Two weekends ago Heather and I took a mini-vacation to Wisconsin Dells. I found a deal on TravelZoo, and if you haven’t subscribed to their newsletter, I urge you to, their weekly top 20 deals are phenomenal. The deal was two nights in a suite, admission to the indoor water park, food and drinks include for $200 total. With tax and tips it ended up costing us $250 for the following:

  • Two nights in a suite
  • 5 meals + snacks: 4 times at the buffet
  • Admission to the water park
  • All the booze we (read: she) could handle

Not bad, considering that two nights in a hotel usually cost $200. It was at Chula Vista which is a relatively new resort that is kind of away from downtown Dells. We went to Ho-Chunk casino the first night we were there. It wasn’t bad. I resisted the urge to play Craps and just kept Heather company while she gave me $20 to play penny slots.

We spent all day Monday at the water park. I had never been to an indoor water park before so I didn’t know what to expect. It obviously isn’t spread out much since it’s indoors and therefore you have to walk pretty much straight up to get to the slides. That kind of annoying for someone of my stature. There were some logistical things I thought they did wrong that kind of made it a pain to start using slides of different types. There were basically 5 different slides to ride and three of them you could go down with another person. Heather and I definitely had more fun going down together but I wasn’t that into the water slides, just as Heather predicted. The good news is that because it was a Monday it was not crowded and we never had to wait in line to go down. It was still fun though.

If you have never been to Wisconsin Dells, it’s the so called “waterpark capital of the world.” The town basically consists of waterparks, amusement parks, candy shops, hotels, eateries and touristy gift shops. We decided to do the Wisconsin Ducks boat tour. The Ducks are these amphibous vehicles that have been recomissioned. They were used in WWII to deliver troops from island to island. This company owns like 50 of them and gives scenic tours of the Dells. I had seen them on the Travel channel and our friends had gone and told us to go. It was like $25 a person and my biggest beef was that there wasn’t enough like interesting information. The guy giving the tour was a college kid who made a lot of silly jokes and pointed out weird looking rocks and trees and made up stories about them. I figured there was plenty of interesting things he could have told us, oh well I guess.

It was a nice vacation and a good deal. I would go back. Chula Vista is worth it if you can get a deal.