9 Ways to Save Money at Great Wolf Lodge

I recently went to a Great Wolf Lodge for the first time. I have heard good things about it (from people that have kids). Great Wolf Lodge is an indoor waterpark that has accommodation attached to it (a resort). There are 20 locations of Great Wolf Lodge across North American, mostly in the United States, and it was founded in 1997.

This post may contain affiliate links. Please see genymoney.ca’s disclaimer for more information.

Our kids (age 5 and 7) had a great time and mentioned Great Wolf Lodge being the highlight of the road trip. I didn’t have very high expectations and I was pleasantly surprised at how organized it was, and how passionate the staff were at trying to deliver a great experience for the kids. The staff seemed like they enjoyed being there and they cared.

There is a Great Wolf Lodge app that tells you the schedule of activities available.

For example, there was a craft activity, story time, and the evening dance party. These activities are free and allows parents to rest their brain a little which is nice.

We have been to Legoland and stayed at the Legoland hotel a few years ago which was similarly priced, though Great Wolf Lodge includes the waterpark tickets within the hotel stay.

The Great Wolf Lodge we went to was located in Grand Mound or Centralia, Washington. It was about a 5 hour drive (with traffic through Seattle) from Vancouver, BC.

Here are a few ways to save money at Great Wolf Lodge:

Get a Great Wolf Lodge Groupon

Groupon (the US site) has good deals for Great Wolf Lodge especially during the off season. Sometimes you can find a Groupon deal for the Centralia location for around $100 USD/night. You do have the add the resort fee on top of that, but it’s still a pretty good deal considering the cost of the water park admission is included with the accommodation.

Travel During Off Season

As mentioned above, you can travel to Great Wolf Lodge during the off season to save money. Think fall and winter and not during school holiday times.

Make sure to search while incognito because even when I was booking the prices increased quite quickly in the span of a few days.

We stayed in a Kid Cabin Suite it was great because the layout was similar to Legoland Hotel, it feels like a one bedroom suite but it’s just one room.

Here’s what the Kid Cabin suite looks like, it can sleep 5-7 comfortably but if you need 7 you would need to pay an additional fee for the water park.

Use GWL Coupon Codes

When booking we also used a Great Wolf Lodge coupon code, through the Early Saver Deal using the promo code ESAVER. If you book your stay at least 90 days ahead of time you can get a discount. For us it wasn’t too much of a discount but at least it was something.

Travel Hack With a Credit Card

Probably the “biggest bang for your buck” method to save money on Great Wolf Lodge is to travel hack your stay with a credit card (of course it goes without saying that you need to use your credit card responsibly).

We used the Scotiabank Gold American Express card and redeemed our Scene+ Points for half to he cost of the hotel stay. This credit card saves you the 2.5% foreign transaction fee and when you sign up you can get 25,000 bonus Scene+ points by making at least $1,000 in eliglble purchases in the first 3 months. Then you can get an additional 20,000 Scene+ points by making $7500 in purchases in the first year.

The Scene+ points are added about 2-3 business days after you hit the minimum spend. Both of these bonuses will give you $450 cash back towards your hotel stay.

Right now until October 31, 2024 it is first year free. Here’s my review of the card.

For additional information on how to redeem your Scene+ Points for travel check out this post.

Here’s what the redemption looks like- we saved over $500+ this way even by booking for peak season (July).

Come Early and Stay Late

Even if check in time is 4pm (and if you want early check in you have to pay for it) you can still use the water park. You’ll just have to have your swimsuits and towels easily accessible so you don’t have to unpack everything to get at them.

There are change rooms, showers, and lockers to use if you are arriving early to take advantage of the water park.

Likewise, when you check out you can still use the water park for the entire day. Their day pass prices also fluctuate depending on if it is low season or high season. For high season, the full day pass is $75 per person and for low season the full day pass is $40 per person.

Skip The Restaurants

There is dining on onsite at Great Wolf Lodge, breakfast packages per person start at $17.99 USD, and the restaurants vary according to each Great Wolf Lodge.

At Grand Mound, Washington, the pizza restaurant was not completely unreasonably priced, you could get a pizza to share for around $20 to $25 USD.

You can see the prices in the app.

We ate nearby at the local McDonalds or Jack in the Box for lunch and had breakfast in the room and either heated up some canned pasta and soup or grabbed a roasted chicken and a bag of salad from Walmart for dinner. Food of champions!

Bring Your Own Food

At Great Wolf Lodge there is a mini fridge and a small microwave. You could bring your own portable kettle and boil hot water to add to instant noodle packaging, or make Kraft dinner, or add to instant oatmeal in the mornings.

The list of unhealthy-ish processed and cheap foods is endless.

Since we were also camping we had some canned goods that we just heated up in the microwave for a quick meal too. We used these silicone collapsible containers from Canadian Tire to heat stuff up in the microwave (the lid is not microwavable) and also used them as bowls to eat cereal or oatmeal.

Avoid the Packages and the MAGIQuest

Finally, although tempting I think the MagiQuest wand was something like $25 USD for one. We are pretty strict about not getting stuff like that (which they only use once) and will eventually sit somewhere in the house cluttering it up.

Each MagiQuest game is $16.99 on top of the the wand purchase.

There are packages that entice you to save money at Great Wolf Lodge too (e.g. dining packages, or fun Magiwand packages), you need to have nerves of steel to say no to your kids though.

Hopefully this post helps you save money for your next trip to Great Wolf Lodge. Our kids had a great time and we might consider a weekend trip in the future during the low season to go again, especially when our youngest will be tall enough to ride more of the rides.

Did your kids like Great Wolf Lodge?

What are some other ways to save money at Great Wolf Lodge that your family has tried?