Great Wolf Lodge Scottsdale Review

We look forward to sharing a full review of our new Great Wolf Lodge in Scottsdale, Salt River, Arizona. This kids’ resort offers plenty of fun options for families. Read the good…and the bad. 😉

Hello friends! I hope you have a great morning. Today I’m sharing a new review Great Wolf Lodge in Scottsdale! It’s a very fun and kids-friendly resort for the whole family to love! Let’s take a look at this review and see what we thought.

We spent 3 days and 2 nights at the brand new Great Wolf Lodge. This basically makes a child’s dream come true. The girl lost her heart! I have seen several posts about Great Wolf Lodge over the years and were excited to finally take the crew. This summer, when I found out we were getting it, I booked our room on the first day they opened the system for booking. This site crashed multiple times during the process. I was able to get a room at the end of the month, but it was their grand opening weekend. The room rates were pretty fair and I was happy to pay.

Great Wolf Lodge Scottsdale Review

Great Wolf Lodge is a family-friendly resort with the lodge “Campfire” vibe. Two Wolf Mascot, Wiley, Violet and other charactersWalking through the property for photo ops, they have quite a few fun amenities.

Activities in Great Wolf Lodge Scottsdale

I was blown away by the amount of activity they provide on-site. They have mini golf areas, gold bread, mining exploration activities, indoor rope courses, mini bowling alleys, rock climbing walls and a full indoor water park. The water park is climate controlled up to 86 degrees per year, with a variety of slides, lazy rivers, wave pools, huge splash pads and baby/toddler areas.

The resort also features a Build-A-Bear workshop, a children’s area (where they offer childcare), a candy store and a Magiquest.

Magiquest became one of the biggest hits with kids. This is an indoor scavenger hunt (purchased for about $20) using a magic wand. You will pay an additional $15 to join the Magiquest game. A bit of green leaves are marked when various spots are found throughout the property. Something happens when you flick a wand over an object.

It can be a small thing, like the painting on the wall brightens up or something intense. Following the “Quest Pass”, you will need to collect different runes and objects and fight different characters on the screen of the entire property, which can turn into a very complicated game. This part was really magical, with kids running around waving wands at different objects everywhere, heading for the portal and seeing what they needed to do next. It was very Harry Potter.

On a Saturday morning, the girl and I went to the road quite early and took a quick drive to Scottsdale. We checked in to the hotel. There the girl received a cute wolf ear headband.

And our room wasn’t completely ready, so we spent an hour in the arcade, which is conveniently open 24/7. We were able to get stuffed animals for each from one of the clow machines, but they were pumped quite a bit.

We checked in to our room and grabbed dinner on site before heading to the water park. We jumped into the waves for a few hours, played with the splash pad, and the girls rode the slides at bedtime. The pilot entered the room when we all crashed and alternated between water parks and indoor activities for the next few days. It was a great family stay and a great way to celebrate the end of the airline training.

professional

Activities. I was surprised at what activities were included in the cost of staying on the property. It includes a water park, spending hours each day and also offers daily schedules with a variety of activities per hour. These include character greetings, face painting, storytime, dance parties with wolves, bingo and more. Some of the other activities were the purchase of additional activities such as bowling, rope courses, gold pans and rock walls. You can buy a wolf pass for each child, including everything, but I opted out of it because I didn’t know how much we actually would do.

Water park. The girls loved the water park and we literally spent hours every day here. There was a lot to do for each of them, but I think it would be perfect for babies all the time, even as a teenager.

Cons

food. The food was overpriced and terrifying. We usually love hotel food – girls have serious obsessions with room service – and it’s easy to find what we all love. That wasn’t exactly the case here. It’s also a high price when compared to Disney food, but at least it’s a delicious dish and there are plenty of options. The options were very limited, very healthy/not fresh and found to be overpriced. I think the fries were great, but I can’t live from fries for three days. 😉 (Liv even said that pizza was gross, but I’ve never heard her say it before.)

This is the saddest taco you’ve ever seen in your life. They were called “fajita vege tacos” which were on very small tortillas and filled with pico salsa and one or two peppers for each taco.

We are in Arizona. We do tacos a lot, but this was just hate.

The Great Wolf Lodge was still working out some of the obviously just opened kinks. It was not uncommon to try something (like a vending machine or drink machine) to find it broken. Also, I found the room to be ok. The duvet looked like it was 0.5 inches thick. I have the worst time to sleep when I feel that the blanket is just a sheet. So I take a towel from the bathroom and cover myself with a towel lol. They also had smoke detectors in their rooms and flashed super bright light every 10 seconds. We didn’t get a great sleep on our first night.

What’s nearby?

The good news is that Prep & Pastry, Fashion Square and more are only 12 minutes long. There are also plenty of great dining options nearby. There’s no denying that there are plenty of great foods in Scottsdale. So I think you’re just going to want a snack or snack by just putting the property outside for a real meal, going to Great Wolf Lodge. (Part of my recs: Olive & Ivy, True Food Kitchen, Flower Kids for Lunch, Blanco Tacos, Butter.)

Great Wolf Lodge Scottsdale is extremely conveniently located near a variety of attractions, making it a great base for family fun. Take a short drive away and explore the Desertridge Marketplace for shopping and dining, or discover the underwater world of the Odesey Aquarium. For those looking to enjoy nature, Pinnacle Peak Park offers plenty of stunning, scenic hiking trails with breathtaking desert views.

Checked out the brand new Scottsdale Preparation & Pastry location and ordered all the favourites. Chickpea scrambling is amaaaashing.

(I’m so proud of Kyle and their new location!)

How does Great Wolf Lodge compare to Disney?

They are completely different animals. (< - see what I did there?) Disney is a very oiled machine, runs smoothly and efficiently, with plenty of magical touches throughout. Obviously, it has been around for a long time, and the teething problems have been going well and genuinely ironing.

Great Wolf Lodge is not trying to become Disney. It’s so much fun what they do and they do it well. But that’s not a similar experience. So we still had an absolutely amazing time, but that’s not one of the places we’re like, “I can’t wait to go again.” Overall, I think it’s definitely worth it. The girls will want to go back at some point. I highly recommend it once. It’s still a very cool experience.

At this point, it’s back to the swing of things here! I have some conference calls to this AM, I’m going to go into some cardio!

I hope you have a great morning and I will meet you soon.

xoxo

Gina