My Review of the Great Wolf Lodge, Colorado Springs

We spent a couple of nights at the new Great Wolf Lodge over spring break. We also stayed at the GWL in Dallas a few years ago, so I will make a few comparisons to that. Overall it was fun, and I recommend it. Just a few tips and things to be aware of:

Arrival/Check-In:
They say if you check in at 4:00, your room will be ready. This is highly unlikely. They were still cleaning rooms and trying to get them ready for guests past 5:00 pm on the day we arrived. The lobby was full of families, luggage, and screaming toddlers. My recommendation is arrive early (officially you can arrive as early as 1:00, but the manager said they would let people in even earlier to avoid big lines at 1:00). Leave your luggage in the car. Bring in a bag of swim stuff. You check in at the front desk, then head to the water park and play until you eventually get a text notifying you that your room is ready. There are lockers in the water park area and several places to eat (without even needing to change clothes). When you check in, you get a wrist band that acts as your room key and can have charging capabilities, if you want. It's nice not having to carry around a key or wallet or anything while you're playing.

Rooms:
You can see all the options on the website. In Dallas, we stayed in one of the themed rooms. It has a layout like this:

I thought our kids were too old for the theme this time, so I got a standard room (layout below). The advantage that I now see to the themed room is that the kids' bunk beds are almost in their own separate room. There's no closable door to their area, but it's almost entirely walled in and provides parents with a little more privacy and less noise at night (as opposed to having everyone in the same big room, listening to each other toss and turn).

The rooms are new and clean and spacious enough. There were adequate outlets and USB ports in the nightstand. 

Complaints: 1)The beds are uncomfortable and the pillows are too big (John was calling me the princess & the pea for feeling this way, so maybe I'm overly sensitive, but I would at least bring my own pillows next time.) 2)The walls are thin; we were awakened by a crying baby at 3am. Bring earplugs. 3)The bathroom does not have enough places to hang wet swimsuits and towels. I would recommend bringing suction cup hooks. Our bathroom had one double hook on the door and one small towel rack. That's it. Not even one of those retractable clothes lines in the shower. We had to take our swimsuits off of the shower rod every time someone wanted to shower.

Activities:

There are special passes available that include activities. We didn't do that. The water park is included, and we did a couple of extra activities at an extra cost. 

The Water Park is great. It was not as big as the one in Dallas. No lazy river. But it was also less crowded feeling than Dallas, so that was nice. Lines were not too long for rides, especially in the morning. There are several big water slides of different types (some scary, some just fun and relaxing), a wave pool, and a play area in the middle where you can climb, shoot water at each other, and so on.

Mini-Golf is $7/person. It's a small 9-hole course, but fun.

John and Helene both enjoyed the Ropes Course. I think it cost $13/person.

There was an arcade and several other activities available that we did not do. The kids did MagiQuest a few years ago in Dallas and loved it. I think it's worth the money if your kids are old enough to let them run around the hotel on their own. It's around $30 because you have to buy a wand and activate it.

Food:
There are several restaurants in the GWL. We didn't try all of them; we went out to dinner both nights just to get out of the hotel for a while. We had breakfast included in our stay one morning, and it was great! A big breakfast buffet with lots of fresh fruit, oatmeal, grits, waffles, bacon, sausage, eggs, potatoes, good coffee, ... All the usual hotel stuff, but much better quality food than the typical (Hampton Inn level) hotel buffet.
The next morning we had to leave pretty early, so we got breakfast sandwiches at the Dunkin' Donuts (in the GWL), which opens at 6:30.
We had lunch at the Barnwood restaurant in the GWL, and it was surprisingly good quality, locally sourced, freshly prepared food:

The Barnwood also has happy hour (1/2 price drinks and appetizers) every day from 3-5:30, so we took advantage of that, too.

It was a fun staycation. I recommend it if you can get a good deal. The best option I found was to book at least 60 days in advance, so you can take advantage of the Early Saver deal (40-50% off). https://www.greatwolf.com/colorado-springs/deals