Great Wolf Lodge Bloomington is a family-friendly resort just one mile down the road from
Minnesota’s Mall of America. This is not only a nice wilderness themed hotel on its own,
but it features a bevy of amenities, most notably a 75,000 square foot indoor water
park. In this video, I will be reviewing that water park and explaining if it’s worth
experiencing if you’re in the Minneapolis area. This water park opened back in 2006 as the Water
Park of America. Back then, it was attached to the Radisson. In January 2017, Great Wolf Lodge
purchased the property and it was rebranded as a Great Wolf Lodge by the end of the year.
This water park is conveniently located just a few miles from the Minneapolis-St.
Paul Airport and just down the street from the Mall of America. This road
is filled with countless hotels, but this is arguably the most entertaining of the bunch.
The exterior isn’t quite as grand as the ground-up Great Wolf Lodges,
but the first impressions are pretty solid. It’s impossible to miss the tangled mess of
green water slides protruding from the building. Normally there isn’t
scaffolding here, but the hotel was doing some refurbishment work during my visit.
Overnight guests get the water park included with their stay. If you stay on a weeknight,
you can sometimes stay here for as little as $120-$150, which is a great deal considering the
quality of the rooms and amenities. The prices can be doubled or tripled on weekends though.
Alternatively, you can visit with a day pass. Compared to the other Great Wolf Lodges,
these day passes have much less variation in price by day. They cost between $50-$55 per day.
Some of the other Great Wolf Lodges can cost 3 figures on weekends!
If you want to save some money, you can arrive after 4 pm for a 20% discount.
You get your water park wristbands at the front desk and then walk through the arcade to enter
the water park. Once inside, it’s hard to miss how hot and humid it is. The water
park is deliberately kept in the mid to upper 80s so the water feels refreshing yearround.
Like many indoor water parks, this one does look dark on the inside due to the absence
of a skylight. You do have some side panels to let in some natural light. The walls have been
painted to add some ambiance and I like the woodsy lighthouse in the center of the park.
And then the slides that appear green on the outside are bright blue on the inside.
It’s weird the slides are painted two separate colors, but they look nice and fresh.
The water park basically forms a loop. One of the coolest aspects is that the Crooked Creek lazy
river circles the entire park and it’s connected to both the tube slides and the wave pool.
It’s particularly funny with the latter how you go from leisurely floating down a stream
to being bombarded by waves when you enter Slap Tail Pond. The one downside with this is that
you need to watch out for kids. Our tube was almost launched into a smaller guest.
Accessing the slides can be a little confusing.
The River Canyon Run family raft slide and Otter Run body slides share the same staircase.
Two of the three Otter Run slides are about halfway up the tower on a platform.
The final Otter Run slide is placed atop the tower with the start to River Canyon Run. Most people
will be queuing for the latter, so you’ll need to squeeze past them to access the body slide.
Making things even more confusing is that the upper Otter Run slide doesn’t return back down
to ground level. Rather, it dumps you off on the same platform as the lower two body slides.
That same platform is also home to the Alberta Falls tube slides,
but those ones at least have a separate staircase.
During my visit, everything was a walk-on except River Canyon Run, which was a 15-20 minute wait.
This water park has less attractions than some other Great Wolf Lodges,
but some of the water slides are surprisingly wild.
The highlight for me was Alberta Falls, specifically the left side.
I rode in a double tube and this slide had two crazy turns. The final one nearly inverted our
tube. I’d feel myself lift out of the tube each ride and then the tube would comically
wipeout into the water. I don’t know if the same effect happens in a single tube, but any double
tube was flipping into the water at the end. The right side is much tamer by comparison.
River Canyon Run is the park’s longest slide by far. This family raft slide has a mix of
fully enclosed and open sections. The enclosed sections were supposed to have lighting effects,
but most of them were down for my visit. The slide starts off fairly slow,
but the final section has some shocking turns where you slide quite high up the walls.
Otter Run is a mixed bag. The lower two were disappointing, as you could really feel the
seams on your back. The upper one both faster and smoother. You could see spots on the slide
that had been reworked, which possibly explains the superior ride experience.
This park also has one of those flow riders in Wolf Rider Wipeout.
These aren’t my favorites, but I know they’re great for people who have aspirations of surfing.
For the young kids, you have a decent water fortress in Fort Mackenzie.
I like how this ride is basically on an elevated island in the center of the park.
Then you also have two activity pools in the back corner. Chinook Cove has a series
of basketballs and hoops. Then Big Foot Pass has the lily pad crossing that kids absolutely love.
One weird thing with this park is that all the slides would close midday for an hour long
safety break at 1 pm. I have never seen this at another park before. I don’t know if this
is the norm or it was just due to staffing, but it occurred for both days of my stay.
Hotel guests have RFID bands doubling as their room key,
but day guests likely will need a locker. These are tucked in the back corner of the park.
It’s surprising these aren’t closer to the main entrance, but not too many people used them. Their
cost was on par with most water parks, but most people just kept their stuff on lounge chairs.
Beyond the water park, you also have an arcade with a fleet of modern games,
a rock wall, and an elevated ropes course. I didn’t try any of these activities,
but they were highly popular with kids. So do I recommend the Great Wolf Lodge in
Bloomington? On a weekday, yes. If you can get a room for $120-$150 like me,
that’s a great value between the quality of the hotel and the indoor water park.
I wouldn’t pay the weekend rate, but it is more affordable than some other Great Wolf Lodges.
While this water park doesn’t have the most extensive slide lineup, there are some wild
ones and the minimal crowds make it an attractive option if you enjoy water parks, especially in
the colder months when all the outdoor ones are closed. So definitely look into a day pass as
well if you’re looking for an indoor activity. While I haven’t visited Valleyfair’s Soak City,
I think that park appears to have a better slide lineup, but this one has that intimate atmosphere
and more manageable crowds. Then compared to the other Great Wolf Lodges I have visited,
this one is towards the middle of the pack. It will be interesting to see how this park
stacks up to the indoor water park being planned for the Mall of America. That one is expected to
cost nearly $420 million, be four times the size of Great Wolf Lodge’s indoor water park,
and open in 2024 if approved. It sounds like it’ll be comparable for the DreamWorks Water Park.
So those are my thoughts on the Great Wolf Lodge Bloomington. What are your thoughts on this place-
whether it be the indoor water park or the hotel itself? How do you compare it to the other Great
Wolf Lodges out there? Let me know your thoughts down below. If you enjoyed this review, I’d
appreciate it if you gave this video a like and you considered subscribing since there will be a
lot more roller coaster and amusement park videos here at Canobie Coaster. Thanks for watching!