Inside or outside, Ohio waterpark is a splash
Our destination: Sandusky, Ohio. It’s best known as the home of Cedar Point Amusement Park, but there are plenty of other attractions in the area.
We stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge, a log-sided resort with an indoor water park roughly 2œ-hours from our suburban Detroit home. With 11 locations in the U.S. and Canada (including one close to Chicago in the Wisconsin Dells), the chain is well-established and had gotten positive reviews from friends. We went midweek and found a good deal on the Web at greatwolf.com: $179 a night for a family suite with balcony, including an all-you-can eat hot breakfast.
Our first stop after we crossed into Ohio was the African Safari Wildlife Park in Port Clinton. The main attraction of the 100-acre preserve is a drive-through fenced-in area where visitors can feed deer, elk, moose and other animals. The park is home to 50 different species, including zebra, giraffes and bison. Online coupons offer weekday carload discounts for $42.95 a car.
The park provides each vehicle one free small bucket of animal food, and you can buy additional buckets and carrots.
You drive very slowly, so you can safely take small children out of their car seats. With my 4-year-old sitting on my lap and my husband behind the wheel, we opened the front windows. It wasn’t long before a moose grabbed the entire cup of food, put it on the roof of our Pontiac, and chowed down. Pellets of animal food rained into the car and the windows soon were covered with moose slobber. It was too close of an encounter for our daughter, but my husband and I couldn’t stop laughing.
After the drive-through area, we parked the car and walked around Safari Junction, where we saw lemurs, alpacas, camels and other animals. Kids can ride a pony and camel at no extra cost.
From there, it was a 20-minute drive to Great Wolf Lodge. It’s on a busy street with plenty of strip malls and chain restaurants, not in scenic downtown Sandusky.
The resort lobby is designed to provide visitors with a rustic Up North feel, complete with animal trophies mounted on the walls. It also has a clock tower that entertains young children with an animated show four times a day. There’s also story time about 8:15 nightly, a Cub Club with its own staff that does arts and crafts projects with the kids, and the Cubs’ Cabin, a dry play area for children under 7.
Of course, the whole reason to go to Great Wolf Lodge is the water park. One of the five pools is a zero-depth entry toddler play area, with fountains, small slides and enough room for young ones to swim around. The resort recommends all young children and weak swimmers wear life jackets. It has them on site for free, though it’s first-come, first-served and at peak times they can run out. Lifeguards are everywhere.
Our daughter was fascinated by the giant bucket atop the water fort that dumps 700 gallons of water every five minutes. The resort offers one sit-down restaurant. It’s reasonably priced and has enough food — and drinks — to satisfy most.
Our second day at the lodge — our only full day there — the toddler pool was closed for cleaning so we spent most of our time at the underused outdoor pool, which also has fountains for the kids to play in and a zero-depth entry.
When it’s time to get out of the water, the lodge also has an arcade where parents can easily spend too much money.
If you can lure your children out of the resort, Sandusky has a historic downtown along the Lake Erie waterfront and offers easy ferry service to Put-in-Bay island in Lake Erie.
On our last day at the resort, the toddler pool was still closed and the rain had moved in again, so after a final swim in one of the inside pools, we were ready to get on the road.
AP