Podcast: The Ride - Great Wolf Lodge with Justin McElroy

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

Justin McElroy (My Brother, My Brother & Me, Sawbones) returns to the show to tell us about Great Wolf Lodge. A chain of indoor water park hotels that the whole family (except parents) will enjoy! GarfieldEATS episode up at Club 3: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide WATCH THIS EPISODE: https://youtu.be/5AEFcckVc8s FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FOREVER! DOG! and a refreshing swim with a fake child corpse. Justin McElroy takes us to parent maddening water park and hotel chain Great Wolf Lodge on podcast The Ride, a podcast about theme parks hosted by three guys who love nature. The roof, the slides, and especially the chlorine stench i'm scott gardner uh joined by fellow nature lover jason sheridan i prefer to uh consume my nature via skylight it's it's yeah it's nice you get just a little bit but there's a little bit of of barrier instead of that raw nature that might uh fuck you up give you a heat stroke or something uh mike carlson hi hi yes i love nature have i told the story on the

podcast before about getting chased out of like joshua tree by like goats like i tried to be it go into nature no and 30 goats like surrounded me and then my friend and I drove away from there to a different part of the park. And then we went up a hill and it said, watch out for the thirsty bees. Thirsty? The bees are so dehydrated that they will just go into your car because they sense there's water in there. So beware of the, it was like, beware of the thirsty bees. And like, I was just getting like, nature was just telling me it doesn't want me. It does not want me out here today.

Go back to your artificial nature. And I have gone back to it ever since. Okay. Well, a couple of things. Not thirsty as in horny. No, the bees were not horny. Nobody got humped by a bug. They weren't like so flower depraved.

No, I don't think they were horny, but I think they were of a normal level of horniness for bees. They were thirsty as in literally dehydrated. They had no water. Okay, yeah. You didn't have the chance to get attacked, in which case it might have been like, we're getting stung.

No, wait. It's something else. The bees weren't kind of waiting for me kind of like at the end of the bar or anything there was nothing like that like in an old cartoon or something bugs bunnies they all had eyelashes all of a sudden those bees have eyelashes you could hear the sound of their eyelashes bad there was like a thousand of them and they could all in unison were batting their eyelashes at me at once. That did not happen. That's not what happened.

Okay, well, lesson learned on your part. Again, we're talking about real nature and the kind of real nature that you can find at a chain called Great Wolf Lodge. It is a chain of indoor water parks slash hotels slash there's arcades and restaurants there are many theme parks uh what they are and this topic comes to us uh courtesy of somebody who has been because i don't think the three of us have been correct no i've only walked around a lobby uh no i think i

would get like hit with a sap immediately if i if i walked in hit with a sap like if I walked in. Hit with a sap? Like a sap or a nightstick or something. And it's like, oh, that weirdo's here alone. That weirdo's here with another adult weirdo and no one else. It's pretty specifically family oriented. I think our guest went with his family, but who knows? It might've been a solo expedition.

We will find out all the details. And he just so happens to be a prolific podcaster from My Brother, My Brother and Me, Adventure Zone, and Sawbones. It's Justin McElroy. Hello. Hi. Hi. What a pleasure. Hello. Hello. Hello. Thanks for having me. Oh, absolutely. It's a pleasure to talk about Great Wolf Lodge. Thank you for bringing this to the table. It's one of those that I've sensed people are excited about. I think a lot of people on our social media are excited to talk about it,

have been wanting us to talk about it. But, you know, what do we know? We've never – again, I walked around a lobby for 20 minutes. I'll bring some of that to the table. But you've put in the work. You've really done it. And I'm already excited by just the observations that were DMed. So tell us more.

I spent a lot of human hours at the Great Wolf Lodge. A lot of time at Great Wolf Lodge. Wow. Wow. Multiple trips or one? Oh, multiple trips. Yeah. Really?

Okay. A little context is probably helpful here. Sure. The Great Wolf Lodge that we started going to was, it's right next to uh king's island in cincinnati oh yes it's like almost right by like bordering the parking lot it seems like it is i mean you can walk um it's not uncommon to have people like walk over there from the park there's a walking path it's a hall wow like there is a walking path from great wolf lodgeodge to Kings Island. So the two work in terrible synchronicity, right? So if you can't go to one, you can't take your kids to a hotel, even if it is a water park themed hotel, and see like coasters in the background and be like, don't look at that.

We're not going there. Don't look. Don't look. And at the same time, they, you know, we go to Kings Island and look right next door. It's the Great Wolf Lodge. Well, certainly you got to stay at Great Wolf Lodge. If you're going, there used to be a hotel across the street from there called Coasters,

was the restaurant. Then it was the Kings Island Resort. As seen in the Brady Bunch episode. Is the hotel in the Brady Bunch episode? Is that where they stay? Yeah, they stay in the Kings Island Hotel. That's all that's all leveled now so your your options are like stay at a chain nearby or go to great wolf

lodge next door to king's island part of the you know cedar fair uh family right right which that's we've talked about that that park's great so that's a trip you've done a couple is is the in tandem and you grew up with king's island is that correct for sure yeah like where i live in huntington west virginia we have so we do have a theme park it's called camden park um and that would be even more specific than great wolf lodges like no one's been to camden park but if you if you look up videos someday it's a real classic there's a lot of there's an extremely old roller coaster called the big dipper that, uh, uh,

there's a really, really unnerving log flume. Um, there's a haunted house that is like something from another dimension. The whole place is wild. Is it unnerving because of like anything spooky or unsettling on the way? Or is it just, it might fall.

The gum wall is a big part of the unnerving part. That's like some 60s gun there's only beach nut in there like i don't i don't fool around with the gum wall with the haunted house uh uh that place is a trip but if you want to go to an actual theme park that is that is more than like an hour of dodging hepatitis like you go to king's island which is slightly less hepatitis infused than the park is but Parquez. But yeah, we went to King's Island. Like, that was the, like, if you're in band or choir or whatever, like, that was the trip that you took

at the end of the year. So I spent a lot of time there. Preferred it when it was owned by Paramount. There's a lot of theming. The Mirth Mobile was there for a while from Wayne's World, which was a big deal for me. Oh, that's great. I remember all the, like, there was a Top Gun thing, there was Days

of Thunder, there was Italian Job when I got to go and then they had to strip it all. Drop Zone, that beloved Paramount property, Drop Zone. Is that a movie? Yeah, it was Wesley Snipes about falling out of planes, I think.

But they rethemed all those and stripped out all the like movie theming so like top gun becomes like hang pilot i don't know the new names ever since they closed the vortex over there i'm harvard exciting plane yeah thrilling undercarriage but great wolf lodge is a is relatively newer in that right? So that wasn't there when I was a kid. That was like, predates my kids, though. I think it's been there about 12 years, that particular location. The chain is from the mid to late 90s, and I think it started in the Wisconsin Dells, if you guys have ever been in that neck of the woods.

