lifeguard

line cook

security guard

guest service agent

dishwasher

Great Wolf Lodge

I am a recent at GWL and I can say with 100% honesty it is a tough place to work at but the pros outweigh the cons. 

- you can pick up a lot of shifts and managers will call you if youre willing to take hours and be flexible

- I was trained by two really amazing people who have a lot of joy and passion for their jobs and their work ethic has rubbed off on me so I try to emulate them every shift I work

- A lot of the people you work with are amazing people and you should get to know them and you can make a lot of new friends

- Supervisors are understanding if youre going through a hard time personally, are feeling sick or need help 

- theres always someone there who can help you learn something on the job or if you know some parts theyll give you a refresher on the rest

- you get discounts on coffee, food, rooms, various discounted tickets for events, and clothing

- GWL is always hosting lunches or parties for various charities and give back in the community (the food is always good too)

 - you can get day passes to the waterpark PLUS 
2 hour arcade playing passes FOR FREE!!! 
You just have to sign up in HR 
AGAIN ITS FREE you can bring 3 people with you or your family and ITS SO MUCH FUN!!!!

- The uniform isnt bad to wear and you can alter the shirt to fit you best

- There is a very good training system in place so you can learn lots of different stations quickly and still feel confident in knowing what youre doing 

- Although there are high service standards it is to be expected when youre in the tourist industry and working in a resort where there is such a high volume of people visiting everyday so be prepared to work when you arrive and wear comfortable shoes! 
Thats a must. 

- Many people work for minimim wage but the company rewards hard workers well

Working at great wolf lodge was pretty absurd. You would get called off of your shift 1 hour before the shift (which sucks if you live further away because you're already ready to go and then they call you off). There is absolutely no guarentee about the hours they are going to give you because half of your shifts get called off anyways. It looks like you're getting hours, then they take them all away. 

Management is a joke. They lie and pick favorites. You'd think that managers of such a large company would realize that people sucking up to them and buying them gifts and socializing with them doesn't mean that they are productive workers. Worked with some of the laziest people I have ever met. Picked up their slack and they got all the credit of course. 

Employees in this department are extremely fake. They make little cliques with each other and then talk to people to get information from them, and then talk about them behind their backs. Super two-faced. There could be bullying in the work place and management would do nothing about it. Ridiculous. 

The mascot costumes were extremely unsanitary and unsafe. Simply spraying the costume after use is probably not disinfecting it at all. Makes sense why peoples faces would break out. Employees would let children climb on people in the costumes and people are required to stand in these costumes for long periods of time. Not the best idea for someones health, especially when they are forced to be outside in the summer in them. 

It makes a good first job for the first few months, and then you realized how ridiculous everything about it is. It might look good on a resume but the negative effects that this job had on me (like going home from work crying after more than half of my shifts) is not what a job should be like.

The world culture at Great Wolf is an extremely positive workspace, everyone is friendly and professional all the time and the people you work with are very helpful and collaborative when it's needed. This is a doubled edged sword. The workplace is OVERLY positive, to a toxic degree. Criticism and change are very hard to communicate properly and are always taken as offense, the rules in terms of how you conduct yourself are extremely tight and strict, where you aren't even allowed to have your phone on your person, even if you don't use it. The supervisors are also an insular, self serving group who will pass blame down the ladder, and defend themselves and eachother to a fault. The work itself isn't too bad, if you are able to work under a strict time crunch. All of your work MUST be done by a certain time of day, and you have to maintain pace with the rest of your team, which can be very difficult, there is little to no opportunity to catch your breath at any point during the day. The pay is good on paper, but bad in practice. You're paid $18 per hour which is very good, but you only start at 10 in the morning, already losing 5 hours a week, and you are given a mandatory half and hour break every day, which is taken off of your pay automatically, but you will often end up being forced to skip your break to be able to complete your work in time and not get written up (most housekeepers skip their breaks every day). At the end of the week, if you work full hours you're paid for 32 hours. So the pay is deceptive. Yes it's $18 an hour, but you're not getting 40 hours without working 6-7 days a week

I worked there for just under 3 years in Guest Services and I can honestly say I hated at least 2 of them. Everything was great in the beginning. Everyone was super welcoming and friendly. They really try to sell you on the idea that they care about their employees which is a load of bull. The management really plays favorites, and if they don't like you they make sure you know it. They will lie right to your face, and you have ZERO job security there. I'm not sure if it's the same with all departments but in that particular department the staff was DISGUSTINGLY underpaid for the amount of work that was expected. They have implemented a new raise policy, but they make it near impossible to qualify for it. And if you do expect to be our the door because they clearly don't want to pay their staff anymore than they have to. About a month or so after I received my raise I was let go of due to "incompetence". After 3 years I was no longer competant enough to do my job? Riiiiiiight. Not to mention you can kiss any sort of a social life goodbye once you sign your life away to them. You will eat, sleep and breathe this place. It's funny their motto is "we make time for your family", except for their employees families, clearly. And expect to be HOUNDED to pick up shifts om your days off, and if you don't then be prepared to be reemed out for it. Also, forget about asking for time off cause you'll almost never get it. Even if you're part time you're treated like a full time worker, but you know, minus the decent pay and benefits. I'm not sure if all locations are like this, but I would tell anyone to STEER CLEAR OF THIS PLACE AT ALL COSTS.

