While it’ll still be some six months until you can splash and slide your way through Manteca’s new Great Wolf Lodge, you can take a virtual tour of what to expect right now.

The imposing new water park resort being built just off Highway 120 has finished erecting its exterior shell, and work on cladding the facades has begun. When finished the resort will include a 500-room hotel, 45,000-square-foot family entertainment center and 95,000-square-foot indoor water park.

The resort has hired its new General Manager, Alana Ostrowski, and they are assembling the site’s management team now. By late March, early April general hiring should begin in earnest. They expect to employ some 600 people to staff the site including clerks, cooks, lifeguards and more.

Great Wolf Resorts, the corporate owners of the Great Wolf Lodge chain, have 17 locations across the country and Canada. Resort management gave The Bee a look at what to expect once its new Manteca site, its second in the state and first in Northern California, opens Aug. 1.

The resort being built on Daniels Street, next to the Costco, is split into three attached sections: the six-story hotel, the family entertainment center and the water park. Guests will enter through the hotel, which has a west-facing entrance.

Free activities in lobby

In the hotel they’ll enter a large lobby that also hosts many of the resort’s free family and children’s activities throughout the day. These include yoga classes, story time, crafts and nightly youth dance parties. As one might expect from a resort named Great Wolf, the theme will be rustic so expect plenty of howling wolf imagery along with wood, stone and leather decor. The resort’s paw-print logo will be ubiquitous throughout.

Walk through the hotel area and you’ll enter the Adventure Park, a family entertainment center that connects the hotel and the water park. The center will be anchored by a large ropes course and includes a small six-lane bowling alley, miniature golf course, and arcade games. Size-wise the Adventure Park is a little smaller than Turlock’s Ten Pin Fun Center, a standalone family entertainment center in Turlock that opened last year, which is 52,000-square feet minus its attached laser tag arena.

Great Wolf’s other signature attraction is MagiQuest, a wand-based interactive scavenger-hunt game that takes players to points throughout the resort. It can be played at different skill levels for all ages, and is an additional fee.

Once through the Adventure Park, you’ll reach the indoor water park on the eastern end of the resort. Great Wolf spokesman Jason Lasecki said the indoor water park has an open concept design, which is meant to give parents easy sight of their kids no matter where they are inside. The company said the water park is roughly the same size of the entire grassy field at Levi’s Stadium where the 49ers play.

The water park features everything from a toddler area to wave pool, lazy river and 16 slides. The big slides will be accessed from a tower that take riders through enclosed tubes that run outside of the building. They can be seen protruding from the water park building on its north side, opposite the side facing the freeway. Perhaps designers thought what looks a bit like a series of gigantic undulating rainbow-colored tentacles attacking a building would be too distracting to drivers.

Manteca gets a new waterslide

The Manteca resort will debut a new slide to the Great Wolf repertoire. The Sequoia Splash allows multiple riders to take a raft through a series of loops and turns and funnels — yes, funnels.

Right about now you might be thinking about logistics. Is there a place to change into my swimsuit? Do I have to take my stuff from my hotel room through the entertainment center and then into the water park each time? Can I just sit in my cabana and watch my kids exhaust themselves in the water all day while drinking daiquiris? Yes, sort of yes, and heck yes.

Guests will access the water park, and their hotel rooms, using RFID wrist bands. The bands will act as room keys, water park access and charge cards that can be loaded to use at the Adventure Park and other amenities.

Guests will travel from their rooms through the Adventure Park and then into the water park, which has locker rooms and changing areas. Lockers can be rented by the day (which should run around $15-$20 depending on size), but not across multiple days. The water park has a bar where guests over the age of 21 can partake, as well as cabanas that can be rented with waiter service.

The water park is kept at 84-degrees year-round. But if you prefer the sun on your skin, they will also have a large outdoor pool with cabanas.

A one-night stay at the hotel grants all registered guests access to the water park across two days. You will have access from 1 p.m. until the park closes on check-in day, and all-day each subsequent day you are booked as a guest. The basic two-queen-bed family suite starts at $199 for up to four people, with the option of adding an additional registered guest for $50 (this also grants them the same water park access).

But, keep in mind, while $199 is the base rate, hotel room prices can vary greatly and change depending on supply and demand. Weekends are typically more than mid-week and high-interest dates like school breaks and holidays will also be more.

The hotel will have a wide variety of room types, from the basic family suites to themed suites with specially decorated separate spaces for the kids. The largest suites should start at $299 and can sleep up to 10 (seven included in the price, with up to three more guests at $50 each). All rooms also come with an added resort fee of $29.99.

Bookings underway now

As part of its grand opening, the lodge is offering the public a discount of 30 percent for reservations booked by Feb. 29. Stays must be completed by Dec. 17, 2020, to be eligible for the discount. But the hotel will likely be close to capacity when it opens, so don’t expect to see the greatest room deals right out of the gate. Also the company’s website is not currently accepting bookings for Manteca online yet, (though that should be sorted out later this month), so call its toll-free number until then 888-960-9653 (WOLF).

Lasecki said he knows the resort’s policy of only allowing registered hotel guests to use the water park has caused grumblings among many locals. He said the water attractions are limited to guests to keep the site secure and reduce wait times, which typically aren’t more than 10 minutes per slide.

Still to address those concerns last year a pilot day-pass program was launched at some sites, and depending on demand would likely come to the Manteca location.

Great Wolf prides itself on being a one-stop shop for its guests. So there will be plenty of food options including eight to nine restaurants, snack bars and other food vendors. You’ll be able to grab everything from an ice cream cone to a slice of pizza to a sit-down, full-service dinner.

The hotel’s largest restaurant, Barnwood Kitchen, will have capacity for 200 people including a private dining room and outdoor patio. The restaurants are spread across the lobby and Adventure Park areas, which are all accessible to the public.

“When you come to us we want you to know it’s a consistent experience, from the temperature in the water park to service,” Lasecki said. “You will always get the same experience whether you come in January or July.”

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Manteca’s Great Wolf Lodge water park sets opening date after yearlong pandemic delay

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