So yesterday I was invited to bring my family to the opening of
MagiQuest at
Great Wolf Lodge in Sandusky, Ohio.
I'd never been to a Great Wolf Lodge or a MagiQuest before so I had no idea what to expect. In fact the only experience I've ever had with either is the MagiQuest in Myrtle Beach. We didn't go in but it looked pretty cool from the outside:
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| MagiQuest at Broadway at the Beach in Myrtle Beach. |
So the first thing you need when going on a MagiQuest adventure is a wand and a Book of Wisdom:
We picked up and activated our wands and were on our way:
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| After I convinced my daughter that she did not, in fact, need another princess dress. |
Then it was on to the training video which helped us figure out what we were supposed to be doing. We were extremely clueless so this helped ALOT:
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| Kids watching the video and figuring out their wands. |
The way the game works is that you sign in with the ???? where you receive a quest.
A quest consists of collecting different objects by waving your wand
at them. Once you have all of the objects you go to a finishing point
and something cool happens before you are awarded your rune. The
objects are spread throughout 4 levels of the hotel and the Book of
Wisdom helps you find which level your object is on. It's pretty basic
game play and a whole lot of fun:
Our first quest was to find all of the crystals. Something that our daughter was REALLY into. Because when you wave the wand at the crystals they light up!
Once we had collected all of the crystals we went to the Lady in the Leaves and she did a whole thing for us before awarding us a rune for our efforts. Very exciting.
We tried another quest but by then the kids were pretty done. So we took a break and hung out in the Cub Club for a little while before dinner:
The boy didn't really get the whole quest thing but he had a ball
activating all of the objects. Treasure chests open! Paintings talk!
Stars light up! Dude was waving his wand at EVERYTHING by the end of
the night trying to make stuff happen.
He didn't even want to put it
down for dinner:
My only negative about the MagiQuest experience was that
occasionally my wand didn't work. Which was quite frustrating. If I
had longer to play I probably would have asked someone about it but
since the kids' wands worked just fine it didn't really bother me.
After dinner we were able to complete the Animal Rune quest which ended with a Pixie talking to us. Something my daughter loved. Then we were all set to head home when the lovely
Jenn of
Five Dollar Shake let us know that there was a storytime in the lobby at 8. We definitely wanted to see what that was all about! So we killed a little bit of time at the arcade:
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| I LOVE ski ball. Seriously. Showing off my ski ball skills to my kids
was crazy fun. They thought I was a God for like 2 minutes. |
And then had an ice cream snack:
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| YUM. |
And put the kids in their jammies for story time with the group. It wasn't just story time, though. It was a full on animation show:
And then a story.
Perfect for ending a day. I can see how this would be a great bedtime transition for kids staying at the lodge. No fits about leaving the fun activities b/c STORYTIME! We weren't staying so afterwards we loaded up the kids and headed home. It's only an hour drive which isn't that big of a deal at all.
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| Ready for bed. |
Overall we had a great time. The MagiQuest was a little over our kids heads but they still had a a lot of fun waving their wands and activating all of the different objects. I could see this game being crazy fun for someone a little bit older staying at the lodge for a while.
The Great Wolf Lodge itself is pretty great, too. First of all I have to mention that nothing was ridiculously overpriced at all. Usually in situations like this - captive audience - things seem to be marked up to a crazy amount. But everything here was reasonable and affordable. Very refreshing to see! The kids were also into the various animals and decorations throughout:
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| WOLF! ARF! WOLF! ARF! wash, rinse, repeat all day. |
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| PLANE! |
And there are enough activities that in an afternoon we hardly scratched the surface. I was there to check out the MagiQuest so we didn't go into the main attraction. The water park:
It looks SO much fun, though. The kids enjoyed just watching the activity:
We will absolutely be making a trip back at some point to experience the water and the rest of what the lodge has to offer!
I received MagiQuest wands and dinner in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are as always my own.
