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."
