lifeguard

attendant

retail sales associate

front desk agent

food service worker

Great Wolf Lodge

I hope I will never re-live my experience here. The Management is by far the worst I have come up on at Great Wolf Lodge, VA. There is a lot of favoritism between some of the Managers and employees as a result of friendship. There is absolutely no equality and your work is not appreciated. The housekeeping department was by far the most disorganized and because it was clear the hunger you had for the job you would almost be worked to death. The Management did not care about it's employees and despite the salary received any employee would desire to feel appreciated bending their backs day after day. They would not speak to you with respect and leave all the tasks on you to complete. Bear in mind that this building is 4 floors high, from, east to west and west- west. The Managers did not assist or prioritize their tasks very well. It was clear they were not properly trained before occupying their positions and this was irritating. They chose the wrong things to focus on and often times disregarded the more important matters. The assistant general evidently had more people skills and common sense than the general manager. Well, at least he took the time out to acknowledge your concerns. From the front desk, food and beverage, maintenance to the housekeeping staff. Literally EVERYONE working there was disgruntled. There was absolutely NO ORDER! One Manager did not appear for work days at a time, the other new Manager was so ridiculous, he would call meetings on a busy (weekend), every week at the same time to address the same issues while the hotel was in need of immediate attention, while we needed to get our jobs done. His decision making skills were so absurd half the time we would have to be forced to prove to him that his required action was ridiculous and of course there was a language barrier because no-one could fathom a word he was saying most times. He addressed irrelevant issues and provided feedback where none was required. The employees were miserable because most times they did not have the tools they needed to work. The stocks and supplies needed to be ordered to keep our jobs flowing was not done on time so as a result it basically made us incompetent. Sometimes housekeepers had no chemicals, the laundry schedule was done incorrectly so you found that 1-2 persons would be working per shift until evening time, same for public area, the front desk was also the same with an overflowing line and 1 or 2 pregnant women standing on their feet checking in guests for at least 5-6 hours at a time WITHOUT BREAK because their Managers insisted that help was required. (Inhumane). Employees could not even spend their money in the lodge because they were forbidden to stand in line with other guests with any indication that they work for the Company. OK? So we work for the Company but we cannot stand in line to get a meal? We were spending our money too!, 25% discount or not! We could have been catered to in another way other than shouting at us to "Go to the back of the line!" This food and beverage Supervisor was famous for that reaction to employees trying to get something to eat after a hard days work... again... inhumane. The food and beverage staff could not get any hours on the clock and they worked so hard that they had to become part-time life-guards because things were so slow even during the summer. They insisted that our hours be cut and so we often found that in order for the business to obtain more money in their pockets (greed), one person was doing 3 persons tasks (No exaggeration). Certain employees were given weekends off almost every weekend out of the month, obviously this would a strain on production but hey- I'm not a Manager. It was a constant complaint. Some employees were never disciplined because of their "friendship" with their Managers, while others were documented for minor issues. The new Managers were so hungry for power that they just used you to make themselves look good in order to get acknowledged by Corporate and hopefully grow higher in the Company not understanding the reality that people make up a Company. Therefore, in order for it to build there was to be unity and co-operation within, not a constant competition. There were days when contracted workers did not show for works because of their level of frustration but I learned there that no Manager understood what Managing with a heart was. That term was never consistently exercised and that is because they were not consistent, they were untrained. It appears as if they were all promoted and given a job description and that's it. There were no people skills, no communication skills, no appropriate management skills, no unbiased approach to anything. The gossip and jealousy there was ridiculous. I request that an investigation be made in that facility because it is a total mess.  For such a major Cooperation, this kind of treatment is unheard of. It should not be and something should be done about it.

