed just one night, but used the water park on the day we arrived and the day we left. 

Our son tried to play the MagiQuest game--$70 later, we discovered it was over his head.

Over all, we had a great time at Great Wolf Lodge.

We had talked about going again over the years, but as soon as our second son was getting to be a good age for it, we had a baby. But our middle son has seen photos of our trip and has persistently been asking when we can go there. Our youngest child started swimming like a fish this summer, so we figured this would be a good year to go.

My husband and I decided to give the kids a night at Great Wolf Lodge for a Christmas present. I like the idea of opening less "stuff" on Christmas and instead focusing more on giving the gift of a family experience. I looked at Groupons and Living Social deals for the resort, but most of those were only good during the week and had hidden costs (like a resort fee and taxes) that were on top of the discount price. We needed to go on a weekend due to our school and travel schedules, and we wanted to go during the Snowland activities.

I ended up booking directly with Great Wolf online. Literally two hours after I booked our room, I received an email from Great Wolf with a larger discount code. Aggghhh! I called Great Wolf and the representative adjusted my room to the lower price with no issues. (Tip: sign up to be a member on the website, and you will receive extra discounts not available to the public).

Miles and points redemption: I charged the room on our Barclaycard Arrival Plus credit card, which earns 2 points per dollar on all spending. We had enough reward points accumulated to completely wipe out the expense with a travel statement credit.

The kids will each receive a Paw Pass as a Christmas present from their grandparents, which will cover a MagiQuest game, a stuffed animal and some other fun extras.

Great Wolf Lodge has added quite a few things since we were there 7 years ago. I can't wait to see it snow in the lobby!

PS--this is going to be a surprise for our kids, so if you see them between now and Christmas, don't spoil the surprise!