There was a water park, an aquarium, and the pungent stuff that leaks onto you when you replace a sink.


The Anaheim/Garden Grove Great Wolf Lodge came highly recommended to us by a few friends. Since Danielle had no school on Friday, it was a good opportunity to get some January swimming in - the GWL water park is fully indoors. I think the little one has only been down a plastic slide into the Cooley pool so this was looking to be an important milestone.

Dani and I drove up Thursday around lunch time and happily found that our room was available for check-in when we arrived. After dumping our luggage and getting suits on, we were greeted with a rather uncrowded water park.

Left back: big slides. Left center: medium slides (Fort Mackenzie). Right center: wave pool. Right back: standing wave. The lazy river is behind Fort Mackenzie, the toddler area is on the right out of view.

I wasn't sure if Fort Mackenzie would be impressive or intimidating so I steered Dani toward the toddler lagoon. The little kids' area wasn't boring by any means - it had a smaller climbing structure, water spouts, and a pair of slides. After a little wading time, Dani tried one of the slides. Unfortunately, she chose the straight-down slide and was displeased that I didn't catch her at the bottom.

We switched things up and went to the more familiar setting of the wave pool. Because she is a hair under 42", Dani was required to wear a PFD in the wave pool. As it turns out, the life jacket gave Dani additional confidence and so she opted wear one most of the rest of the time.

After the wave pool we checked out the lazy river. I was mildly disappointed to see that the lazy river has its own little section of the water park rather than rivering around the entire perimeter.

Some relevant documents - the upsells, activities, kids menu, and final bill.

GWL has a sit-down restaurant, a buffet, a pizza place, an ice cream shop, and a Dunkin. Since this isn't a ton of variety, we ventured out of the lodge for second lunch. Needless to say, the moment you step out of GWL you realize you're in the suburbs and strip malls of Garden Grove. The nearby shopping centers have a few hole-in-the-wall food options but it's largely uninspiring. There's a McDonald's across the street but that's just a worse verions of GWL options.

We grabbed some Round Table and promptly returned to the water park.

With the newfound comfort of a life jacket, Dani eagerly tried the other of the slides in the toddler lagoon. This one was a curving red half-pipe that would have been better to start on. Dani spent about 45 minutes doing lap after lap on this slide with an enormous smile on her face. With only two or three other kids riding the slides, there wasn't any waiting between runs.


Abrutly, Dani started walking out of the little kids area towards Fort Mackenzie. She wasn't entirely sure where to go on the giant play structure so I coaxed her toward the smallest of the big kid slides - a short, enclosed tube with a simple u-turn. I wasn't sure how sliding in the dark would sit with the little one but when she got to the bottom she simply said, "that was dark and fast but fun!"

After just a few laps on the first slide, Dani wanted to try the ones that turn 270° and launch one flight of stairs higher. These were probably her favorite but she because she was battling the exhaustion of a half-day of school and several hours in the water, I told Danielle we should probably go check on Mommy's train. In uncharacteristic defiance, Dani simply turned and walked back up the stairs to do another lap. To be fair, my instructions probably felt like a rug pull because I normally put her on the clock when it's almost time to go. Indeed, when she returned Danielle was amenable to being given three more slides but decided that her last one would be from the top of Fort Mackenzie. She came off the blue slide 10% scared, 30% sleepy, and 60% excited.

There's not a ton to say about the next day, we did three water park sessions where Dani retraced the previous day's journey from toddler lagoon to the top of Fort Mackenzie.

Other thoughts and recommendations

Overall the GWL trip was great - it was convenient, inexpensive, and a lot of fun for the little one.


The accommodations are like a lower-end Marriott or Hilton - they're plenty comfortable and better than I'd expect from a kid-oriented venue. The pricing is certainly on par or better than the aforementioned peers; ~$200/night with included water park passes. Part of me wishes I could have paid for a higher-tier room and maybe extended or exclusive water park access. Another part of me is happy that the GWL hasn't been Disneyfied with a half dozen fast pass tiers and 'experiences'.

Like most vacation destinations, the GWL lobby and common areas are well-maintained. The lodge theme is nice but, of course, it's rough cut wood screwed on top of drywall. The staff was uninversally quite friendly and helpful but not in a fake, theme park sort of way.


For bigger kids there's a wizard game that is comprised of running around the hotel with a wand, completing quests at themed kiosks. The staff indicated that there's a littler kids' version of this but we opted to skip it since the only reason Danielle will leave a pool is to get on a waterslide. There will be time for this when she is older and brings a friend to GWL.

On the one hand, the wizard game doesn't have the greatest production value - screens with simple animations, Home Depot astroturf grass, and craft store jewels. At that age I don't imagine it matters, but I hope the level of effort means they change the game somewhat regularly. On the other hand, I distinctly recall the pure joy of running amok through hotels when I was a kid. That experience was completely without purpose, couple it with magic and shit and I'd have been in heaven.

GWL also has a ticket-oriented arcade, a mini bowling alley, and a tiny minigolf course with a fluorescent cave theme. These may attract interest in the years to come, for now it's all about bouncing between the water and tablet/audiobooks.


I mentioned the limited variety of restaurants in the lodge and lack of options within walking distance. I'd kicked around the idea of hitting Downtown Disney but after many hours in the water, driving and dining in didn't seem appealing. Probably a future itinerary could be built around hitting Disney or one of the OC downtowns on the way in.

Some stuff we ate at GWL:

• Half chicken/sit-down: good
• Salad/sit-down: good
• Tenders/sit-down: good
• Fries/sit-down: good
• Burger/pool snack bar: horrible
• Cheese curds/pool snack bar: not great
• Fries/pool snack bar: okay

For the wide disparity in food quality between the snack bar and sit-down restaurant the respective bills differed by all of 20%. And so it was rather disappointing that (on Thursday and Friday, anyway) only the snack bar and pizza place were open before dinner. On the plus side, our room had a fridge and our floor had a microwave so we could have supplemented the dining options with some home favorites.

It'd be neat if the GWL had leveraged the OC food truck scene so we could have gotten some yakisoba or carne asada fries or empanadas.

Turns out d'bears isn't just my fantasy team.

My biggest (fairly unsurprising) takeaway from this experience was to only go on weekdays. Thursday afternoon had a very light crowd. Friday morning and afternoon saw a few more visitors - instead of walking right onto the slides Danielle traveled in a small flock of children who impatiently waited for the attendant to wave them in. The empty lobby and easy slide access ended at check-in time on Friday afternoon. Our last trip downstairs was more reminiscent of my summer days at Windsor Water Works - mainly standing on cold concrete stairs wrapped in a rubber mat waiting for my turn.


It's been pretty mellow around the house. Dani got a plush stingray at the aquarium and we've kept an eye on Watch Duty for any local situations.



Our old sink started leaking and though we are due for a new kitchen, Costco had stainless a steel Kohler so we pretty much had to. I haven't done a kitchen sink before but was intimately familiar with all of the plumbing underneath. No sweat.

Since the counter had absorbed some water over time, I took sandpaper to it and followed up with a little bit of fiberglass.

That is a really dirty window.

1. Surface prep
2. Fitment test
3. Fiberglass
4. Silicon caulk around the fringe
5. Install
6. Tightening of the retaining brackets with Jes pushing down on the top
7. Replumbing

The new sink didn't have an air gap/bubble valve for a dishwasher so per the internet's instructions I ran a high loop to keep any garbage disposal overflow out of the dishwasher drain line.

Related / internal

Related / external