Long time employee - can say i enjoyed my time working here for the most part but its nothing more then a stop gap job. 

i enjoyed the people and the work. always busy. your co-workers could usually relate to you and were mostly relaxed and easy going. most days went by fast - minus the slow seasons.

because i worked here for a while, i thought i could advance or have some sort of hope but i never sniffed that opportunity or i was mostly denied for reasons that i dont know. they play favorties here, big time. and its painfully obvious too. its very easy to go unnoticed or to get treated a certain way. 

i would imagine upper management is like a boot camp. the way i was talked to sometimes by my soups or dep. manager was uncalled for. could be a slow day and i would get talked to like im a git. if big boss was having a bad day then you would know about it through who you would report to. the hotel management needs a serious overhaul because you can feel how incredibly stressed out staff can get over meeting some nonsense goals. lots of people who work there are pen and paper but not practical and they dont care to listen to you because youre below them. some of the managers dont even know the job. im not kidding. 

for anyone wanting to take this job seriously then be aware of these things but if you keep quiet and work hard , then its a good stop gap job; until you can find something that pays considerably better. 

I moved here, after being a guest at this place 8 times in less than that many years so I was grateful and excited to work here.

I worked Retail, and while I enjoyed the guest experience,  loved doing what I did, whether it was stuffing bears, filling stations but it was so disappointing that it is based on hierarchy not experience or the fact that you are better at customer service than those who are there from the time it opened based on that they have job security and you don't.

Breaks start the minute you leave your register, go through the busy lobby and down three flights of stairs into a dark damp basement to eat.  Again disappointed to find that the food in the vending sounds good because it's lodge food but it is not maintained proper at all. You barely get a break before you have to go back.

The other problem I had was being told false information, if I was told I would be working every night and every weekend  compared to being told by HR, hired days and a couple of nights would of been one thing but I went here based on HR.

I loved this place as a guest, but as an employee, knowing what they have us pay as a guest, I expect the GM to treat all staff proper.

My final straw was, I was the only one with young kids on Christmas Morning, a lady from MagiQuest said she would work my shift to spend the time with my family so it wouldn't be necessary for me to go in. I was so grateful till I was told by the one sub Manager.  no, I need to take my turn.

How a family place can not treat their employees family like a guest is meaning you are just a number, replaceable.

Great Wolf Lodge is a fine place to work for, if you have really low expectations. If you work in Guest Services be prepared to be treated like a dog by guests and management, who rarely step in to de-escalate situations with guests. Yes, they do give you watermark passes and discounted rates, but if you do have a family there is almost NO WAY to provide for them on the wage that is received in guest services, so hopefully you have a partner that has a better paying job with benefits. Don’t expect to actually be “full time” either if they say that you will be. You may be one of the “lucky ones” who get 40+ hours a week and they do not care about your well being enough to give you benefits. For the majority of this department, hours can be cut without notice and most people are stuck working 5-6 days a week and only having 4-6 hour long shifts. If you are young and trying to find a real job or career to grow into, seriously look somewhere else. Management is decent on the departmental level, but on the company level they are not equipped. Human Resources needs to find an entire new staff as well but the witch in charge would not let that happen, even though she is clearly out of touch with standard HR practices for 2021 (speaking as someone who worked up until the pandemic). Literally just don’t work in Guest Services unless you want a high stress, low reward, low paying part time job.  

Overall The job itself was great, loved most of my coworkers, very kind work environment but absolutely terrible management! 
Job starts at 10 and finished for 5 but 
They push you to be done by 4. 
Rooms go on que for guest as early as 10:30am so you don’t ever really have time to take your lunch break but the dock you for it regardless. 
They fired me when summer was over and they needed to cut staff but said it was because I was not fast enough for them after they assigned me an extremely difficult room I have never done before and it was completely trashed. 
They set me up to fire me! 
They love hiring people who have never done housekeeping before give them 3 days training and send them on their own. 
They put you down if you take longer than usual in a room due to the extent of the mess, they do not care how messy a room is, they only care that you finish on time! 
They expect a 5 star clean as fast as possible and bribe employees with 15 minute time cards so they will skip their lunch and finish early. 
I was wrongly fired from this company on the spot just for not being able to finish by four o’clock one day out of the month. 
After devoting myself each day for the entire summer, gave my work my all, and was never appreciated for it! 

I strongly suggest not working for this company as they are heartless and take advantage of their employees.

I read the review before I applied for the job I did. And I wish I took the truth from what they said.  I had been a guest numerous times I had a huge passion for the place. I was ideal to be working there as being a guest I know how to treat others.

This place runs on seniority and not job performance. Typical retail environment where people are nice to your face *those that even bother to acknowledge you* and talk behind your back.  Preference is of course given to their friends they socialize with after work.

This job in itself was easy for me, great to talk to the guests, given responsibility right away which was great but when you are told you will be working a couple days, and a couple of evenings, and occasional  and that in turn actually means you will be working every night, and every weekend. And told to suck it up it is what it is, well for a minimum wage job not worth the perks of a water park pass when its not busy and the discounts. Not even for me.

 Told to put the lodge first above my family and I find that ironic bc it is a family place, and yet they treat their employees poorly. Would not work there, and will not stay there. I can now understand when I would visit the place why people looked so miserable.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Lifeguard 6 salaries reported	$19.35 per hour
Line cook 4 salaries reported	$19.38 per hour
Security guard 3 salaries reported	$19.00 per hour
Guest service agent 1 salary reported	$18.60 per hour
Dishwasher 4 salaries reported	$19.00 per hour

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