Great Wolf Lodge: What is it? What gives it its greatness? And what about its wolfness? Dare I ask how it achieves its lodginess?

3 more days of class and it will officially be Spring Break.  But there’s only 2 days of class before I GO TO GERMANY.  Needless to say, I am ‘psyched’.  More on this eventually.

Also: I feel grossly ill.  This may have a tangible effect on my usual “verbally spasmodic/spasmodically dysphonic” self.  {This is a good example of an intelligent joke which is also not very funny) (Do what I do; just go to Google and type in ‘define: ______’. [e.g. spasmodic dysphonia]  If no other objective is fulfilled from this blog, I hope that I learn and then subsequently teach a new term every week.)  ….One more thing: say “verbally spasmodic or spasmodically dysphonic” five times fast.

Has anyone else ever been to Great Wolf Lodge?  I was just there this weekend with my family, and it was quite the unusual experience.  It’s all the way in Charlotte, first of all.  Second of all, I think all of the guests are usually South Carolinian, whatever that says about them.  

We’ll start with a basic level of description of what the so called “Great Wolf Lodge” is, and then we will build on that conception, slowly creating a full picture in our imagination, so that we can begin to understand what makes this “Great Wolf Lodge” just so “Great Wolf Lodge”. 

1)   To begin with, it’s a lodge.  A large portion of it is essentially a nice hotel for people to stay in. 

2)        There are several shops and small places to eat, including a Dunkin’ Donuts.

3      Then there’s the décor. (Microsoft Word says there is an accent there, and it is not my place to disagree.)  It’s very woodsy, kind of like the entire thing is one huge log cabin. 

4)          Here is also where the ‘wolf’ thing comes in.  There are some cool statues of wolves near the front, and pictures of wolves and other animals (beavers, bears) in every room and on random walls.

5)           It starts to get weird here.  Throughout all of the empty space in hallways, lobbies, foyers and corridors, (some of those were added redundantly ‘just cuz’.)  there are treasure chests, huge plastic crystals, minks in cages, tree stumps with fake heads coming out of them, and big tv screens with dragons on them.  It’s something called “magiquest”, which boils down to hundreds of little kids and some oddly dressed adults running around, shrieking, and pointing plastic wands at things for “quest points”.  There’s also a huge Viking-magical-witch-cabin in the front hall, which is awesome/slightly off-putting.

6)           There is a large, ridiculous inside water-park complete with about 12 slides, a wave pool, and a huge but very wet playground structure in the middle.  

7)            The random animal wall murals (they’re a little more cartoony than the wolf portraits and statues) sometimes tell stories about the animals.  Apparently there are two beavers named Tooth and Nail.  They also have a lot of animal friends.  These include a rabbit, a raccoon, and a bear with a cupcake on his head. His name is sprinkles.  I kid you not.  (My brother and I cumulatively spent at least three hours piecing together the elaborate mythos surrounding these characters and the namesake of the hotel, the “great wolf”.  No joke. The book should be available at Amazon and your local bookstore early 2012.)

I hope you enjoyed this brief yet poignant look at the mystery that is “Great Wolf Lodge."

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Chill Bubble Tea: A review/tragedy part dos

Welcome back for part 2, if you haven’t read the first post you might have a hard time understanding this:
The smoothies didn't look too bad, as far as smoothies go. (which is to say, absolutely awesome) The only odd thing we noticed was that the entire bottom half of the cup seemed to have an enormous amount of black dots pressed up to the side. These, of course, were the tapioca pearls.

I'm not opposed to trying new things though, and although these pearls intimidated me slightly, I didn't let it turn me off to the smoothie too much. Our next task was to prepare the smoothies for drinking. We retrieved our humongous straws from the convenient bin, and then realized there was a problem. With this strange plastic film over our drinks, (instead of those conventional plastic lids, of which there were several I saw hidden away nearby the magic topper gizmo), we had no holes to place our straws into.

We both began to poke away at the plastic film covers, quickly realizing that we would have to fight to get to these smoothies. I tried briefly to rip the film off, but returned to poking madly. Eventually I made a small cut with the sharp end of my straw, and proceeded to stab it the rest of the way in, leaking smoothie all over the top of the cup, and spraying a small amount on my hand. After helping Laura do the same, we left the restaurant with our smoothies. (I pray that those lids were at least environmentally beneficial or something, because as far as I could tell, they serve no purpose other than to aggravate me to no end.)

