Great Wolf Lodge, indoor water park and resort, coming to west Georiga
Set to open in late spring; will hire 600 employees
By Isabel Hughes
Local families looking for a vacation getaway won’t have to travel far once an indoor water and adventure park-resort in LaGrange opens later this spring.
Great Wolf Lodge, a national hotel and water park chain, is set to open its first property in Georgia in late May, marking the company’s 16th location.
The resort, which offers everything from indoor water slides and wave pools to a ropes course and zip-lining as well as kid’s activities and dining and shopping, will be the company’s largest yet, the water park occupying 100,000 square feet of space and the indoor adventure park totaling 40,000 square feet.
The hotel will hold 457 rooms over seven floors and offer 18,000 square feet of office and meeting space.
“This really is going to be our flagship resort moving forward,” said Jason Lasecki, director of corporate communications for Great Wolf Resorts. “It really is the prototype of where we want to take the brand and it’s kind of the best-of-the-best of all the Great Wolf’s brought together under one roof. There are some new and innovative things that we’ve not debuted before so we’re super excited.”
Those new features include first-of-their-kind water slides — the Rapid Racer and Triple Thunder — a multi-level, interactive water fort tree house, the Oasis — an exclusive, adult-only area adjacent to the outdoor pool that will have chaise lounge chairs, a private hot tub and an inside-outside bar so parents can drink by the pool — indoor bowling, an arcade, a miniature golf course, a food hall and outpost bar and a locally-sourced, farm-to-table type restaurant.
“The two new slides will be new to North America,” said Great Wolf LaGrange’s General Manager, Keith Furnas. “They’re the first of their kind in North America for both indoor and outdoor (water parks). The Rapid Racer is a unique racer side where you can take a brother or sister or friends and you get loaded into tubes at the same time by a conveyor and off you go down the slide. There are other racer (slides) out there where you find out who wins at the bottom, but these two are connected in a way that at different parts along the slide, you’re going next to each other so you can see who’s winning.”
Triple Thunder, Furnas said, is another action slide, though it serves as a raft and can hold up to four people.
“It starts off with a nice quick drop and you go into a funnel and then it drops you again, then you get to the saucer portion that spins you around, then you drop into the next one and out you go,” Furnas said. “There are other slides that have these elements but none exactly like (this.)”
Though the water park will only be accessible to hotel guests and birthday party reservations — the average $199 per night room price includes length of stay, check-in and check-out day access to the water park — the indoor adventure park will be open to the public.
“We don’t sell day passes to the water park for a couple of reasons,” Lasecki said. “One, our lifeguards can better scan the water if there’s not a plethora of people inside of it and it’s also just a convenience and comfort factor for the guests that are staying there. You’re not going to have to queue up for 30 or 40 minutes to ride the slides, you’re going to have to wait maybe five or 10 minutes. The water park is designed and built to mirror the number of guests that we have in the hotel at any given time.”
Located about 100 southwest of Gwinnett County, LaGrange was chosen for its accessibility from Columbus, Montgomery and even parts of Florida and Tennessee, Furnas said, though he added it is also far enough from the Atlanta area to make a quick getaway feel like a real vacation.
“That’s kind of a key factor,” he said. “You’re on a getaway with your family and you want to actually feel like you’re going someplace and and hour, hour-and-a-half in a car gives you that sense that OK, we are going away from home, so it plays well into that.”
Lasecki said though Great Wolf is still several months from opening, there has been “great excitement” about it.
“In the last two years, we’ve opened four resorts and so far, the booking for this resort are the strongest out of the four,” he said. “There’s clearly a lot of excitement and anticipation for this property to open.”
Reservations for the resort are now open for bookings beginning Thursday, May 31 and patrons can receive up to 30 percent off rate by booking by March 23.
Water park passes are included in the nightly price and every night’s stay allows park access from 1 p.m. on the day of arrival until close of the departure date.
Towels and life jackets are provided by the lodge and lifeguards are always on duty.
Check-in will open at 4 p.m. and check-out will be at 11 a.m., though late checkout packages are available. The water park will be open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday to Thursday and from 9 a.m. to 8: p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
The resort will also be hiring about 600 employees prior to opening.
For more information, visit greatwolf.com/georgia.
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