Mike has, right? I have, yeah, a few times. So there's 20 of them now, 20 Great Wolf Lodges. Okay, so here's the pitch. It is a massive, massive resort. And the, I mean, huge, really, really big. And then connected to Evergreen Wolf Lodge, like in the center of evergreen

wolf lodge is an indoor water park where like wave pool lazy river uh a bunch of different slides raft rides um you know some other like obstacle courses and and things like that uh you got that big the the bucket that slowly fills up and then pours down You got that big, the bucket that slowly fills up and then pours down the roof, that classic? Bucket. The classic, there's this giant bucket that just dumps at whenever it feels like it. So if you want to try to get through the park

to someplace else, you're not going to stay dry because it just dumps a huge bucket of water on you. Just keep your eyes on the bucket. There's a restaurant in there called Buckets, which is a delight. It's a restaurant is generous. There's a place where you can stand shirtless for 20 minutes and get some hummus or chicken tenders out of the deal. Buckets is correct, but I want to give credit to the full name, Buckets Incredible Craveables. Make sure we get that jargon out. Yes,et's Incredible Craveables. Make sure we get that

jargon out. Yes, Bucket's Incredible Craveables. It's good. You can conceptualize it. I have not been to one of these kinds of things, but I think it's like a sandals for kids. You know what I mean? Like an all-inclusive, like kids show up, you don't

have to leave. So that's like the main thing. If you're in the room, if you're staying in a room there you get a band for the water park you get to go to the water park which is like great wolf lodge was the place when covid really got started or it's like we'll know covid is over when great wolf lodge opens because if you can imagine a worse environment for spreading disease, we maintain it to make it the most comfortable for all bacteria and viruses. Well, and all of the, like,

the sense that I get of it, and from my brief walk around and watching videos, they're, like, they just feel like a bit of a claustrophobia. There's the water park, which is a breeding ground. But then all the hallways where you go on these adventures and stuff, which we'll talk about. But like, those are all just hotel hallway. This is not some, it's not Grand Californian sized, like expansive lobbies.

And it kind of is just like a Radisson that has some like fake nature in it. There's nature. There's a, There's a, there is a, um, gosh, it's what order to talk about these. Okay. So there's the water park.

There's the rooms. Um, they have, uh, uh, there's a arcade, huge arcade that is open 24 hours a day. So if your kids wake up,

uh, at 6 AM, you can go down like, come on, let mom sleep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'll go down and play the Minions VR ride. Fine.

So I've spent a lot of mornings, like, there's a Dunkin' inside where you can get just, if you like your hash brown soapy, there's no better option than Dunkin' Donuts. There's also, like, a big

buffet kind of thing, and. There's also like a big, they have a big buffet kind of thing. And then there's like the, they call it, which is why there's an upscale, upscale. There's an adult sit down dining place that they puzzlingly called The Lodge. It's like, well,

it's just, it sounds like the sequel to Great Wolf Lodge and it's your restaurant. Very difficult to Google just that restaurant. Great Wolf Lodge, The Lodge. The Lodge and it's your restaurant. Very difficult to Google just that restaurant. Great Wolf Lodge, The Lodge. The Lodge does seem like the high end, like the hip way. We're just going with The Lodge.

The high end version or whatever. They've got a lot of there's crafts and all kinds of activities for kids. They got yoga if you want yoga. The weirder stuff is like they have this thing called magic quest which started as like a comparable to like a laser tag or like qzar where you would like go there to do magic quest and magic quest is you have a toy wand and of course they're like

all very customizable with lots of flair you can buy for them. But you have these wands and they have IR receivers in the tip. And when you point them at things in this game, you can do like quests and collect gold and interact with things in the hotel. There's things in the hotel where if you flick your wand at them, like the bear will talk to you or the knight in armor will like light up or something like that. So there, but there's also like, you go to these trees that have TV screens on them and you see a man who like, he's so old.

He's like playing a wizard, giving you quests. And it's a video of this dude. And it's like, he's so so old and the stuff there is so old like you're just faced with this certainty that this man is dead like you look at it you know like without any doubt like there's no way this man is still alive there's no way and he's giving requests from beyond the grave to like go get the lightning rune or whatever and then you have to find other uh community theater actors pretending to be princesses or fairies that will give you other quests and like you collect the runes and you

collect gold there's a channel on the tv that tells you who's got the most gold and wow how exciting for the kids to make it to the tv well it's thrilling except for there's a certain class of kid that you run into at Great Wolf Lodge that you're pretty sure isn't staying there but is on his grind like usually capes are involved if you see a kid with like every time I go there's at least one kid with like

a cape and a wand holster who you can tell is like mom dropped off at 10am she's like I'll be back at 3 have a killer time if you knew this kid you'd do it too um and those are all that so that's weird because it goes through the whole hotel so if you're walking like from your room to the lobby like you're walking through some kids like adventure playground or just like these little dorks running around careening into you, no awareness of where you are, because they've got a red gem to

get to before the time runs out or whatever. So that's playing out around you. So that is mixing with the family hauling in the suitcases and like, come on, let's go. We got to get to the desk. No, don't stop there. And then some kid might crash into you and poke your kid with, let's go. We got to get to the desk. No, don't stop there. And then some kid might like crash into you and poke your kid with a wand.

Yeah, I saw a video of like tips and tricks for magic. Magic quests. I also heard it called Magi quest. I think it might be. Yeah, the spelling seems like, but then there are Magis involved. Right, yeah. Magis are a part of it.

But some of the tips and tricks are like take the stairs there's hidden stuff in the stairway but there's also like fire escape warnings in the stairway like it's a regular stairway not not those stairway and like i saw they were recording this video and a guy is just walking behind them shirtless because he's just like, look, I'm just trying to get back to my room and get some stuff. But then the other detail was like, you go through the whole resort. However, it's by the elevators. The stuff on all the floors is by the elevators. If you hit guest rooms, you have gone too far.

Stop walking through guest rooms. Right. And they're on miserably, cruelly, they're on different floors, the different things you have to do. So you are up and down stairs trying to get to the different quest objectives.

So that's a very wild... The weirder thing about it is all the magic quests, that were outside of Great Wolf Lodge have been shuttered. So these used to be standalone things. They don't exist anymore. The company itself that ran Magic Quest was like subsumed into the Great Wolf Lodge Corporation. So this technology, no one seems to know how to fix it or maintain it is in no way maintained or fixed and i think that's like institutional knowledge that no one has anymore like once the treasure

chest stops opening no one seems to know that guy's gone that guy's long gone he's you know he's working for another partner he's gone we don't know how to fix anything there was one guy who knew how to do it right the one guy built is like well as long as this keeps working forever should be fine he got fired the magi's in the sky have decided that the chest will never open again your work here is done the uh there's an adult there's like a more not adult but there's like a more grown-up version of magic quest called compass quest, where you get, imagine the thrill of casting spells with your wand. Now imagine instead of a wand,

you have an incredible compass that you can put into divots. If you want more, the thrill, the, the, the sheer joy in your child's eye when they take a toy compass and put it into a compass shaped divot. Boy,

let me tell you it is a it is a wild and woolly experience and then i have a feeling jason was into compass as a kid i could be wrong i uh liked fiddling with my boy scout compass and i uh never fiddling with my compass yeah never used it uh well jason fiddled with his compass i just i like turning it and like trying to get it to find north but then when they're like all right we'll align the compass and now find your bearing and now right figure out where in the sky and i'm like no this is no we're not i'm not doing school too i already have to go to school it's the weekend it's the weekend that's why it's friends who would go to catechism would go to ccd i was like

you have to go to school after school like i school oh school too you would have liked it better if you were putting it into things and magic, like, thing quests were unlocked. Yeah. Anyway, sorry. No, please. There's a show, an animatronic show that plays twice a night at the same time. So in the lobby, there's, like, this big, it looks looks like a tree and the tree has a face and then there's different forest animals and a kid in the log and they just look at you with these like dead

lifeless eyes for 22 hours and 30 minutes out of every day and then for for a brief 15 minute window they are brought to life to uh delight parents at literal like the loudest i'm ear splitting ear splitting volumes what makes it what makes it worse is the show is maybe 10 feet from the check-in desk where the employees all are so imagine twice a night every night you are you have to sit five feet from this ear splitting i actually i downloaded the set the the song for you all oh yeah the show out just so i could play a little snippet of it yeah i think we aren't getting that i can't hear it yeah okay hold on one sec sure i think i have the video maybe too, if that's what works. Yeah, if you have it.