Finally through this terrible ordeal, we began the walk to south campus, tentatively sipping our smoothies. My first thought was that for a watermelon smoothie, this wasn't as delicious as it could be. I didn't let this faze me, however; I'm not too picky when it comes to smoothies. I continued on until something strange happened: one of the so called "tapioca pearls" finally worked its way up the straw, and it was quite the experience. It was a small black ball, slightly bigger than a marble. It seemed to be completely tasteless, and it was chewy, which meant that by the time the rest of the smoothie in the mouthful was down the throat, this pearl was lingering, still being chewed up for swallowing. I would just be minding my own business, enjoying my smoothie, when more of the nasty black orbs would find their way to my mouth. Then I would have to slowly chew these things alone in my mouth until I could swallow them. Laura and I were immediately skeptical about the "bubbles." We made faces at each other, but continued on.

Slowly but surely, the ratio of mediocre fruit smoothie to chewy tasteless round objects began to overturn itself. As this changed, our outlook did as well. Complaining about the tapioca became the only thing we did between mouthfuls of smoothie and chewy death. Laura began to work on ways to avoid the tapioca, while I came upon another simple tactic.

Laura gave up, tossing the leftovers of her smoothie into a nearby trash can, while I began to spit. I would suck the smoothie down through my teeth, and attempt to launch the tapioca pearls through the air. This continued halfway through campus, spitting out tapioca pearls, up to five at a time.

Somehow, the actual volume of tapioca pearls in the cup looked almost unchanged, greatly discouraging me. I gave up on the smoothie, discarding it in a trashcan around South Road.

This concludes my run-in with a unique smoothie from “Chill Bubble Tea.” If you have different feelings about their divisive “tapioca pearls”, that’s completely alright, but I’ve made my judgment. To be fair, their tea is good, and I’m sure there frozen yogurt is delicious. (I mean you can’t mess up frozen yogurt can you?)

I hope you’ve enjoyed my story/review/rambling anecdote. Come back next week for my first “real” post. Also, keep an eye out for tapioca pearls on the quad…

Chill Bubble Tea: A Review/Tragedy part uno

Hello internet.

Before I write my first real post, I'd like to take a moment to address a topic very close to my heart: smoothies.  More specifically, the immense danger I put myself in every day in my constant search for another good smoothie.

Incidentally, this search is exactly what led me to wander into a certain restaurant on Franklin Street the other night. Its name...."Chill Bubble Tea".

I had heard they also carried smoothies, so my brave friend Laura and I decided to journey inside to "check it out".

First of all, the main room of the store is essentially just a long hallway; All you can see from the street is a profile view of the extensive counter, and occasionally an employee.  This means that to actually inspect the menu and decide if the restaurant is for you, you must venture all the way inside to the counter, and find the menu on the wall behind it. And by the time you're there, it can be slightly awkward to say farewell to the good cashier and make your exit, if you happen to decide that the menu is not to your liking.

Fortunately (or unfortunately), the menu did nothing but make us more enticed and excited for our beverage.  They had several choices:

1) Frozen yogurt:  classic frozen yogurt, available in several sizes.  There are many delicious looking toppings available... if you decide it's worth paying an extra dollar fifty for a couple pieces of fruit.

2) Tea:  There are many different types of tea available, sometimes mixed with fruit, and you have the option of sugar or no sugar.

And finally.. 3) the smoothies.  These are essentially the main attraction, as they may or may not be the store's namesake: bubble tea.  smoothies are available with fruit or tea as the base, and, regardless of ur choice of smoothie, filled with one extra ingredient: tapioca pearls.  This is the so called "bubble" for their "tea".

So, as classic smoothie enthusiasts, we both got fruit smoothies.  I bought the watermelon one, and Laura selected the "fresh mango" smoothie.

Now at this point I'd like to take a little while to talk about an elaborate contraption I saw at the end of the counter.  I'm no ruler, but I'd say it was about 3 feet tall, and looked ridiculous.  You can't tell very well in the picture, but there's a multitude of buttons and numbers on the panel in front, making it look awesomely complicated.

So once one of the maybe two at most people working there (what is so interesting in the back room that they want to spend so much time back there??) got to work on our smoothies, they progressed rather quickly down the counter, rapidly approaching the frightening blue machine on the end.  Honestly, I couldn't wait to see it in action.

Finally, the time came to see this marvel work its magic.  The lady behind the counter placed my smoothie, already in its cup, into the holder at the bottom of the machine.  A button was pressed, and the smoothie was carried into the machine, and slid back out in the same position.  Just like that, it was over.  All the smoothie had to show for it: a thin plastic film fixed to the top of the smoothie cup.  I was in shock for a moment, and then the disappointment slowly mounted as I realized that was all that was going to happen.

I tried not to let this get me down though, I did my best to focus on the smoothie.  Laura's smoothie spent its brief time in the machine as well, and we were almost ready to go.

Come back next time for the chilling result for  "Chill Bubble Tea: A Review/Tragedy  part uno"

-Michael

(Why is the machine even that big and intimidating?? The cup just slid in the bottom! It didn't even get lifted up or spun around or anything!!!)