Our Guide to Wilderness Resort at Wisconsin Dells

I'm excited to recap our trip to Wisconsin Dells with you today.  We just stayed at Wilderness Resort over Fall Break.  I'm going to share all the tips that we've learned from our previous stays in the hopes of making your trip planning a little easier.  And with any trip, there were highs and lows.  I'll document lots of highlights, but just know that we had our ups and downs every day.

We stayed at Glacier Canyon Lodge on the Wyndham side this time.  It was a longer walk to the water parks, but the rooms are much bigger and nicer.  They're great if you are planning a longer stay.  They also have bigger patios that were very nice.  We spent a lot of time hanging out on ours.  The first time we stayed on the 2nd Floor (where most of the attractions are) which was super convenient, but smaller rooms and noisier because you get a lot more foot traffic on the 2nd floor.

We also planned our visit at an off season time for them.  Crowds were way down and totally manageable since many of the outdoor amenities are closed for the season.  We prefer to go during the off season.  Masks are not currently required anywhere we went.

For meals we brought a lot of snacks and food with us.  It's hard to find fruits and veggies at the fast food options they have so I stocked up on apples, cucumbers and other healthier options like fruit pouches for the baby.  We also packed things like microwave popcorn and all our favorite snacks.  We had a full kitchen and it was wonderful!  We opted to order pizza from a local place - Moose Jaw - and really enjoyed it.  We also Door Dashed Noodles and Company one night.  Both times we ate in our room.  It was cozy and cheaper than eating at the resort restaurants.

Leave your valuables in your room when you go to the water parks.  I rarely took my phone to the water parks.  I planned to take it once or twice to snap some pictures and then the rest of the times I left it in the room.  It's just too stressful for me to have to worry about it getting stolen.  We have never had anything stolen or messed with at the water parks, but you do set your stuff down at a table or on lounger chairs and walk away.

Buckle up for lots of pictures!  It was a busy 3 days.

 

LOW: About 20 minutes before we arrived, I realized that I had forgotten ALL of Leo's swim stuff.  Swim suits and swim diapers.  I was just sick.  We stopped in Walmart and Kohls thinking since we were in the water park capital of the world that we'd have no problem finding him a swim suit.  I was wrong.  It was a challenge.  I found swim diapers at Walmart and had to purchase a swim suit for him at the hotel gift shop.  $25 later and he wore this cute suit the whole trip.  I've never been so thankful to see at 2T boy swim suit.  Lesson learned - double check that you have swim suits for everyone when you are planning to do a lot of swimming. #momfail

Tip: Ask for a coupon book at check in and you'll get a coupon for 10% off your total purchase in the gift shop.  We grabbed this suit and all of our souvenirs with the coupon.  You'll also get coupons to use at the breakfast buffet, candy shop and lots of places you'll want to go.  Those discounts will add up!

The food at the resort is fine, but not amazing, with the exception of Camp Social Breakfast Buffet.  It's only open on the weekends during off season and it's pricey at about $12 per person BUT it's AMAZING.  It's the food highlight of the trip and we'd highly recommend it.  Everything is back to self serve now compared to the Spring when employees were serving and they were asking guests to wear masks.

If your kids are older, make sure and do some after dinner swims.  The water parks are open until 10:00pm.  I stayed back to put Leo to bed and these 3 had the time of their lives.  I made sure to bring things to do so that I enjoyed hanging out in the room during this time.

A room tour:  The patio was a favorite (escape proof spot!)  Always bring a high chair if you have a little one who is used to eating in a high chair.  It'll make meal time seem totally normal for them.  The decor is very mountainy and it really felt like a retreat.

We made sure to plan for lots of time for this guy to relax and run around the room.  It was hard to give him opportunities to run around when we were out and about because we didn't want him to get run over by people and we didn't really want him touching lots of things in the shops.  He loved hanging out and exploring our room.

Snacks in the room were delicious.  No popcorn bowl.  No problem.  A colander from the fully stocked kitchen works just fine.

LOW: Fletcher got really car sick on the way there.  That hasn't happened to him in a while so it took us all by surprise.  We were prepared, but it is still so sad to see him so car sick.  On a happier note, we tried some different things on the way home and he didn't get sick at all.  Yay!

Highlight: This patio!  It was very large and we really did spend lots of time out there.  We read, the kids played their tablets, we had snacks and we watched the skies.

We ate breakfast at Camp Social both Saturday and Sunday and gave it two really big thumbs up.

Leo was a total trooper.  If you only have toddlers or pretty young kids, I would say to wait a few years until they're older to come.  But since we obviously have big kids + a toddler we found ways to make it work so that everyone had a good time.  Lots of dividing and conquering - Kevin and the big kids on the slides and me and Leo in the kiddie pools.  Me and Leo head back to the room for his nap and Kevin and the big kids went to the arcade or a 3D movie.  We made the trip work for us :)

Heading off to the water parks.  The Klondike Kavern and the Wild Waterdome are our favorite water parks.  The best one for little kids is The Wild Waterdome. 

The kids love wearing goggles in the wave pool and on the slides so I made sure to pack them.

This was our first time to enjoy doing some things outside at the resort.  When we visited back in March it was like an arctic tundra outside.  haha

We hiked the trails outside of the resort and were so impressed with how pretty the landscape was just minutes from our room.

There were pumpkins everywhere!  It was so festive for Fall.

Yellow leaves.  Jean jacket weather.  And my favorite kids!  Sounds about perfect to me.  There are several zip lines running through the forest about this bridge.  It was fun to watch them zoom past us. 

Thanks for another great visit, Wilderness Resort.  We're already talking about our must does for our next visit!!  Let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to answer them for you.  Kevin did the bulk of the planning so I'll probably end up asking him :)