I think I might have it. Wait here. Well, you can tell us if it's the right thing. Jordan, can we pull up a video? I think we might have a video here. Even if you find your way home, there's nothing to be scared of here. Trust in all the nature, like a cloud you can soar when you do what you're looking for. here let's pause it we might let's keep we might want to keep going but uh just at this juncture uh who's like you gotta really squint to see that it is the owl. Because the motion is not like a ton.

Right. And context clues are telling you he sounds like an owl. I think when he sings. He's got an owl vibe for sure. Yeah. Owlish singing voice. But this is the one you were talking about. This is the earworm.

Yeah, this is every night. Twice. Like there's one at seven and one at eight um and uh it the kids just sit down outside and they watch this great show and the staff is just subjected to it over and over and over again um there's other weirder there's a a place called scoops which is like uh is i think scoops is the it's a kid's spa i had a picture from when i walked around thank you there's an ice cream store too which isn't called scoop which is not scoops scoops is where you get like fake nail polish on right if you're a little girl. I found something that was like, paint the nails of this raccoon

character and then print them out. And you can get your own nails painted and the hook is like, everything's edible. So if your kid wants to just like, drink the nail polish as a kid. Oh, that's great. The option's there.

All they've eaten for days is like uh buckets and uh edible nail polish and i saw there were uh the brunch buffet had a big cupcake display at the end so it's like all my kid is eating is honeydew melon and blue cupcakes and edible nail polish and going in the water there are there also a huge candy shop. Don't forget the massive candy store. And your kids, when you book your room, you get

for your kids what's called a paw pass. And it's like, this really does bump it into sandals territory, because then it's like, if you get the best paw pass, then you get a cup full of bulk candy, and you get ears, and you get like the a cup full of bulk candy and you get ears and you get uh maybe like um uh goggles stuff like that or you can play a free game of laser tag or a free game of uh

light up goofy golf that's there i didn't mention that there's golf there's bowling alley uh but but that's all packed in right which becomes a checklist where you as a parent now even if you didn't want to do all these things i mean you've already paid for them so you are going to have to go you know play the bowl and golf and all those other great activities which are sort of like jammed into i i found a picture i took of the bowling alley, Ten Paws, I believe. Yeah, Ten Paws, yes. Ten Paws Bowling. And that's small. It's like in a corner.

I mean, I couldn't believe how much was packed into. Where does the Anaheim one or the Garden Grove one, if you will. I just remember thinking like, boy, everything is like it's all in corners. And there seems to be this game and that's all in hallways. And it just all felt. And there's five restaurants somehow in that. And yet the Garden Grove won the biggest one in the in the entire chain. And yet it felt like claustrophobic to me. Yeah, they're very they're very packed.

Well, that kind of goes to what I think is like so awesome about the Great wolf lodge experience and i am using that somewhat sarcastically because as much as there is for kids to do it is openly hostile to parents in a way in a way where no concessions have been made for your existence like no concessions there used to be something called the wind down w-iI-N-E, wind down. And what you do is when you check in, you order a wind down. And that is literally at 9 p.m. or whatever. You set the time. But after your kids are in bed, someone shows up and knocks very quietly on your door and says, here's an entire bottle.

And some truffles. There you go. Enjoy. We make you wait until after your kids are asleep to have anything approximating pleasure. Enjoy the cupcake chardonnay you could have picked up at Target next door. I was Googling prices at Total a total line drastically less than the

wine down but maybe you get your chocolate covered strawberries which i'm sure are there's at least four of them and it's each one more delicious than the last that service has been discontinued once you're in the room you are in the room there is nothing for you like you what you're you are there once your kids are asleep you are not leaving this room you are stuck there i've started to get into this regard not in great wolf lot now i've done a couple of disney trips with my now two-year-old and we we essentially invented the wind down program for ourselves without realizing this was established.

But you bring the bottle. We've actually had a lot of fun in the realm of like, okay, let's check if the baby monitor works at the downstairs bar. No, it stops working as soon as we get down the elevator shaft. I guess we're in the room tonight. Shark tank it is. Just leave the face time running next to the bed. Yeah.

We try. But we've had, you know, hey, our independent wind downs have been actually very nice, I would say. But these, what my question in reading the wind down section of the website, here's, okay, one, there's different packages. And one is called rekindle the bonfire. And I'm a little uncomfortable with the, oh, and then they call it a romantic package. And I'm just going to take a stab here based on what we've talked about so far.

I can't imagine that Great Wolf Lodge is a great place for romance. Oh. Parental romance. You've come to the right man to ask about romance at Great Wolf Lodge. Let me tell you, there is nothing you feel like less.

There is nothing, especially if you spent the day at Kings Island, right? You come back drenched, drenched in sweat. Your kids, your rotten children make you go to the water park after all that. You fill up on a bunch of cotton candy and the worst pizza I've ever had in my entire life. Unthinkable, unthinkable, this pizza. You cannot imagine how bad the pizza at Kregel's Lodge is. It seems like a joke. It seems like they're running a scam on you.

They can't even get La Rosa's pizza, like a local Cincinnati pizza. No, it's absolutely the worst. And there is the, in terms of like, if you want alcohol, the wind down is gone, right? But they do know that you are basically trapped there. And so you can buy cans of White Claw for seven dollars. It's like Vegas.

It's it's it's just so antagonistic that like you can't order things. There's not like adult movie not adult movies but you know like yeah you know pg-13 movies yes right anything above that um it is uh there is like the restaurant the lodge is wildly unpredictable it's the food quality is always like about a hard c it's like a good solid c the The one, I went to one in Charlotte on our way back from a beach trip where we had to stop like halfway. And as a treat to the kids and a punishment to ourselves for being so relaxed at the beach, we stopped at Great Wolf Lodge on the way home. And the rest, the lodge there is overlooking the water park. So imagine the one thing

that is ostensibly an adult experience at this place and your kids are watching other kids have fun through the glass. Like, how is your dinner going when your kids are like,

Mom, let's go. Let's go. Look, they're having fun. We're missing it. Why are we sitting here? This isn't anything. Son, listen. These meatballs are subpar at best i love you i just

want to finish this bad burger with a fried egg on it it's the only thing i have had to look forward all day i'm just pretending i want to just pretend i was somewhere else for a second i it um uh that's like the what I weirdly kind of enjoy about it though, aside from they have the arcade machines where you'll run into these, where you are putting coins in the slot and you get trading cards out of them. And if you get a full set of the trading cards, then you can trade them in for like a bajillion tickets. Right?

So there's a SpongeBob game where as you're pumping quarters in, it will make like these different character cards fall out of the slot. And if you get all nine of them, you need to trade them in for like 5,000 tickets. But you can't find a Gary. That's how they get you. No Gary. It's like a McDonald's game. It's like the McDonald's game with the one street that

you can't find exactly so every time you walk past the machine it's like let me just duck in see if they got a Gary out real quick nope see no Gary okay moving on those are those are uh fun but what I actually like about it is like I feel no you know when I'm at Disney I I I I love Disney uh a lot I'm wearing a Disney shirt as we speak. I'm a huge fan of Disney. But when I'm at Disney, there's this sense of like, if I just do the right things and plan enough and read enough and watch enough Disney videos and stuff,

then I can really maximize this trip and really get something that the whole family is going to love. And with Great Wolf Lodge, you just got to get through it. And the lack of pressure there, I really love. Like, I don't know. I don't care what we do. I'm just alive for 24 hours. Then I'll leave and it'll be over.

