Wilderness Resort is located on 600 acres in Wisconsin Dells. Featuring indoor and outdoor waterparks, over a dozen attractions, three mega arcades, an 18-hole championship golf course, a spa, numerous onsite dining options, and lodging choices ranging from single rooms to luxurious five-bedroom cabins, Wilderness Resort is America’s largest waterpark resort.
Joe Eck, chief operating officer, joined Wilderness Resorts in 2000 as director of sales and marketing, became general manager in 2009, and then took on his current role in 2019.
Over two decades of growth
Over the years, he has seen the resort grow:
“We have expanded along the way many times, and built a lot of water parks, rooms, and resorts,” he tells blooloop:
“The attraction originally opened in 1998 as a little indoor water with 76 hotel rooms. Today, as we stand, we have over 1200 rooms, four indoor water parks, and four outdoor water parks in Wisconsin, and at our second site in Sierraville, Tennessee, we have another 800-room resort with a huge indoor water park, and two outdoor water parks.”
The slides are from market leaders WhiteWater and ProSlide Technology Inc., both based in Canada.
The USP of Wilderness Resorts
Defining one unique selling point of the Wilderness Resort, Eck says:
“What we do at Wilderness is weatherproof your vacation. We’re a family-oriented resort with multiple food and beverage offers. We have arcades, we have indoor go-karts, we have outdoor go-karts. Also, we have mini golf; we’ve got zip lines. We have all these different options for guests, but I think the one thing that makes us unique is we are able to weatherproof your vacation if it’s rainy outside.
“We have four indoor water parks, and lots of indoor attractions. If it’s super nice out, you can go spend your day outside. If you get too much sun, come back inside. Weather can dictate the success of family vacations, and we’re a one-stop shop where we’re guaranteeing you’re going to have a great time, no matter what the weather is.”
A guest-exclusive experience
The other element that sets Wilderness apart, he explains, is the fact the attraction is guest-exclusive:
“You have to stay at the Wilderness to play at the Wilderness,” he says. “Your water park passes come with your room, and are included in your room rate. When you get here, it’s just you and your guests. Passers-by can’t just buy a ticket to the water parks.
“It cuts down on lines, and we feel it also really sets the value of our rooms at a premium. There’s only going to be so many people here every day because we’re not selling public admission.”
In terms of demographics, 95% of visitation is domestic, from regions within the United States:
“We are definitely a family-based resort. Families with children from ages four to 14 is probably our wheelhouse, but we think we have something for kids of all ages,” he explains:
“We do get international travel from Canada quite often, something probably accounted for by the fact our location is in Wisconsin; Canada is only five or six hours away.”
Attractions at Wilderness Resorts
Outlining the attractions themselves, he says:
“Outside of our four indoor water parks and our four outdoor water parks, which have state-of-the-art water slides, we also have a Take Flight’ simulator, which seats 60 people.”
The flying theatre ride, ‘Take Flight – Wilderness Aerial Adventure Ride’, opened on 2 September 2020, and was built by SimEx-Iwerks Entertainment, an industry leader in immersive cinematic attractions. Unlike its other attractions, Wilderness operates the flying theatre as a stand-alone attraction, and therefore it can be visited by guests who do not stay at the resort.
After purchasing tickets, guests join a queue line that passes a green screen photo booth, where they can have their picture taken. These pictures can be purchased at the end of the experience. The queue line leads to a pre-show, and then on to the main show.
Take Flight consists of 12 5-seat gondolas, which can be boarded on three separate floors, and which are positioned in front of a large dome projection screen. During the ride, the gondolas move forward over the edge of a balcony, freeing them to move during the ride. Christie, the global visual and audio technology company, provided its laser projection technology for the attraction.
Swim, play & eat
“We also have a zip line,” Eck adds:
“We have two miniature golf courses, an indoor go-kart track and an outdoor go-kart track. Plus we have an aerial ropes course over our arcade, and then we have three separate arcades here. We also have an 18-hole championship golf course, and an executive nine-hole golf course.”
In terms of the dining options, he explains:
“We have three onsite restaurants that guests can choose from. There is a fine dining steakhouse, Field’s at the Wilderness, specialising in prime steaks and fresh seafood. Then we have Sarento’s Italian restaurant and pizzeria, and then we have Camp Social, a new-style food hall where we have multiple dining options.”
