Escape From The Great Escape

 Warning:  I am totally using this post to vent.

This week we took the kids to The Great Escape in Lake George, NY to try out their indoor water park.  You know how you have those wonderful vacations where everyone is having such a good time that no one wants to go home?  This wasn’t one of those.

I have to admit, my attitude about the trip wasn’t exactly the best.  For those of you who don’t know me, I am a bit of a tightwad; frugal I like to call it.  So it really frustrates me that hotels hike up their prices during school vacation week.  I mean, come on, give a family of 7 a break!  It is already bad enough that we have to pretend that Number 5 doesn’t exist just so they don’t make us rent 2 rooms,  but do they really have to double the cost of the room just because the kiddos are out of school?  My other worry was that we discovered a gem in Wisconsin when we lived there – the Dells, otherwise known as the Water Park Capital of the World. The kids were used to much bigger parks.

The Great Mistake Escape Lodge was, shall we say, less than ideal.  I had high expectations, because after all, they were quite expensive.  But they just couldn’t handle the crowd!  Maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt though?  Maybe we just caught them on a really bad couple of days?  Maybe they don’t always run out of towels at the water park, or have 1.5-2 hour waits at their restaurants, or actually have to close a restaurant because they run out of food.  It could have just been our total bad luck that they promised us a crib three times before they finally told us they also ran out of those.

We did have some good luck though.  We got a brand new heater in our room when ours stopped working.  Spouse got in some good exercise when the side entrance card access wouldn’t work and he got to run around the outside of the whole facility in 15 degree weather.  We did get a crib the second night so the debacle of a 2-year-old drunk with freedom in a foreign land wasn’t repeated. They also had a good strategy to keep the lines down in the afternoon – I think they must turn off the water heater in the pools about midday.   The water got progressively colder throughout the day until the only warm water was in the kiddie area.  (I tried very hard not to think about why that water was warm!)  Kids left the slides and flocked to the kiddie area as the day wore on.  If you didn’t mind freezing your arse off, you practically had the slides to yourself.

All sarcasm aside, the kids still eeked out their share of fun.  They swam, slid and frolicked until their little lips and toes were blue.  We let them run amuck in the arcade, win tickets and bring home little plastic trinkets that probably won’t last a day.  We even let them buy souvenir cups that could be filled at soda refilling stations every 30 minutes for free!  (“Really Mom, really?” Their eyes wide as saucers at the insanity that would allow me to let them mainline soda.)

So I guess it wasn’t that bad.  We did manage to escape, eventually!