It's not miserable. There's nothing for me here. This isn't for me. And they seem to like really cultivate that experience of like there's no FOMO here there's nothing you'd like adults trust us it's just if you're at Disney World you're like can I maneuver this to where oh I get a break from the kids and I get to go do Tower of Terror and that's exciting or if we plan it right there's actually a really good restaurant in our hotel and the wine is nice and the food is like but if you take all that off the table,

it's not for you. Disney World especially is like a monster that you have to slay. You have to plan for it. You have to kill it. In the Great Wolf Lodge, it's like, monster, do what you want to me. Just take me. You win.

I surrender myself to the Babadook. To answer your romance question, you should actually take a look at some of the themed rooms because the suites at Great Wolf Lodge, you can put your kids in. You guys cuss on this show? Yeah. Yeah, I know that. You can put your kids in fucking Albuquerque.

There's like a bunk bed room where they are sequestered off in their own themed bunk beds. I don't know if they lock from the outside, but I assume. I gotta say, though, I watched a walkthrough of a two-story fireplace suite, and I was looking at it,

and yeah, the bunk bed room bedroom had a door but then there was a lot where like there was just a bed next to the living room and like a lofted bed area with no door and i'm like so if you're bringing like extended family if you're bringing a group here everyone better be on good terms because there is not enough walls in this suite. No, there's not. And also it adds a real element of thrills when you're in a two-story room with a three-year-old who could at any moment just plummet right off the top. You have to keep track of them. All of a sudden now, thank you, Great Wolf Lodge, and I have to monitor my child every second that we are in this room so they do not plummet to their doom

um but but they yeah the the rooms are massive it's like themed like uh bunk beds where it looks like a jungle or a cave or or what have you um but the rooms can get big enough so you can put your kids way away you the one blessing is you don't have to think about your kids while they're asleep. You can store them for your convenience. Like a Victorian orphan in a shelf. You just store them and put them away. Don't worry about it. It seems like there's some rooms where there are characters looking at you while you sleep. Because that's something we haven't talked about yet is the original characters who I think they do a good job making it seem like they're something, even though they are just at this.

I don't know if I'm comfortable enough to like want to sleep with them, like staring and playing an acoustic guitar while I'm sleeping. But that's what I'm looking at. The family of the wolf pack, as it's known at this Great Wolf Lodge, is it's weird because it's like it's also another thing that relieves the pressure. Right. If my kids see Cinderella at out, you know, in in Disney World, I know that I'm going to be stopping in a line for 45 minutes. If my kids see Wiley the Wolf's sister Violet, they're like, please, I have no fucking guilt whatsoever, but I'd be like, absolutely

not. This IP is utterly contextual. You step out that door, it means nothing. Like, what kid is going to care that you got a picture with a hotel mascot? It's ridiculous. These are stars in a bubble the bubble birds they are no longer stars not unlike being a podcaster at their own live show we're all wily the wolves no the fame is utterly utterly exclusive to the to the premises the Wolf Lodge cinematic universe. Micro celebrities.

I did, nothing made me feel more old than someone's, there was a YouTube video called the evolution of the Great Wolf Lodge characters. And it started off with the guy who made it going like,

well, Great Wolf Lodge, part of all of our childhoods. And I'm like, what? What? Nope. Nope. Uh- part of all of our childhoods. And I'm like, what? Nope. Nope. Uh-oh. This is mid-2000s.

That's crazy. No one is a child. No one was a child then. I messed up your video trying to show you Wiley the Wolf. This is the original. You know what? What I'll do is I'll drop a link to this in the chat. So somebody who can pull this up in a tasteful way. Oh, sure.

Yes. Jordan. Jordan Katzer. This is the original. That is the original actual design of Wiley the Wolf. The Cub Club. When they were in the Cub Club. Wiley.

They've done a, yeah, they've done like a Chuck E. Cheese on him, though, where he used to look cooler and now he's been like kid-ified more. Yeah. He used to be a lot more like a wolf. You know, a Chuck E. Cheese on him, though, where he used to look cooler, and now he's been kid-ified more. Yeah, he used to be a lot more like a wolf. You know, a cool wolf. Yeah, he had a real edge. Does cool mean dead-eyed and weird? Is that your definition of cool, Mike? Yeah.

In this instance, it is. There's a channel there where they just play this storybook about the founding of Great Wolf Lodge. And it's about like Wiley and these two brothers, Tooth and Nail, that are like beavers. Oh, here we go. Oh my God. Wait, what is this weird clip art? That's the original Wiley the Wolf from the Great Wolf Lodge website.

Like the first time that people were exposed to this guy, this is what they saw, this nightmarish Newgrounds clipart. Yeah, this Pepe. This is unsettling. He's waiting to be claimed by the right wing. But they're walking around and it's like, I mean, kids love them in the sense that the kids that love costume characters will be into it, but they're not characters outside of the resort,

and there's plenty of merchandise and everything celebrating these great characters. There are so many characters on this Wikipedia. Yeah. Yeah. Wiley's got a rich history. Anybody jumping out at you, Mike? That no one cares about. Oh, yeah yeah Princess Pumpkin

Oh yeah She was a lady in the leaves A lady in the leaves The air in Cloudcrest What? Oh yeah yeah yeah The lady in the leaves is a magic quest character Right

That you interact with to get like your Your They have a lot of magi or magic quest character right that you that you interact with to get like your uh your um they have a lot of magi or magic quest characters in this wikipedia like barraxus or charlock the red dragon oh charlock is fun that's an actual like there's a big screen tv with that's showing this dragon and you have to go in and fight him with your wand by casting increasingly specific spells. I did learn how to beat the red dragon. I did not watch the video to watch

how to beat the silver dragon. Real quick, let me show you this. Oh, Sherlock, you gotta use the eyes arrows, I think. Scott, you're gonna be very interested in this and I don't know how this is gonna make you feel. I don't know if you've seen this already. Hold on. Let me just make sure I pull this up.

It is a bear named Sprinkles. Oh, I think I've caught this. Yes. This is a bear. This is a little familiar. Yeah, I think actually someone in our Facebook group noted this because just in context, I'm really into the bear who only lives in the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory chain of candy stores. His name is Truffles and he's very obese and sad.

And my wife and I always feel like comforting him. And yeah, there's sort of a Truffles-esque Sprinkles, you said? Yeah, Sprinkles. Sprinkles is, he's too happy. Look, problem is, I don't want to cheer him up. He's fine. He doesn't need a hug. He got a huge PPP loan.

Sprinkles is sad. Like, Sprinkles never stopped working, but he got a little cushion just in case you know yeah so he but he is i wonder what came first i wonder if they ripped off oh i guarantee truffles came first that that chain's been uh yeah part of our culture since maybe the 80s i don't know our heritage our heritage cultural heritage uh so yeah the the the it's just the experience the way it really sets itself apart from from disney and and other like parks like this not there's a lot of hotels that have water parks right in them um uh they are the displeasure that they cause adults that the there is no way to spend your way out of it like the one thing you know about me is that i do have some money because i got this room

can i please give i an adult give you some money to make this pleasant for you anyway and they like they look down at you and they say no we know you would give us money to make this better we're not going to allow you it would sully whatever this bizarre social experience experiment that we're running is you cannot pay to improve this experience you can't pay to like if it was disney you would be paying to like exclusive genie parking spaces that you don't have to haul your bags through a half mile hallway to get to your room. They would

charge you for like, you know, we'll put food and drinks in your... No, you can't do any of that. You are making your... It is very regular to see families walking through the halls with coolers because they're just that unwilling to participate in the Great Wolf Lodge. lodge just because you mentioned hostile amenities i i have to i have to mention a thing i noticed in in one of the video walk people have put up tours of the various lodges

and in the one video i i saw by like um the parking lot by like a side door into the parking lot. There were all these carts and I was like, that cart looks very familiar. What is that? And I realized it's the cart you pay five bucks for at the airport to throw your luggage on. If you like have a full family's worth of luggage and you have to push it out to a rental car.

