2025 (Gurnee)

We returned to Gurnee in June of 2025 (so a summer trip) and had a great time.

We experienced the bigger slides on this grip - and they were a blast. We had our oldest sneakly get up on her toes when the door guard measured her height and we got her JUST up to 48" for the GREEN bracelet which got us on the double whirlwind amongst other super fun slides.

This trip I also got the idea for the gwl-margarita-tracker!

Tips for packing

• I brought my lulu shirts but the wristband snags them and my sweatshirts like crazy - bring athletic hoodies and regular cotton t-shirts to avoid the snag
• There is a Culver's literally down the street, you could walk... so if you' re starving at night and don't want to spend $29 on a personal pizza, you can take a quick hike for a butter burger

Food

We decided to try to save some money on food on this trip, but we had to be careful... there's no condos so we were in a regular resort room. We brought pulled pork and a crock pot which worked great. You get a mini fridge, so lunch meats and cheeses made for easy sandwiches. There's an ice machine in the hallway if you want to keep anything on ice... We also brough a griddle, thinking we could cook up some eggs or something - and it might've worked but the griddle was BRAND NEW so we got some smoke and didn't want to risk anything... we will certainly break it in and try it on the next trip so stay tuned...

2025 (Dells)

After experiencing the Gurnee location we were excited to checkout the Dells as well.

The waterpark is organized a little differently - and the only real observations are that the wave pool is a lot bigger than Gurnee's but the lazy river is a lot smaller...

We stayed in a condo during this trip, which was great with a kitchenette - buying groceries and just doing sandwiches or pasta for meals saved a boat load of money, probably enough to nearly off-set the cost of the condo over a regular room.

At this location the Magiquest setup is unique - it's in its own building, which is setup as like a 4 story high jungle gym. It's very cool, and the kids can run around to play the magiquest game, or ditch the wands and just run around and slide down slides and stuff... our kids had a blast at 3 and 5 years old.

2023 (Gurnee)

We went to GWL in Gurnee in 2023 for the first time, and we didn't know exactly what to expect. We are also are not very experienced travelers, so packing for a trip (particularly in the food department) is tough... which isn't a huge deal - it just means we spent a LOT on food at the resort...

For this trip our kids were 2 and 4 and it was still a valuable trip. The waterpark is organized in such a way that the littler kids have their own space away from the bigger ones, it's very safe, and the slides and stuff even for the littles are great.

I'm writing this in July after our 3rd trip, so I don't have all the memories from this first one, but here's a short list of things if traveling with kids say younger than 5:

1. water shoes would be a good purchase for the kids if they're going to be in the littles area. The ground there for some reason is murder on the feet (on a future visit we realzied the rest of the waterpark's ground isn't so bad... not sure why the kiddo's pool was so rough)
2. you don't need to bring towels
3. you don't need nearly as many clothes as you think, just underwear and enough swimming gear... no one is dressed in much more than swimwear and a cover-up like a t-shirt even at the restaurants pretty much