Dells Water Parks

We LOVE the Wilderness and are spending New Years there this year! It's lots of fun for kids of all ages and adults too!

Our family has gone to Great Wolf Lodge for the past 3 years. We have a 6 1/2 year old and a 5 year old. They love it. What we like about GWL is that you are only allowed in the water park if you are staying at the resort, whereas other places are open to the general public. GWL also has a magicquest activity, and a kids club that is free, where they can do a craft activity, a learning activity, and earn free stuff. A really great time.

We stayed at Kalahari this summer and LOVED! (our girls are 4 and 6) Besides the waterpark they really enjoyed the bowling and, silly as it sounds, painting pottery. We have also been to Chula Vista which we didn't like as much. This past weekend we went to Key Lime Cove. The waterpark was nice but not that big so you would probably get bored if you stayed more than one day. We loved our room and the resort was super cute though. Have fun!!

We have been to the Dells a couple of times, we have been to the Wilderness and Great Wolf and we liked them both. Our kids are younger (4 and 2), and the Great Wolf seems to be their prefered park.

However, we love Grizzly Jacks in Utica. It is smaller than the big waterparks in the Dells, but the whole waterpark is indoors and there is also an amusement park. It is exactly a 90 minute drive for us which is ideal because we can make the drive in the evening after work and get there before bedtime. We usually get the villa which is huge! Each bedroom has 2 full/queen beds and has room for 2 full/queen aerobeds, so 2 families can easily stay in the villa, 3 if someone is willing to sleep on the pull out couch downstairs. Then you also get a full kitchen, which we love becuase we can pack up our own food for meals. The last time we went was over a holiday weekend and I did a full ham dinner for everyone, so I still got to have my holiday meal. Finally, what I think your kids would love is that they also have an indoor amusement park. This is a lot of fun in the evenings. My 4 year old is just starting to get into this, even though she can't ride all of the rides, but it is a nice change of pace. So for a long weekend, we prefer this over driving to the Dells.

We have been to Kalahari twice, Wilderness twice and Great Wolf once. I would recommend Kalahari or Great Wolf for your age group. Wilderness is huge and we went over Thanksgiving once and the walking between waterparks can be a hassle and it was quite chilly in the hotel hallways. The other thing I noticed about Wilderness is that there is not an indoor waterpark area that has an actual swimming pool for older kids to swim around in other than the wave pool which can be stressful because it gets very crowded and the waves are big. The other two indoor areas are either kids play areas or big water slides. Both Great Wolf and Kalahari have indoor pools with basketball nets and lily pads. Wilderness only has these types of pools in their outdoor areas which you won't be using at Christmas time! We did both Kalahari and Wilderness this summer with my 11, 9, and 4 year old. By far, Kalahari has the best slides for little kids and I couldn't get my 4 year old out of the kids water fort area! Hope that helps.

I've been to Kalahari and Wilderness and both are good in their own ways. The Kalahari is much smaller in that it only has 1 indoor waterpark and an indoor amusement park (that you have to pay separately to get into usually). However, I MUCH prefer the Kalahari indoor waterpark to the other waterparks in terms of their waterslides for little kids. All of the waterslides in the wilderness waterparks are pitch dark and quite scary for younger kids because you can't see a thing while going down. Also, you get water dunked on you at the beginning or end of all of the slides at the wilderness while this is not always the case at the Kalahari. So for a day or two I would choose the Kalahari. However, the Wilderness has 3 indoor waterparks, an indoor play area, 2 or 3 miniature golf places, and several arcades, which makes it a nice choice for longer trips because there is more to do at the resort. Both places have a big indoor wave pool, but the Wilderness one is much better and feels more like a beach with beach chairs, etc.

The Wilderness is very nice and so in Kalahari. We've been to the Wilderness 4 x's and Kalahari once. if you go on line you can take a virtural tour.

We're going to the Dells in 2 weeks! We've been there many times over the years. I really like the Wilderness Resort, and also Great Wolf Lodge. Wilderness is a totally huge resort. We are staying there this upcoming trip and made sure we got a room close to the indoor waterpark we plan to use the most. It can be a lot of walking to see the different indoor areas. The Villas are very nice if you want to upgrade for extra space, but they aren't attached to the main buildings with the indoor waterparks. Great Wolf has all the indoor waterparks connected, it is a great layout for families, and a lot of really cute extras. I love the Kid's cabin suite rooms, but they are a little pricey. Great Wolf also has good food, and an excellent little dessert cafe. I've always wanted to stay at Chula Vista because I've heard it is very nice, but I found their prices to be the most expensive by far, so we decided against it. We stayed at Raintree once when the kids were little. It was OK for very young kids, but would probably not be too exciting for your oldest. Wilderness and Great Wolf are much nicer.

We are thinking about doing the same thing over Christmas Break. We love Kalahari & Chula Vista.

We went to Mt. Olympus and it's great for the ages of your kids. They also have an indoor amusement park.