People have been telling me for years that I simply must do GWL as it is an incredible experience.
Incredibly expensive? Yes
Incredibly fun? Meh.
Allow me to break things down:
* If you've never been before, it's a "resort." I use the quotation marks because resorts typically are all inclusive. This one is not, and literally everything you do costs extra money, including parking.
* There's a water park downstairs. It has stupid hours and closes at 8 PM each night, way too early. Should be open til 10 like every other pool at every other resort. Even Disney pools are open until 11 or midnight. Because it closes stupidly early, all the kids will be running feral around the resort after 8 PM, and you won't be able to do anything else due to hoards of unsupervised children. There's another pool or patio that was closed the entire week we were there. Then there's an additional outside pool and play area that closes even more stupidly early, around 5 or 6 PM, even though it doesn't get dark until 9.
Dumb.
* There are lifeguards, but they stand around talking and not really guarding anything, so try to watch other people's kids too. It's not safe.
* They make it seem like there's lots of dining options, but there aren't because they all have stupid hours, too. Dunkin closes at 2 each day--- and the employees there were super rude--- the dinner buffet only runs on certain days of the week, the pizza place was always out of half the stuff on the menu, and the wait at the bakery/ice cream place was always ridiculous.
* They have MagiQuest, which we've played in other places, and it's actually pretty fun. It's like a live action role play. You run around and use a magic want and cast it at items to complete quests. But every other place we've played, it's all on the same floor. Here? It's spread allllll over the resort. On multiple floors! They even have items in hallways upstairs where the rooms are! So basically you have unsupervised kids with magic wands CONSTANTLY running full speed up and down the stairs, down the hallways in between rooms where people are sleeping, and playing on the elevators so they can finish quests. I cannot understand what GWL was thinking with this one. You WANT unsupervised kids running up and down stairs and playing in your elevators? Sounds like a great opportunity for injury and liability issues but ok.
* There's an arcade but it's pretty small
* We never got to use bowling. It's not a real bowling alley. It's 6 or 8 lanes of virtual bowling, basically ski ball, and the wait was over an hour.
* There is golf but it was always too crowded as well.
* We did build a bear
* Overall the resort is very run down and wasn't Incredibly clean for as much as they charge
Tl;dr? It's very expensive and very crowded. Just be prepared and try to go with the flow. Your kids will probably have a blast. You'll probably need a few drinks.