Great Wolf Lodge has many things to offer. It is a place where families come and experience a whole new vacation, the employees become a family, and a place to just have fun. My work day consisted of coming to work, being on stand for a couple of hours, a lunch break, then back on stand. Other positions are different. During the week (not in the summer) it isn't too busy. The only thing I can say, on weekends that's when the job gets real tuff. Everyone comes to the indoor water park, which is where I worked. You would have to look at every inch of the water park to make sure everything was going smoothly. If not we would proceed with the EAP, emergency action plan. The hardest part of the job was making learning to cope with so many people all at once. It was a challenge getting used to thousands of people and watching over their lives. The most enjoyable part about the job is at the end of the day the employees would come together as a whole family and just share everything. Everything we would have to say. Yes I miss my GWL employees so much but its not worth it when my management wants to kick your butt. There's something called a 12 point system, which I 100% agree with. What I don't agree with is the unnecessary reasoning given points towards this 12 point system. The 12 point system is where you get points, like strikes. Once you get to 12 points your are terminated. No I did not get terminated. I quit. I got in a situations where I physically could not come in to work due to being in the emergency room, then put into an actual hospital room for several days. When I returned to work I provided doctors notes and they still gave me 8 points. If I wouldn't have gotten those 8 points I would have still been in the hospital for another week. I disobeyed my doctor, left the hospital, and went to work so wouldn't I lose my job. Another thing with my management is they show favoritism. For instance, say "Larry" over here got a minor illness and came back after several days. He came back and provided doctors notes, they specifically told "Larry" to take a couple more days off. They wouldn't give him any points for the several days that he missed as well as no points for the days they gave him off. How rude is that. It is unreal how something serious, my situation, turned out to be my fault and his turned out to be more fun for Larry days. Its not fair. That went on for several weeks and not just with me, many other employees. I finally got so fed up with their judgment I quit. I wasn't going to get hated on anymore and the one thing I learned from my GWL experience is no matter how hard I try some people just don't care. One of the best things I did learn was how to have a second family. How to cope with people I've never dealt with before. That's my GWL experience. An experience that's suppose to be fun and exciting for both the guests and customers turned out to be job threatening and intimidating.

A typical day would be anywhere from 40-100% occupancy. We knew some days ahead when we would be busy, but there were multiple occasions we were slammed with rooms due to rooms being sold out. 
You stock your cart at the beginning of your shift with cleaning necessities and fresh linen/terry. Around 10:15am-10:30am you knock on the doors to your assigned rooms and greet guests with toiletries. At 11am, guests will beginning exiting their rooms (this is checkout time). You are timed when cleaning rooms. You are given a certain amount of “credits” to complete your assigned rooms (credits are equivalent to minutes; example. 292 credits is 4 hours of work). Your time begins when you get into your first room, and enter the room as “cleaning started”. House Attendants will “strip” rooms before you (Room Attendant) enter. “Stripping” a single room can take anywhere from 3-10 minutes depending on the circumstances of the environment (“stripping” is clearing all trash/garbage/dirty linen/terry out of the room). Cleaning the rooms take anywhere from 30-60 minutes at a time. You are given anywhere from 6-11 rooms, depending on occupancy. 
If you are not finished with your assigned rooms and go past your position’s scheduled end time (5pm or 5:30pm), you may not be paid overtime but must complete your assignments (some days overtime was not accepted). 
 
This job taught me many things, good and bad. Importantly, it taught me my worth. This job is definitely not one I would consider to get “comfortable” at. It’s demanding, the work environment is not ideal for an everyday job in my opinion. A job is a job, yes.. but know your worth. Know what you bring to the table. 

Management could’ve used more work. I loved my managers, but found it incredibly difficult to express concerns or room for improvement when the work environment was busy/stressed. At times, it looked like our managers didn’t want to be there more than their employees didn’t. I feel like management had their favorites and least favorites and it showed. I’m in my twenties, and noticed that sign wasn’t a good factor of this job. 

Outside of management and directory, the actual resort environment was great. Seeing people enjoy the lodge was rewarding after a day of hard work. Human Resources did all they can to team up with the headquarters, and we began being provided lunch from the Lodge’s kitchen. 

The hardest part of the job (Room Attendant) is being patient with your environment. This position can bring an individual an incredible amount of stress if they allow it. It’s physically and mentally demanding. 

The most enjoyable part of the job can be anywhere from the quietness of cleaning in a room alone, to engaging in team efforts with your work department. 