And I'm like, at least at Disney, they have standard bellhop carts and they have bag services, people that will like take care of this for, like you're like, okay, at least I don't have to do, this is much more clearly set up of like, all right, take that cart to your car, load up your luggage,

and, yeah, walk the half mile through hallways and side doors up to your room. Little wizards trying to get their... There will be quests getting in your way. Don't nail the little wizard with your away luggage sliding off the cart. Guys, when you go to the water park, the first thing you have to do is go have your wristband scanned. You use wristbands everywhere.

So, oh, did I mention you're spending the entire time with this plastic wristband that they affix to your wrist that you cannot remove at all because it's what you use to get to the water parks. So it has to say's you sleep in it you have to like you cannot remove this thing yeah because you can't you can't take it off because they don't want you handing your

thing so somebody else can go to the water park in your stead right when you get to the water park you have to scan your uh badge and they are your your band and they ask you how many towels you want. And you tell them the number of towels. You check out the towels for a period of time. And if you don't return your wet, sopping towels to them, like before you leave, they charge you for stealing these incredible towels. And let me tell you guys, luxury, you got it. Yeah, there we go. High thread count on these beautiful towels

you're going to want to take some home so they had to curtail the theft of these these horrific glorified watch cloths but p.s the best you can't take the towels out of the water park but your room is not in the water park so they have committed you to sloshing through the hallways shirtless and embarrassed until you're like your teeth chattering you can't even bring your towel back to your room with you and return it there well children run around with capes they have extra clothes they have more clothes than you usually have and you have less right yeah i feel like everyone i feel like this is a humid vacation this is a clammy like as soon as you walk into the vac vacation. This is a clammy.

As soon as you walk into the building, you're clammy. Yeah, it is a sweaty environment. It seems like a big idea of this chain is this is a place where you can go have active water park fun even when the weather is very bad. That's a lot of why they've put them in a lot of the places because what are some of the it's like there's there's the pocono's we were talking about yeah that gets stormy i would imagine so i i was going to bring out the pocono's because my family used to go to a resort called the mountain laurel resort and the pocono's and even in the early 90s they were ramping up their indoor pool like complex this was like a resort that was still doing pretty well at the time had a lot of activities had like more restaurants than this better restaurants than this where where mom and dad

could go you you the whole family could eat dinner and then one or two nights during your trip, mom and dad would go alone, and they would leave the kids with daycare activities kind of things. But I looked up that resort a couple years ago, and I was like, wow, it hasn't changed. It hasn't changed anything since the 90s. Uh-oh. I looked it up this morning. It seems to be doing well. It seems to be more towards modern amenities. But yeah, I think this was a big thing catching on in the Poconos of year-round indoor water parks for people who don't want to go skiing or just families who just want to get away.

And maybe you'll hike for 30 minutes one day. And the rest of the time you'll be at the water park which is very uh humid and you have to you get used to the chlorine smell or at least you better uh but you're for sure gonna get a headache one day they uh yeah there's no daycare options at great wolf lodge uh which seems weird until you remember that you might experience some pleasure if you left your children with somebody else for a little while. So they can't have that. They can't have you enjoy not attending to your children because that might bring you joy as a parent.

And they are very much in the business of not allowing that to happen at any point. Oh, so wait. So this is a question for you, Justin, that you were, because you were alluding to, even though you would gladly throw money at them to give you something that you want, there's no way to do that. You know, in terms of plussing it up, something we talk about on the show, what would you, like, if you could hand over $1,500 more to make something happen there what do you what do you want what's the great wolf parent plus up that uh would make the thing better it would have to be

it would have to be a different resort like it would have to be a different adjacent resort so contemptible is everything from the aesthetics to the offerings a great homage to me, the discerning adult? It would have to be like Cigarette Joe's Island Getaway. And it's like next door. You have to pay $1,000. And you can leave your kids at the door like a goat check. There was a tunnel in your room to a different resort that the parents could go through. A secret passage.

After the kids are asleep. Right. You can slide down like the water slide and blank check. You just slide down and you get to the adult park underneath. All the parents in a tunnel, come with me. I know of a place. Come on. I can provide you passage.

Yeah, there's no atheists in foxholes, but everyone's a smoker at the Great Wall. You're just like, i don't usually crave cigarettes but i would love to go outside alone and smoke a pack right now i'm gonna have the first cigarette of my life here at green will outside great wolf lodge uh there is a uh i will i will mention and i guess this is a concession to adults in some sense, because the pool in the water park, there is Grizzly Rob's Bar, which is a, it says, the description of the website is, feeling the need for some cool refreshment? Grizzly Rob's is the place to quench your thirst with soft drinks, island-inspired cocktails, and an extensive beer list. Stop by for an invigorating break at noon after a day of 84-degree water park play

or any time the spirit moves you. Spirits being the operative, yeah. And you will never see parents more broken down than parents at 11 o'clock a.m. lined up for margaritas at Grizzly Rob's bar. Like, yeah, yeah, I know they're mostly iced. I just need to feel something. Please, Grizzly Rob, set me up.

Have you had a drink at Grizzly Rob's? I don't have time for the lines at Grizzly Rob's, so what I will do is get a, there is at Buckets, you can get a frozen pina colada, and that is the one offering they have there in terms of like alcohol um there may be beer i'm not i'm not a big beer guy but it seems like that you have to come in with a plan and the plan might help you or not do anything for you depending on where the great wolf lodge is because um like it seems like that ohio one you maybe could go find a Target or something.

If you wanted to sneak your little bottles in or whatever. Or the Anaheim one is close enough. There's stores very close. But if it's a resort truly in the middle of nowhere, then you've got nothing, right? You've got to plan for that and come in with your adult amenities ahead you can like there's a fridge in the room right you can like bring your own stuff and plan ahead if you don't though the it's i'm gonna sound like i'm overstating it but like the parking lot i don't know how they make it so far from your room but

the farthest distance that there is on earth is the distance from your room at great wolf lodge back to your car and also if you move your car pretty good chance you're gonna have even worse when you come back punished and someone will slip in there no questions asked they'll slide right in so uh it yeah it is it is a real crapshoot to to leave to go anywhere there is like um some convenience stores uh across the way um the the dunk i mentioned right which it doesn't sound that wild right there's duncans everywhere but it's the only coffee that you can get in the resort whoa so imagine if you will 8 30 in the morning at the duncan in a great wolf lodge i mean lines out the door i mean like beyond because everyone wants coffee and this is the place where they

will give you a cup of coffee so everyone at at the hotel, every adult that drinks coffee, has to wait in line for their coffee. And the line is unfathomable to a point where I have gone to my car, driven to the adjacent Dunkin' at my way, to go through the drive-thru and get my dishwater hash browns from an outside vendor, rather than wait in the lines there at the Great Wolf Lodge. Oh my God.

Yikes, yikes. These are, boy, this is bizarre. This is all so fun to talk about. Oh yes, Mike. I have checked. You cannot mobile order. No. You absolutely cannot mobile order the Dunkin'.

That's convenient. Convenient. Special message. No, no, no, not Great Wolf Lodge. You wait in the line. That's convenient. No, no, no, not great lodge. You wait in the line. You're waiting. You might enjoy skipping the line. Do you love your family or not? Prove it.

