When The Hubby started medical school, we made a plan to take a fun vacation to celebrate when he graduated. At the time, that plan included just the two of us and Hawaii.

Then we had another baby just two months before he graduated. It was time for a new plan!

This new plan involved a family-friendly location and we knew just where we wanted to visit…

The Great Wolf Lodge in Kansas City, Kansas!

Great Wolf Lodge has eleven locations across the United States and Kansas City was the closest to us, so we picked a weekend in June, packed up, and headed out for some family fun!

Talk about your ultimate family vacation! Actually, our three days and two nights there were so jam-packed with fun that I had to break it up into two posts to tell you about it all!

Tomorrow we’ll talk about the water park, but today it’s all about the hotel!

We arrived on a Friday and, despite the line, we didn’t have too wait long to get checked in! Our room was a family suite, with two queen beds for us to relax on…

A sofa sleeper separated from the beds by a half-wall…

And a balcony where we enjoyed some fresh air and games…

The family suite also has a microwave and fridge which was very helpful in keeping our crew fed and happy!

Of course we didn’t spend all of our time in the room, although the beds were SUPER comfy! The lodge has loads of fun for the whole family to enjoy!

Friday night, the big boys and I explored the lobby…

and watched the daily Clock Tower Show, a cute production of talking forest animals telling a story about the building of the clock tower.

I think the boys enjoyed it!

This was a great pre-bedtime activity and lots of other families were there to enjoy it with us!

The next morning, we visited the lobby again for a little animal education…

During the Wolf Walk, Great Wolf Lodge staff guided us around the lobby, teaching us fun facts about woodland creatures such as the wolf, caribou, and bear!

And to end the walk, we all made origami wolves to take home!

Since we were only there two nights and spent the majority of our time in the water, we didn’t have the chance to experience any more of the fun activities inside the hotel.

Should you visit a Great Wolf Lodge yourself, you’ll have to try your hand at crafts in the Cub Club and get some yummy food, like the coffee and sweets found at Bear Paw!

Doesn’t this look like a fun place to stay?!

The activities I touched on were perfect for our younger children, but there are activities throughout the hotel for older children as well, such as Bingo, hula hoop and limbo contests, arcade games, MagiQuest, and more! You can visit the Great Wolf Lodge site for more on the fun to be had at a lodge near you!

A few other highlights of the hotel from my adult perspective:

*Free wifi– And by free, I mean a totally free and easy connection! I’ve been at many hotels that claim free wifi, only to end up with hidden fees or lots of hoops to jump through to get connected. Not at Great Wolf Lodge! I really appreciated this!

*A fitness room – The Hubby and I make it a priority to work out every day {almost every day for me}, so we were very happy about this feature. The room was small, but the three treadmills and few weight machines were enough to get us through those few days!

*Lots of luggage carts – Hallelujah!

Oh yeah, and then there was the waterpark…

You better come back tomorrow to read all about the highlight of our trip – lots of time in the water!

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*****

Disclosure: We received a reduced room rate for our stay at Great Wolf Lodge as a member of the media. I was not compensated in any way for this post and all opinions are 100% my own!