When the resort operator opens its new Gurnee, Ill. property next year, F&B offerings will include Barnwood, a restaurant serving locally sourced small plates and craft cocktails that will also be open to non-resort customers. Great Wolf will also try to tap into the emerging food-hall trend with a multi-restaurant, open-seating dining area anchored by four diverse eateries featuring “higher-end, family-friendly” offerings.
Great Wolf Resorts has revealed new details and the first renderings of its $60 million-plus water park lodge that is set to open in mid-2018 near Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Ill., the Chicago Tribune reported—and the plans represent several ways in which the company, which got its start 20 years ago in Wisconsin Dells, Wis. and has been growing at an impressive clip, is now looking to up its culinary game as it expands.
Plans for the Gurnee property, which will be the first for Great Wolf in Illinois, include the addition of a new farm-to-fork restaurant, Barnwood, which will serve locally sourced small plates and craft cocktails and — unlike the water park itself — be open to non-resort customers, the Tribune reported.
“We introduced [the concept at the Great Wolf property] in Colorado Springs [Colo.], and it’s been doing phenomenal,” Great Wolf spokesman Jason Lasecki told the Tribune.
Great Wolf will also try to tap into the emerging food-hall trend at its Gurnee property, the Tribune reported, with a multi-restaurant, open-seating dining area anchored by four diverse eateries.
“It’s not a mall food court,” Lasecki said. “It will be higher-end food offerings, but family-friendly. We’re still working on the culinary concepts that will be there.”
Another example of Great Wolf’s increased focus on food-and-beverage offerings can be seen in its “Wine Down” service, recently rolled out at all of its resorts, the Tribune reported. For $35, parents can have a bottle of wine and a sweet or savory snack delivered to their rooms between 8 and 11 p.m.
“We’re making it more of a completely immersive resort destination,” Lasecki said. “We want guests to stay at least two or three nights instead of one.”
The Gurnee property will mark the 17th indoor water park resort for Great Wolf, which recently relocated its headquarters from Madison, Wis., to downtown Chicago, the Tribune reported.
The company’s expansion plans also call for opening a Great Wolf lodge in Minnesota later this year and another outside Atlanta in the spring of 2018.
The Gurnee project calls for transforming the tropical-themed KeyLime Cove indoor water park resort into the Northwoods-style Great Wolf Lodge Illinois, featuring an expanded, 80,000-sq. ft. indoor water park with a wave pool, 50 percent more slides than its predecessor, a new outdoor pool and “several” water attractions still in development, the Tribune reported.
“When the weather is nice in the Midwest, people want to be outside, and the outdoor pool is definitely something guests said they wanted,” Lasecki said. “It’s going to be a huge addition.”
Great Wolf bought the nearly decade-old, 414-room KeyLime Cove indoor water park resort earlier this year, the Tribune reported. “It had a lot of what’s in line with our brand—oversized rooms, the big lobby—but the water park wasn’t as big as it should have been,” Bryson Heezen, a Great Wolf Development Director, told the Tribune.
The new aquatic playground, as opened by Great Wolf, will be 20,000 sq. ft. larger and tricked out with a lazy river and a dozen slides, including the resort company’s signature Alberta Falls, a speedy ride with high banking turns and steep pitches, and Coyote Canyon, a tube slide that funnels passengers into a spinning vortex, the Tribune reported. Tamer options will be available for younger kids, too, in keeping with the company’s target audience of toddlers to early teens.
Artist renderings of the future resort show the colorful indoor water park showcased behind a wall of windows in the cavernous lobby, where a tall, stone fireplace serves as a rustic centerpiece, the Tribune reported.
“When you enter, you’re really immersing yourself into that Northwoods feel our guests love,” Heezen said. “It’s going to look like an entirely new property.”
Behind the stone fireplace will be the setting for a souped-up version of a Great Wolf fan favorite, “The Forest Friends Show,” where animatronic animal characters entertain the kids three times a day, the Tribune reported. The new show will take place inside a giant, wood-carved picture frame, using projection-mapping technology on a multi-plane surface for a more dramatic effect.
“We’ll be able to bring the characters to life in a way we couldn’t do before,” Lasecki said.
The so-called “dry play” attractions at the Gurnee resort will be clustered together in an adventure park area, the Tribune reported, and will include mini-bowling lanes, a nine-hole miniature golf course, a live-action adventure game called MagiQuest, a kids spa and an arcade.
In Gurnee, the number of rooms, 414, will stay the same as KeyLime Cove had, the Tribune reported. But the Caribbean decor will give way to a cabin vibe, especially in the KidCabin suites. A hallmark at other Great Wolf resorts, the suites function like a room-within-a-room, where children can sleep and play in a private, themed area with bunk beds.
“It’s their own little hideaway,” said Lasecki, a father of three. “My kids love it. And it gives parents some breathing space.”
Reservations won’t be taken at Great Wolf Lodge Illinois until roughly six months before it opens, the Tribune reported. Overnight rates haven’t yet been set, Lasecki said. They typically start around $199 at other Great Wolf resorts, and the price includes access to the water park for up to four guests.
“You can use the water park before check-in and after checkout, so for a one-night stay, you get two days of play,” Lasecki noted. “That appeals to a market like Chicago, where it’s only an hour to an hour-and-a-half drive.”
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