We're going to be together. Can I just read some copy that's that, that just jumped out at me from the great wolf website. Oh, you know it. I, I, the big thing, and this is, this is recurring in a lot Great Wolf website. Oh, you know it. The big thing, and this is recurring in a lot of their spots and stuff, you know, arrive as a family, leave as a pack at Great Wolf Lodge.

So that's kind of on a lot of their stuff, but it's the next couple sentences that stuck with me. Experience a world of play all under one roof. Go with the flow in our water park resort or find adventurous dry play throughout the lodge how do we feel about drive drive adventurous adventurous dry play none of jason's gold bond involved no there's no talc there first off no talc that would be yeah because it's powder because jason was talking adventurous dry play is with if it's the talc but

the lotions are for it it feels like just a bunch of lorem ipsum to like fill in because like it doesn't we don't care if you want to come or not adult we just put some garbage in here your kids are gonna make you go we don't have how do you do how do you do fellow humans are you excited for leisure is man adult like yeah we're an adult like you here at great wolf lodge we have the iron horse fitness center you can uh exercise your commitment to health and well-being in our fitness room we offer a perfect selection of cardio and weight training equipment flat screen tvs and towel service so you can stay on top of your game or begin anew. Imagine you're going to start a new commitment to fitness at Great Wolf Lodge. This is my moment.

I'm going to start now. I want to get attractive enough to leave my terrible family for a new family. We'll maybe come here. If I can get in shape enough to have an affair I might experience something approaching physical pleasure. Then maybe Wiley's sister, Violet, will look at me.

The Iron Horse Fitness Center is next to the glow-in-the-dark golf, and I've never seen a single human being in it as long as I've lived. I've never seen one. Well, Justin, there's a reason for that because the entirety of great wolf lodge is a treadmill you're running and running and you're not getting away dad take your one go up the stairs the next quest is on floor six the next quest is back on the bottom floor all right back up to eight well you raise you do raise a good point, Justin.

This might be a terrific place to have an affair because I don't think anyone's going to be looking for you. Private eye, like they're not letting anyone in with a private eye, like a long telephoto lens. Like, oh no, pal. No, you're not coming in here. You're talking about an affair that's deep enough along that it would be on the old show Cheaters,

where a private investigator is involved. Yeah, a sleazy James Elroy-style private investigator is tracking you. I'll find your man. I will. I'm sorry, Ms. Wilson. I had real good tabs on him, and then I lost him in a crowd of 1,000 unhappy adults that look like just facing utter mortal panic. Every single one of them looks exactly the same. He slides a picture on the desk and the fair is actually obscured

by 1,000 little wands that are up in the top. The kid's holding the wand. You can see they're making out here behind all these wands. I can't see that. No, I really... I think some children

conspired to use magic against me to defeat my privatized skills i did my best uh could i real quick my my uh talk about the found the founders oh yeah oh yeah um i'm very excited i am excited i did not go to the great wolf lodge when i the couple times I went to the Wisconsin Dells as a youth. But I definitely went to their other creation, which was Noah's Ark Water Park. Noah's Ark. Yeah, you've brought this up before. It feels familiar to me, but I don't recall much about it. Yeah, Noah's Ark is not, I mean, it's obviously somewhat religious.

That's what it's called. But that's like the top that's like the the water park in wisconsin that you go to then it's got the biggest slides and everything and i don't know if it's still in america right it's massive well i think so yeah it um it was definitely like all the that was like what you would do if you were a kid like if you didn't go there you were you may as well not have come back because it was the cool one and my mom we i begged to go there because my mom was very afraid of me going to a water park oh this is the place where you were denied uh you've told this one that you were you were shut down from like kids birthday parties i was denied no i did go here but i was denied uh um she wouldn't let us go with like

just kids and other kids families that she didn't trust even they were friends of mine so we would like lie and say why i didn't go she'd be like oh we have to go you know it's i think here's one of my favorites it would be like it's our anniversary and the kids and i are all and uh jeff are all doing something so we So this would be the regular birth, because it would always be the same birthday water park, and it would always be the same line. Wait, but then you would, it wasn't your anniversary,

and you would not do anything? We would barely do anything, yeah. Surely you couldn't have gone to Bennigan's another night. Maybe we went to Bennigan's. It's possible. We went to Chili's or something. You know, I talk about these five timers, these stories that we tell.

This one I think you need to tell at least once a year just to remind everyone where you're coming from. This is important context. You know what? Okay, here. Let me give my mom

some credit. This was the family that would invite us that also called her once and said, also I want to let you know we have a gun in the house and the boys know where it is. As much as my mother was a little overprotective, I

guess I have to give her this one. Well, hold on a second. Did you get to see it? I did not. Also, I did not go over to that house for many years. That's fine. That's fair. Although I did see the one brother shoot the other brother at two feet close range with a BB gun.

Whoa. Oh, my God. In the back. Because they were fighting. Okay. Sorry. I, my God. In the back. Because they were fighting. Okay. Sorry. I'm so sorry. One of the brothers was on the roof with the BB gun shooting at his brother when we rolled up there.

And then the other brother, just as kind of a psych out, was like, fine, come down here. Took his shirt off. Got down like this. Shoot me in the back and I'll show the scar to mom. God. And then he did it. It happened. We watched it happen. Shoot me in the back and I'll show the scar to mine. God. And then he did it. It happened. We watched it happen.

Shoot me in the back. Imagine that feeling for 24 hours. That's Great Wolf Lodge as an adult. I mean, it's basically like getting shot in the back with a BB gun by your brother for 24 hours. And you asked for it. You paid for it. Yeah, you wanted it. You wait there.

Your kids doesn't have a credit card. They can't get there without you. There's nothing to be scared of here. You said it so many times. I feel like there's a lot to be scared of here. Yeah, that's where the song starts and then it keeps getting said.

Jack and Andrew Waterman are the two gentlemen. The famous water park founders, the Watermans. That's so weird. And then they, yeah, Noah's Ark was first and then they created

Great Wolf Lodge in like 97. So it's so recent. Yeah. For something that has so many locations. Really bizarre how quickly it's taken on. But Noah's Ark has some magic to it.

Like you could see why another business would be appealing from the Watermans. Oh, I loved Noah's Ark. It was awesome. I was scared of a lot of the slides, believe it or not. But it had enough things for a kid to get very excited about. And it was massive. How much Noah? See, there's not really much religious stuff.

And I got to dig back in, and maybe there was in the old days. But it seems like it's a very secular telling of Noah's Ark, if that's even part of it. Because there's no religious-themed slides. Didn't realize Noah did hang loose so much. Yeah. I would imagine

that there was a little more religious tie-in early on. How is it water park-wise? Just judging it as a water park, Justin. I hate water parks. I hate water parks. It's really hard for me to judge because I will say it's a little better being in an indoor environment where you don't have the sun beating down on you while you're standing

in line for a ride. That I appreciate. But like, for example, I've been to Disney, I don't know how many times, never been to like Blizzard Beach or any of those. I have zero interest in water parks. Every time we go to Great Wolf Lodge, I live in this tiny bit of hope that my kids would be like, I don't really feel like doing the water park this time, dad. Let's just do anything else for the entirety of our stay.