“Camp Social, a 15,000-foot family-friendly dining experience, pays homage to Americana, and features The Burger Bar, a full-service bar that serves a select burger menu Tacolicious, which serves tacos, nachos, taco bowls – and the famous walking taco; and Coffee Canteen, serving locally-sourced Bella Goose coffee, teas, smoothies, and doughnuts.”
Renovations at Wilderness Resorts
Additionally, Eck says:
“We are re-doing our Wild West indoor water park, and are opening a new restaurant called The Swimming Chicken, which is a chicken-based restaurant, serving chicken tenders, chicken sandwiches, grilled chicken on salads, that type of thing. It will be our newest sit-down restaurant, just off the water park. The concept is awesome: it’s family-oriented, and the name and logo are hilarious.”
The Wild West Waterpark will, once its major renovation is completed, have two incredible new slides, and a new Wild West-themed multi-level play and spray structure, among many other improvements. One of the new slides will be a two-lane duelling tube ride, while the other will be two-lane duelling, head-first mat racer. Both sides will feature eye-popping translucent slide effects as well as multiple ‘rally points’ where riders will be able to see their competition as they dash down the slides.
The resort’s popular Fantastic Voyage and Black Hole slides, currently in the Wild West, will remain.
A hotel refresh
The resort is also undertaking complete room renovations to all of its 446 guest rooms at the Wilderness Hotel. Among the changes, the rooms are getting new paint, carpet, flooring, countertops, furniture, artwork, and televisions. Renovations, which began in April, will be completed in late 2022.
Outlining the resort’s different lodging options, Eck explains:
“We have 446 hotel rooms, which are your standard double suite with a pull-out sofa sleeper. Then we have 88 lodge condos, which sleep up to 14 people; and 30 cabins that can sleep up to 20 people. We have 108 two-and three-bedroom condos that sit on a lake here in the Wisconsin Dells, called Lake Delton, and then we also have 460 condominiums in Glacier Canyon Lodge, which connects to Wilderness Hotel via a skywalk that goes over a canyon.”
Glacier Canyon Lodge is also home to the three-acre Lost World outdoor waterpark, and the Glacier Canyon Conference Centre.
The impact of COVID-19 on Wilderness Resorts
Wilderness Resorts was, like many, hit hard by the unprecedented events of the pandemic:
“There isn’t a playbook on how to go through something like that,” he says:
“We are a business that is open 365 days a year, and we had to shut down for six weeks. It was an adjustment. Obviously, we had to figure out how to come back. Our job is to bring families together; that’s kind of what The Wilderness is: we’re an attraction and a resort. Our job is to bring people together, and all of a sudden we’re reopening post-pandemic at a time when six feet apart is the standard.”
“We used that shutdown time to say, ‘All right, if we come back at X occupancy, how many people does that bring? We need to bring in the outdoor air as much as possible, we need to maintain queue lines that provide space.’
“Also, we needed to change the way we did a lot of our food. We had a buffet restaurant, which had to change. That was why we redid our restaurant, Camp Social, to turn it into a food line that we serve from.”
Adapting to the new normal
“I don’t think we had a QR code anywhere at the Wilderness Resort, pre-pandemic, and now a QR code is a standard for us, in place of all those printed pieces of paper that people used to hand out to each other. Those days are gone.”
Instead, he says:
“We have a wristband that gives access to the water parks: the doors and the lockers, then we utilise a QR code to provide a map of the resort that’ll come up on your phone. It also gives you the menu items in all our restaurants, though we still have paper versions for people who want them. We have, though, become much more electronic-based.”
Future plans
Outlining plans for expansion going forward, he says:
“Our longer-term plans are going to focus on continuing to stay fresh with our existing product. Over the last year, we have been working to make sure everything we have is newly refreshed and up to date. We’ve been open since 1998, so we want to make sure that we show we’ve come along with the times.
“As far as expansion goes, our Tennessee property is where we’ve really been focusing. That’s where we opened our Soaky Mountain outdoor water park three years ago. We are also adding to our indoor water park in Tennessee. There, we are bringing in a new water coaster ride, and then building new units cabins, villas, and condos, similar to Wisconsin.
“Keeping it fresh and exciting is what we do, on a daily basis.”