Most of my coworkers are great. We support each other. We help each other if we have any questions. 

However, so many of my coworkers come in sick or call out for no reason. This makes the staffing issue extreme. It puts the burden on the staff that show up, even if they are too sick to work safely. There is a point system. If you call out due to sickness, you may get points added to your record, even if you call out early enough to where you should not get points. It will be 2 points every time that happens and you get fired after 12 points. (Points only erased after a year, no exemption) Due to the nature of the work, you will get sick. You may get punished for being responsible. 

Supervisors seem to complain about the constant call outs, creating a culture of not wanting to call out. If you work long hours in a day (9:45-8:15), you will get little recognition. You may even get an extremely late lunch break (I’ve gotten one at 3:35-4:10pm). People who work those shifts are rarely checked in on. Supervisors just seem to want to have their job be easier, which means they want people to stop calling out. However, people have lives outside of work, so the people who show up to work will get punished. Even when you work an open or close shift, you are still rarely checked in on. It can be fine, but when problems arise, supervisors are somehow hard to find. 

The water park is hot inside, with water provided. Make sure to drink water. People have came close to passing out due to how hot it is. 

Some supervisors will attribute emotional and physical pain of lifeguarding to be “a part of the job” and to “suck it up and play the system”. 

The new EAVS system was supposed to help us with the low staffing we have and keep pools open. However, we still struggle to keep every pool open. We even need to recruit from other departments to work some slides, the front desk, and the towel hut, in order to keep the wave pool and kid pool open. Many coworkers quit due to the new EAVS system, as it added more work with no pay increase. 

Favoritism is a factor of everything. The longer you work there, the more you can see who are the favorites (and it’s not the people who call out the least. It’s kind of random)

Overall, my fellow lifeguards are good. However, the lack of breaks in a hot environment while being forced to work sick due to a lack of staffing makes this place not the best place to work. Find a place that allows employees to have sick days without having to go through huge loop holes. It’s not a bad job, but the management will want you to prioritize them over everything else in your life. 

Working as a snack bar attendant at Great Wolf Lodge in the New England (Fitchburg) location is an absolute disaster. The management is nowhere to be found more than half the time, so asking for breaks during long shifts, finding them when a customer asks for one, or just simply needing to ask a question is impossible. I was in school when I had this job, and from the beginning I made it clear that I would not be able to work more than 20 hours a week due to my busy schedule. No matter how many times I tried to reason with her, the manager responsible for the schedule would almost always schedule me for 39 hours a week (I assume, to keep me part-time without having to give me benefits).

The coworkers are no better. Most of them are very unfriendly and can even act cruel towards new employees. The managers make your coworkers responsible for training you, which they don't do. Every now and then, they'll ring a customer out and ask you to fill up a slurpie, but that's about it. I had to figure out the register completely on my own, and when I couldn't find a product that a customer asked for, coworkers and managers alike ignored my questions no matter how many times I asked. On my very last night, a coworker (who was unaware that I was leaving that night) stole my key from me.

The coworkers in the kitchen are hardly better. Throughout all of my time working there, I only found one person who had been genuinely nice to me, either in the kitchen or out front, while I was working there. They do not put orders together properly or in the right order, and while you scramble to find the food that goes with each order, the customers will scream at you about why it's taking so long.

Many times they would schedule me to work until 9PM-- keeping in mind, the snack bar closes at 7PM and it only takes about an hour to restock and clean the place up. But I would be kept until exactly 10PM on weekdays (The longest they were LEGALLY allowed to keep me there on school nights), and until 11:30 to 12 AM on weekends and days that did not precede a school day. The managers will send you all over the building-- I even had a HOST from the main RESTAURANT in the snack bar with me (all the way across the building) helping at the snack bar. We didn't even need the help that day.

Don't work as a Snack Bar Attendant at Great Wolf Lodge. I don't know if any positions are any better, but don't work this job. You will want to leave immediately.

The work isn't necessarily difficult, it's about what you'd expect at any hotel front desk, but be prepared to always be busy: the lodge is never closed and more times than not it's at max capacity. Guests are probably the roughest point of the job, which is par for the course when working with the public. At least compared to standard retail positions, guests are actually happy to be there; they're on vacation after all. And a majority of people working at the lodge were genuinely happy to be there.