I mean, the rides are... My kids won't do any of the fun slides, so it's pretty much just standing in the wave pool trying to keep them from drowning. I mean, that's the bulk of it. That seems stressful. Yeah, and it's very stressful. Even the lazy river is just them trying to fall out of the inner tube

getting sucked away by the current so that's not much not much fun well it feels like you're just a lifeguard well look yeah they've got yeah they definitely have lifeguards and i know about the lifeguard system because and i can't believe this this might be the first topic we've ever done on the show that has been the topic of an episode of Undercover Boss. There was an early on in the show. The then CEO, Kim Schaefer, went undercover and worked at a lot of the restaurants, worked at the front desk, which really gave you like the tenor of who comes there. Like, so people so upset at the front desk. I told you I wanted a high room. OK, we only have floor three.

Is that OK? Well, it's going to have to be. Oh, you're you're willingly on television acting like this. But then but one of the things she does is she works with the lifeguards. And a couple interesting things happen here. You get to see the training and you know that the lifeguards are trained and have to stay on their toes at all times because on just a regular day, not even in the pre-work training, they might have to pass something called the Timmy test.

And the Timmy test is when unannounced a different lifeguard throws a very realistic dummy uh with a big like gaping open mouth ah like it looks like an already deceased child i mean a cpr dummy but like with a little more going on so that it has like limbs akimbo timmy might get tossed into the wave pool and you have 15 seconds to notice timmy and rescue timmy and get him out of the water which is a and the test that i saw that was on the show was considered successful at 13 seconds which is pretty good that guy's on it but what a stressful thing for the lifeguards that timmy might show up and for the guests you might just have what you think is a like it looks like uh almost dead et flopping around in the water with you that's the timmy dust is the watch

a child drown simulator like i mean guys i i mean I'll grant you that that's a wild practice. But like, I would like to keep the lifeguards with their head on a swivel for drowning kids. I mean, I don't want to. I definitely do want them to have an eye out. Yeah. I mean, I'm sorry that it has to. How often? I mean, they don't get false alarms, right?

They're going to get dull. Every once in a while, you got to give them a little. There's kids. Stay on. Yeah. Not a job you can stop paying attention to it at any second so that is while bizarre probably a good thing that they do um i also learned a little bit of the lingo something that you get to see in this episode we recently uh were just oh because of mission space obviously mission space you end up with a lot of vomit and the euphemism we were discussing, protein spills. There is a different euphemism at Great Wolf Lodge,

and that is AFR. We got an AFR, and the AFR stands for accidental fecal release. Ha ha! Ha ha! Oh, crazy. I don't know what happened. I just ate. I don't know what happened.

I ate the world's worst pizza and milkshakes for 24 hours straight. I got diarrhea. Come on. If you don't want me to poop in the pool, you got to serve a vegetable in here somewhere, guys. Yeah, no telling if the AFR was from a child or from a man in his 40s.

I'll tell you. How was work today, honey? Awful. We had a Timmy test in the morning and then an AFR right after. I think my boss is out to get me. And I was so scared by the Timmy test. I had an AFR.

AFR was me. I should have led with that. I'm sorry. With our new fleet of ultra realistic Timmy's, Timmy can serve not just for the Timmy test, but we can squirt AFRs out of him. As you're rescuing him, just like hauling around the wave.

You have to grab Timmy with one hand and grab the AFR with the other that is the experience of being a parent at Great Wolf Lodge where they have replicated it almost exactly if you can get at least 85% of the AFR in your hand on the first grab

then you are up to par we got the chunks we can't expect him par as far as the lifeguard. He got the chunks. We can't expect him to get the liquid. His lifeguard's only 17. What's he going to do? The end of this episode of Undercover Boss, she's just holding like a lightly singed Timmy doll, and she's just covered in shit, and she's like,

everyone's getting a $ dollar raise everyone's getting a three dollar an hour raise immediately i'm so sorry i'm gonna go try to get hired at lockheed martin literally anything please somehow less crimes against humanity at lockheed martin something where there was there is no fun involved not any capacity for fun um well here one more thing you know and we we could we could start writing it down a little but There is no fun involved. Not any capacity for fun. Well, here, one more thing, you know, and we could start writing it down a little, but the Crimes Against Humanity, I think it's time to transition into the Crimes Against Humanity section. Justin, do you know anything about where your money is going when you go to Great Wolf Lodge?

Okay, now, guys, here's the truth of this and i was so afraid yeah i'm sorry we have i've worked i have worked no no no i because i don't know and i've worked so you don't have to be in that place 30 seconds before you realize like i would not like where this is headed like if i start climbing up this ladder i'm not gonna enjoy where it is so no i have not looked into it uh maybe that maybe i've had my last trip to great. We'll vlog. But I've remained. Well,

here, let me, let me build up before I get to the real source of it. I started looking up some stuff. Just, this is the section of my notes just titled shadiness. This isn't about the owner as much as I, this,

the garden Grove location. The only one that I've been to that I walked around a little, it did just feel so odd to me and so barren. And then it's like, it's kind of in, it's where Harbor Boulevard, it's south of Disneyland and it's where it starts to get a little barren and residential. Like you're finally out of it that it's that every hotel chain has a location and there's a Fleming's Steakhouse and a Morton's and all that. Like it's starting to get into just regular kind of low-income OC and a lot of weird stuff. Garden Grove

paid for the whole... The city of Garden Grove, trying to track people away from Anaheim, footed the bill for like $20 million to have the site prepared. So they're throwing so much money at it. They had to... much money at it they had to great wolf lodge had to pay 1.9 million to settle the cost of relocating 30 low-income families

living in a trailer park on the property so they evicted a trailer park in order to get great wolf lodge built uh not counting the legal fees for getting them out and then still it's not like garden grove was super sad not like garden grove was super like corporate garden grove was excited but the neighbors were like i don't know if i want a six-story water funnel in my backyard and you know who won this fight because jordan if we could pull up the photo i have look at the view that you have if you live in here. Miserable. We're looking at like a really just like a cracked, like, I mean, the street's fine.

You'd happily live on the street. It's not like a sad street, but it's made much more bizarre by full water, multiple mismatchy colors of water slides exploding out of this building at the end of your block. It looks like Dr. Strange has used his fractal magic to draw together a regular neighborhood. There goes the neighborhood. It's the weird thing about that location because a lot of these are sort of in nature or in the mountains. But this Anaheim one, it's, yeah, it's bizarre that it's just right next to and that there's just like a walgreens right there these poor oh god like you've survived getting disney firework ash in your yard for decades but at least you didn't have a water funnel out your kitchen window now the the ownership status of great wolf lodge its own adventure. Because at one point in time, there was a, what I read described as a rare public bidding war.

Where like companies were going back and forth. Where it's like, I'll buy the company, $4 a share. Oh, $4.55, $5.75. Like they're literally doing like an auctioneer getting it. And so they've had a couple owners. And then a few years ago, 65% of operational control or controlling interest, I believe is the phrase I saw, is now 65% by the company Blackstone. So the company that owns a lot of real estate in America,

the company that probably owns some of real estate in America, the company that probably owns some of those houses on that street also owns this. Pricing out. Yeah, they're the big company when you hear about fucking up the housing market and like, let's buy all the houses and rent them out in full cash

so that people can't buy starter houses anymore. They also fund rainforest deforestation in the Amazon. The CEO donated like $15 million to Mitch McConnell's Super PAC. The CEO was the head of when Trump got elected, and he got like a consortium of CEOs that Bob Iger was briefly on and then left. But there was some like, I don't even remember the name of the committee, but like Super Trumper.

It's an incredibly evil organization that, okay, let me list some things that in addition to Great Wolf Lodge, if you partake in any of this, you're putting money into fucking up the housing market at the Range Forest. All the bush parks, the Sea bush garden sesame place uh they own the willis tower the former sears tower they own motel six they own the cosmopolitan aria and the vedara in vegas and then you get into the products oatly they own the oat milk uh Ancestry is these people. I'm doing an ancestry of them.

