bring the pack

Wildly popular Great Wolf Lodge breaks ground on massive Houston-area indoor water park resort

Great Wolf Lodge is coming to Webster.

Photos courtesy of Great Wolf Lodge

Local families who’ve traveled north on I-45 to take in the joys of Great Wolf Lodge near Dallas are now in luck. The wildly popular, nationwide family resort and indoor park will break ground in nearby Webster, Texas on Thursday, September 22, for what will be its second Texas location.

Great Wolf Lodge Gulf Coast Texas will boast 532 rooms and — importantly for kids and families — a 95,000-square-foot indoor water park and a 58,000-square-foot family entertainment center known as the Great Wolf Adventure Park. The 27-acre destination, located east of the Gulf Freeway near the Flyway at Clear Creek development, is slated to open in mid-to-late 2024, according to Great Wolf Resorts announcement.

“With millions of families visiting our resort in Grapevine, we know Texas families love the Great Wolf Lodge experience and we’re excited to introduce our second resort to the Lone Star State,” said Murray Hennessy, CEO of Great Wolf Resorts. “A hallmark of Great Wolf Lodge is that we help families strengthen their pack by offering a fun-filled getaway that is close, convenient and carefree, and with this new resort, we will be able to better serve families in the Houston area and southeastern portions of the state.”

Accommodating year-round visitors, Great Wolf Lodge Gulf Coast Texas will feature myriad attractions and amenities for all ages, including:

● An expansive, 95,000-square-foot indoor waterpark, heated to a comfortable 84 degrees, featuring a variety of body slides, tube slides, raft rides, activity pools and splash areas for every member of the family – from toddlers and teens to parents and grandparents.

● The aforementioned, 58,000-square-foot family entertainment center known as the Great Wolf Adventure Park. This center will offer a variety of family-friendly attractions, including MagiQuest – Great Wolf Lodge’s exclusive live action-adventure game where players use interactive magic wands to battle goblins and dragons.

● A collection of complimentary family events and activities including Yoga Tails, a morning exercise program that combines tales from the creatures found in the Spirit Water Forest with yoga poses, and evening events such as Great Wolf Lodge’s signature Hustle & Howl dance party and Story Time event.

● Several dining options that will appeal to a variety of culinary styles ranging from pizza and burgers to upscale dining and premium ice cream treats at Wood’s End Creamery.

● Family-friendly suites in a variety of categories and styles including Great Wolf-themed suites with separate sleeping quarters for kids designed as either a log cabin or wolf den and outfitted with bunk beds and Great Wolf character theming. The resort will also feature suites with multiple bedrooms for large families or multi-generational groups.

Area businesses can make use of the destination’s more than 11,000 square feet of flexible conference space with breakout rooms, built-in A/V technology, customizable catering options, and a team of dedicated industry professionals to serve visiting conferences and events.

Aside from a major tourist attraction, Great Wolf Lodge’s new outpost will be a boon for area employment. An estimated 600 construction and trade workers will be on-site each day during the peak of construction. And the resort will fill approximately 500 full and part-time jobs to prepare for the grand opening, with positions including senior management, engineering, IT professionals, lifeguards, guest service agents, housekeepers, and more.

In an effort to seamlessly integrate with the community, the new resort will operate with environmentally friendly practices, including energy usage and water consumption.

Notably, the resort’s location in Webster makes the perfect addition to a weekend jaunt to nearby NASA/Johnson Space Center/Space Center Houston — as well as Galveston.

“Tourism is one of Webster’s top economic drivers,” said Donna Rogers, mayor of the City of Webster, in a statement, “and Great Wolf Lodge is a force multiplier that will attract visitors from a super regional and global market.”

Great Wolf Resorts currently operate across the U.S. and in Canada. The company plans more growth: a Great Wolf Lodge in Perryville, Maryland is scheduled to open summer of 2023 and a location in Naples, Florida just broke ground.

Fans of the howlingly fun resort can stay up to date on developments on the company’s social media channels and on www.greatwolf.com.

welcome home, wes

Wes Anderson's Houston homecoming supports historic theater restoration

A fancy, eccentric-looking crowd showed up for the Wes Anderson Homecoming Soirée, held on Friday, July 17, at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts’s Zilkha Hall.

Fans of the Houston-born, Oscar-winning auteur paid hundreds of dollars to attend this benefit event. Guys dressed up like characters from The Royal Tenenbaums. Others wore red skull caps and low-top Adidas, like the characters from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Some people working the event even wore “Lobby Boy” hats, looking like the bellboy character from The Grand Budapest Hotel.

The people gathered for two reasons: 1) to get a chance to see Anderson in person; and 2) to raise money to renovate and restore the Garden Oaks Theater, a project spearheaded by local nonprofit Arthouse Houston. Top-tier “Founders Experience” ticketholders got a chance to meet Anderson onstage for pics. The St. John's School alum also received a proclamation from Mayor John Whitmire declaring it “Wes Anderson Day.”

After that, he and actor/fellow SJS alum Michael Maggart (who has appeared in several Anderson films) held a half-hour discussion where they reminisced about making Rushmore here in Houston, Anderson’s days working at the Bookstop on W. Alabama (now a Trader Joe’s), and how he and frequent collaborator Owen Wilson used to sneak into the River Oaks Theatre. (It involved pretending to lose a pair of glasses.)

Of course, the conversation shifted to Anderson coming back home to support the Garden Oaks project. “I always say you can't build an old building,” Anderson said. “First of all, I mean, a beautiful old place has history, and has people's experiences tied into it, and it has stories involved in it. And I think an old cinema — these things are kind of endangered all over the world, and it's not just an architectural thing. It's not even just a community thing. It's a sort of delivery system for something that’s, to me, deeply important to our country.

“It’s one thing we can access these things on all these devices,” he continued. “It's a different thing when you go to a place that's designed to help you share the experience of a movie together. It's such a powerful art form. And, anyway, for me, it's worth making a bit of an effort to try to save a place like the Garden Oaks.”

After the convo, he introduced the quintet of films he curated for the event. (Unfortunately the DCP file for his 2007 short Hotel Chevalier had some technical difficulties and was cut short.) “We wanted to do a screening here, and I don't have a new movie to show,” he said. “I don't have something hot off the presses. So, I thought I'd put together a little something that just was different from what anybody else will see. So it's a sort of mixture… This is just for Texas, this little collection.”

He eventually left the stage, leaving Arthouse Houston co-founder/director Maureen McNamara and Houston Public Media host Ernie Manouse to auction off perks & gifts and encourage the audience in helping revive another legendary, local movie palace. Among other items, attendees bid for treasures such as a special John Waters backstage VIP experience at his upcoming Christmas Show, dinner with John Cameron Mitchell, and a rare set of photo portraits of a young Anderson and friends, circa Bottle Rocket. Others paid $5,000 for select seats in the future theater and $5,000 to restore one foot of the venue's neon sign.

Photo by Alan Nguyen

Mayor John Whitmire declared Friday as Wes Anderson day in the director's honor.

So far, the effort has raised approximately $1.3 million of the $4 million required to begin the renovation project. The organization needs to raise $4 million by July 30 for the project to move forward. Those interested in securing naming rights will find more information here.

“River Oaks has 245 seats,” McNamara informed the crowd. “The Garden has over 700, and that is a place that we don't have in Houston. We have a need for that, for premieres, for performances in your life, for music, for a dynamic learning & exhibition space… So, we're building new on the shoulders of our history. I hope you guys will join us, and we need people to join us in a big way today.”

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