Great Wolf Resort has added a limited day pass program.
That means when the 500-room Great Wolf indoor waterpark resort in Manteca opens in mid-2020 you can access the waterpark without booking a room.
A quick check of the Great Wolf location in Anaheim showed that — depending upon the day and hotel bookings — the per person price for a day pass ranges from $80 to $150 per person during July dates. The lowest price in August was found on the 28th, which is a Thursday. The cost that day is $55. Day passes are available online roughly two months out. If the hotel is booked solid or near that point, no passes are made available.
Prices for day passes just like rooms and suites, varies from market to market.
The odds are this will have people who have been slamming Great Wolf for not allowing “locals” to access the waterpark without booking a room to — how should we put it — be howling mad.
They’re likely to point to Raging Waters at Cal Expo in Sacramento where a day pass without the family of four discounts on July 7 are available for just over $30 compared to $150 that day at the Great Wolf in Anaheim.
But there are huge differences between an outdoor water park and what Great Wolf is offering. First of all it is indoors, the attractions are much different and the temperature is kept at 84 degrees.
It is also a $180 million resort that offers a resort experience which is why they will provide 500 year-round jobs in Manteca — half of which will be fulltime — plus generate $2 million plus in room taxes to help pay for municipal services such as police and fire. Raging Waters doesn’t come anywhere close to having that kind of a positive economic impact on Sacramento.
The indoor waterpark resort model wouldn’t work if you could dump off your kids and leave them for the day as you could at Manteca Waterslides. It would devalue the resort experience that people are paying for that supports jobs and has people who are not from Manteca paying for the dollar equivalent of 14 police officers a year if all of the Great Wolf room tax collected was used by the city for that purpose. And in doing so it would make the business plan dicey if not impossible to succeed.
Of course, none of that will matter to people irked that they won’t be able to drop by the waterpark for $12.99 a day.
The logic is akin to saying the city shouldn’t allow fine dining restaurants that charges $50 per person for a meal to locate in Manteca because they are priced higher than McDonald’s or Applebee’s. Basically you get what you pay for.
Those distractors argue on social media the city should have turned down 500 jobs because municipal leaders brought a waterpark to town that was as inexpensive as they remember Manteca Waterslides as being.
It is an insane argument given the $180 million private sector investment but rest assured it will be made.
That said a family of five could go get day passes at the Great Wolf Anaheim for $55 a person on Wednesday, Aug. 28. That is $275. But that same family could book the least expensive suite still available for $309. While that comes to $62.50 a person, it is actually $31.25 per person per day to use the water park. That’s because a one night’s stay at the hotel room comes with two days of access to the water park. Guests that use the water park the second day can store their luggage at a secure location in the hotel after the check out of their room.
The day pass program includes free life jackets and free passes for those 2 and under. Towels are available for purchase or you can bring your own. Lockers are also available on a first-come, first-served basis. No outside food or drinks are allowed.
Day passes can be purchased online or via a toll free number. On the day of your visit you need to bring a valid driver’s license or customer issued ID as well as the credit card used to complete the transaction. Water park day passes are non-refundable and all sales are final.
Rumors rife on social
media regarding PG&E
gutting off electricity
Facebook was abuzz Friday with local people posting that PG&E had issued an advisory they were cutting power to Manteca within several hours for two to five days due to severe wildfire conditions.
It was a rumor.
PG&E is very good at alerting people of pending outages as long as they have your correct contact information. In the past three years I’ve received four for my home that alerted me that either they were turning the power off the next day to do work or that an incident had knocked power out with an advisory of how long it might be before it is turned back on.
If you received a postcard from PG&E regarding contact information about such alerts you are among 240,000 customers they don’t know how to get ahold of as you haven’t yet provided them with the necessary information.
Better yet, if you have a smartphone or cellphone that allows texting and you have your home phone or email address as your contact, switch it to the smartphone or cellphone.
For customers who have not yet confirmed or updated their contact information, PG&E strongly encourages everyone to do so by visiting www.pge.com/mywildfirealerts or by calling the PG&E contact center at 1-866-743-6589.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