Straight to evil. They own Bumble. They own. Honey, do you remember the place where we met and then we fell in love? Darling Jane. Oh, you guys are Bumble. Yeah, we met on Bumble. Yeah.

Guess what else they own? It's's uh you know it's weird what i can't figure out from all this is why you guys had me on this episode when i've never paid to go to great wolf holy ignorant until this moment i've been you know i thought about going but gosh with that kind of corporate history i mean they have their hands in so many pockets like you can't avoid they fund both the politicians that complain about coastal liberal elites drinking their oat milk and then they're funding And the best one in the list, Spanx. Blackstone. The evil equity firm owns Spanx.

There's no way around it. This is just how we have to live. Somebody else says, hey, Podcast to Ride has many guests on there. What's that vibe like? And I have to tell them, just fucking do your research and free go in, man. They're gonna Edward R. Murrow you and they'll wait till the end to do it. What the hell?

I'm glad you've had such fun. Let's take a look behind the curtain. No, don't worry about it. It's the podcast equivalent of if we dump animal blood on you. You're complicit. Well, anytime. And that's what it's like to be a parent at great wolf lodge you're getting animal dumb dog blood on you and you people are shouting you're complicit you're complicit and they're not accidental an animal blood release anytime we try to do it like

an inoffensive just what seems like a bland topic inevitably you get to the second page of google results and it's like oh no what's this isaac chotner interview in the new yorker oh no who's he got up against a wall related to like you know funimals or whatever well so uh i i i'm sorry if you've taken this as finger pointing this was not the intent yeah if anything I hope that it makes you feel better about, do you feel more justified in what has been frustrating about this place? In this part, there is a sense where like, this does feel like on top of the final indignity.

We're like, it doesn't, the this pleasure is permanent it does not end when you leave the premises you're carrying it around with you for the entirety of your life i have to respect the hustle that they have towards making me feel bad emotions there's a little bit of the joker like where do they get those wonderful toys like oh you got me again guys got it yeah it's good yeah in their defense the animated film about the great wolf lodge characters seems kind of cute and nice nothing about the trailer upset me so they're trying to like make the characters where you know you you maybe could experience them outside so there's the movie the great wolf Pack, A Call to Adventure, and this seems fine.

Now, I'm not going to think about how it was funded. I just think that Wiley and Oliver Raccoon and especially Brinley Bear are looking their best, and it looks like a fun adventure. I wish the Watermans never sold. That's right. Yeah, if we can focus on the dream of the Watermans. Yeah. They just wanted to make a family into a pack. Right.

Do you feel like... Not a super pack. Not a super pack. Yeah, that's where we got lost. We went from packs to super packs. That's right. Make sure. Is this a real movie? Yeah.

Will this be out in theaters? It's supposed to be out 10 days ago as we record this. Really? This is so timely, guys. I'm so impressed with you. Wow, that's strange. I don't know. I think maybe you can buy this, stream this, or something.

But what I love is that it becomes a movie that you can watch on Great Wolf Lodge TV. Reminiscent of my favorite thing, that there was this hour-long Treasure Island movie where you get to see Steve Wynn act, and it only played in Treasure Island. It's a nice throwback to that. So, the next time you go,

the next time that you're sure to happily go with your pack, you can watch this movie. Is there some sort of morality offset that I can do where I have to pay my credits to a good organization to justify my presence at Great Wolf Lodge? What's the opposite of, I don't know. Yeah, I guess helping low-income housing. You shouldn't have to do penance. You tip 200% at the lodge.

No ethical consumption under capitalism. It's the title of this episode. That's extra true. Any closing thoughts? Have we washed away all your bad, any good memories into... I feel lighter. I feel lighter. This has been good to get off my chest.

All right. Well, perfect. Boy, what a fun thing to talk about. Crazier than I thought it would be. Justin McElroy survived my podcast, The Ride. Let's exit through the gift shop Is there anything you'd like to plug? We are going to be

My family and I We do live shows For our podcasts We're going to be in San Jose Doing the Adventure Zone Which is our role playing podcast On the 29th We're going to be there doing My Brother Me

On the 30th at the San going to be there doing my brother, my brother, me on the 30th at the San Jose Civic, and then October 1st, we're in Denver at the Temple Hoyne Buell Theater doing my brother, my brother, me. So that'll be very soon. I bet as you're listening to this. So if you can get tickets at McElroy, MCLROY dot family. Fantastic. And you could probably pair it all up.

You go to the Denver show and then you go to the Colorado Springs Great Wolf Lodge. Perfect. Perfect. I always encourage people to stay at the Great Wolf Lodge. Adjacent.

It's the perfect experience if you're a childless podcast fan. You're really going to love this. This is really, I'm going to be- Well, that was an early discovery. For me with this, is that like looking up videos of it, they have made no outreach to vlogger, to childless vloggers and stuff.

They've made no marketing push. Most theme parks of various sizes have been like, oh, these people do free marketing for us. Give them some tickets. Not the case at Grateful Fudge. Jason, let's see if we can get you down in Anaheim. Oh, that sounds like- Let's see if we can get you down and oh that sounds like if we can get you on a comp room it's impossible to say for sure but i've never seen an adult there who did not obviously have like was not either obviously a parent or had a children

a child like present with them i've never seen like let's just go to the lodge tonight and enjoy nice dinner hello sweetheart this definitely this feels like maybe the first thing in podcast to write history where I'm like, I am not welcome. They may as well have those nuclear site like, this is not a place of honor signs posted. Private eyes. They're going to be watching you. Yeah. Just look, listen, if you just look

exasperated the entire time, no one will bat an eye. Oh, yeah. I'll take a wand, please. I'm going to email the PR at Blackstone and ask if we could send our cub reporter, Jason Sheridan, to one of the great wolf lodges. PR at Blackstone.com. Literal cub reporter in this case. He'll be part of the cub club. By staying there, he gives his name and his likeness over to a bear-like creature named Jason the Bear.

I'm happy to chaperone Scott and his i'm i'm happy to chaperone scott and his son because you're happy to chaperone me chaperone yeah i'm chaperone i've never been chaperone i i'm happy uh as you said you were on your own if you ever had to go to this oh yeah yeah i told justin that i yeah i had the the agreement with my wife already was if I were ever to take my son down here, that it is just dad and son. And now I wonder if dad has to get removed from the equation. So Uncle Jason. Yeah, please let me know how that goes.

Please go. I don't know any other adults that have been to Great Wolf Lodge. I would really love to hear your thoughts on it because it is a unique location. I'm still, you know, after all this. Just don't pay to get in there. You're going to have to sneak in. Uncle Jason has vitamin B shots. He just gives Scott one every hour

to keep him going. Just a B12. Help me, my friend. I'm suffering. Well, yeah, we'll see. I'll report on that. Hey, thanks to Jordan Katz who produced this episode.

Welcome to the show, Jordan. You can find us on all the socials at Podcast The Ride. Merch is available in our Tee Public store. And for three bonus episodes every month, check out Podcast the Ride, the second gate, or get one more bonus episode on our new tier, Club 3. You'll find all that at Patreon.com slash Podcast the Ride.

Not dark money. There's no dark, unless you consider it that the money might flow through me eventually to Great Wolf Lodge and then to Blackstone. But that's a long ways away and not yet. So your money this month won't go to Blackstone. I can promise that. It's a temporary promise. All right.

So long, Pac. Forever Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey. For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcasts.com and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Keep up with the latest Forever Dog news by following us on Twitter and Instagram at Forever Dog Team

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