The general work atmosphere has such strong pros and strong cons that it's hard to pin down a single rating. Coworkers are some of the friendliest, most helpful people I've ever met, and we had each other's backs through every thick and thin - whether it was work related or not. This is naturally not a guarantee, but our front desk was so tight knit we actually kind of bought into the idea of being a 'pack family' as we were referred to, at least with one another. Unfortunately, one of the main things we needed to back each other up on was management. Everywhere you go you'll have your fair share of management issues, and we had ours too: late/missing breaks, not being consistently supported with guest issues, favoritism, some lowkey racism mixed in for fun. When management takes a stand for us, it's a huge highpoint. When they don't, the feeling ripples all through the desk.

Overall I felt like I got a lot out of the job: better communication skills, practice with problem solving/deescalation, a solid introduction to sales/upselling (through activity passes and room upgrades), and a realistic representation of the hospitality industry as a whole.

I left due to not feeling safe after reopening in the middle of the Covid 19 pandemic. Corporate put a good amount of safety protocols in place, but almost every rule set in place to keep us safe from guests (and guests from each other) was broken in the two days I worked before leaving. Many of my coworkers also left at the same time for similar reasons. I believe we'd all happily return if possible when things are 'normal' again (or at least the new normal in a post-covid world).

If you can withstand working in an environment where a gas leak and carbon monoxide issues are prevelant, this is the place for you! The laundry room is run like a sweatshop, and if you ask for help like you’re instructed to do “see something, say something” you’re threatened for it.  The laundry supervisor will “reset” the carbon monoxide detector when the alarm goes off and does nightly (ranges  of carbon monoxide levels 74-180ppm’s)  (OSHA SAYS NOTHING ABOVE 50 ppm per 8 hour work shift!) then instructs the workers to “shut all the basement doors so the carbon monoxide won’t trigger the alarms elsewhere, and tells the employees to “get back to work!” Without clearing the room with fresh air! When you get carbon monoxide poisoning while working like I did they refuse to help you or do anything about it,  I had to argue and force the supervisor  to call aquatics and fill out a report. When maintenance finally listened to us about the presser machine and all the issues we’d been having, they discovered a gas leak, instructed the machine to be turned off until the manufacturer could make repairs, because OBVIOUSLY a gas leak on a machine that large could be fatal, did anyone listen?!? NO, machine kept running and two nights in a row began smoking and  filled the 
basement with smoke, setting off an alarm the first night. But when we asked for help the second night (because the new housekeeping manager just ignored it and went back to her office) she became angry and yelled at us “not to make a scene, or trouble” because again safety IS NOT IMPORTANT it’s just become accepted by the employees in the basement that unsafe working conditions are the “norm” and expected by management that this is acceptable. God forbid you ask H.R. for help, the head of H.R. will “cry” and pretend to care but later will have her friend the head of aquatics lie for her about what’s really happening downstairs, no matter how many witnesses there were for each incident, she somehow manages not to talk to or include any of them in her “investigations”. It’s absolutely unacceptable how people are treated here, how unimportant safety really is, especially if English is your second language........people are treated like trash and are nothing more than disposable. Think twice before applying here, it’s truly not worth it!

A typical day at work starts at 8am store doesnt open till 8:30 so before we open we put our money in our register and check our communication log from the night before to see if there is anything we should know for the morning. Then we turn on the lights and walk around the store to check and make sure that all the shirts were folden and straightened properly and fix anything that is out of place or out of the ordinary. On busy days we usually get alot of people in the morning before they go to breakfast and go play in the waterpark. During those rushes we are mainly behind the registers ringing guest up but when we have a moment we get out of the cash wrap and greet guest see if there is anything we can help them with and constantly make sure the store is looking good. Go to our many stock rooms if guest needs some thing that we may not have out. But it really all depends on what department you are working in and what shift that you have.

I have learned quite a bit more than I had planned on when starting at the Great Wolf. I have learn not only what customer service means but also guest and hotel hospitality. I have learned the good qualities from my managers and directors such as how to treat other employees and be diplomatic.

My manager just recently quite but she was one of the best managers that I have had the pleasure to work with along with my director and even managers from other departments and outlets are all fantastic and well manored people. Which you cant find every where.

The associates that I work with all get along and we know how to make our job fun but when it comes time to be serious and get things done we set aside the fun and games and prove how well they all really know their jobs.

The hardest part about my job is trying to please everyone that you come across with an issue whether it be a guest or an employee. The saying is you cant win them all and thats something that is hard to accept.

The most enjoyable part of my job I would have to say is hearing how well the staff is doing from guest. When the guest says how happy and pleasant the staff is to them and to their coworkers. Its the most rewarding thing having some one that basically keeps you employed tells you that your doing a good job.

Overall I enjoyed working for the brand. 
Senior leadership at the lodges themselves is constantly changing and it seems there's a new GM every few months; this makes for a tough work environment and ever-changing expectations.  
Corporate team does a good job keeping property leadership aligned on objectives / goals and works with you to develop programming and initiatives to drive staff performance and the overall guest experience. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to work with my corporate team on creating new trainings, our weekly revenue calls and the annual gatherings we had to strategize. 
Being a "newer/growing company" you are able to try new things a bit more than with a more established brand, this is a plus in the sense that they are willing and able to try/hear ideas if they make sense for the lodge/company.  
It does seem that so long as the property is profitable, corporate is content and doesn't read too much into the satisfaction of the pack/property leadership. (This will likely be highly contested, but is how i  and MANY others felt the majority of the time I worked there). 
The most enjoyable part of my day was getting to interact with our guests and pack and seeing the smiles on the guests face as they enjoyed one of hundreds of things to do on-site. We worked hard daily to exceed guest expectations and had fun while doing it! 
HR was a wonderful partner and was ALWAYS working hard to engage the pack and recognize everyones efforts with events and surprises. Kudos to them on all they do!
Competing priorities between property leadership and corporate goals make life challenging at times, this really depends on the property you work at and whom you work under though. 
Hardest part of my job was dealing with the same recurring guest issues daily (which were out of my control), while no one was ever held accountable and it was negatively impacting the guests.

Corporate is completely out of touch with what happens in the lodges. They are constantly implementing new ideas in the lodges without thinking about how it will impact the teams and HR. When they implement these new ideas, they do it very last minute and hastily making it even worse for people in the lodges. Corporate will then send out an email showing that people are not compliant with this new roll out yet they haven't given any guidance on how it should be done, instead they like to treat each lodge as a blanket that is a one size fits all "solution." The CEO was the founder of Evolution Hospitality and he's trying to turn Great Wolf into Evolution; however, no one at the lodge level is happy with the shift in "culture." Leaders in the West region are sniffing out those who are not looking to comply with the new regime and will get rid of you anyway they can. 
Great Wolf is a great place for someone's first job, where they can learn how not to do things and move on. I would not suggest it for anyone looking to continue on in their career of management, whether it be in hospitality management nor in human resources. 
The pay at Great Wolf is a joke, especially for front line employees. They like to "entice" front line employees with annual raises but it's just $0.25. The company made over $1B in 2023 yet all they can afford to give their employees (that they care SO much about) is a quarter each year they are there. Oh and the benefits? Astronautical pricing for a company this large. They don't care about the employee's well being and have ZERO emphasis on being healthy so the employees aren't and the healthcare premiums are very high. $65+ per PAY CHECK (not per month) for health insurance on their high deductible plan is almost unheard of these days. And it only gets more expensive from there!
And for those reading this in the West Region (WA, CA, TX, CO, or AZ), I'd be careful what you complain about and to who. You cannot trust anyone, especially HR.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Lifeguard 6 salaries reported	$12.73 per hour
Attendant 95 salaries reported	$15.17 per hour
Retail sales associate 1 salary reported	$24.47 per hour
Front desk agent 99 salaries reported	$16.01 per hour
Food service worker 2 salaries reported	$14.07 per hour

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