Great Wolf Lodge is North America’s largest family of indoor water park resorts with 23 different lodges, offering a diverse array of attractions, entertainment, retail and dining offerings focused on bringing joy to families.

We opened our first resort in Wisconsin Dells in 1997, nearly 30 years ago, and have since brought unforgettable adventures and leisure experiences to millions of families, creating lifelong memories.

Great Wolf Lodge offers a unique holiday and leisure experience that we are excited to bring to families across the UK. Each of our resorts features an expansive indoor water park, an attraction-filled entertainment centre, delicious eateries, family-friendly entertainment and spacious guest suites all under one roof.

Designed as a lodge retreat set in the woods, the architecture of the resort presents a warm and welcoming environment.

The resort features three interconnected buildings that include the hotel, guest rooms, family entertainment centre (that we call our Adventure Park) and the indoor water park. The tallest element of our resort will be the seven storey building (28 metre high) guest rooms at the centre of the site

Our iconic indoor water park and slides will be located on the southern part of our site. A new woodland will provide natural screening, boosting biodiversity and setting the resort within a landscaped context.

In addition to families staying overnight, we expect to attract day visitors for our Adventure Park and Water Park as well as delegates to our conference centre.

All traffic will enter our resort via the A619. Existing public rights of way will be preserved and enhanced, with new footways added along Worksop Road.

An on-site car park will offer 900 spaces, including over 100 electric vehicle (EV) charging stations.

On arrival, guests will enter via our Grand Lobby, the living room of our lodge where guests can enjoy complimentary entertainment activities including our magical night-time spectacular – the Legend of Luna.

Our resort will have an internal floor area of 50,000 m² with an indoor Water Park, Adventure Park, retail and dining outlets, and our Northwoods-inspired guest rooms.

As with all our resorts, the expansive indoor Water Park will be the centrepiece attraction. From kid friendly splash pads to multi-family member raft adventures, the Water Park will contain a whole host of pools, slides and rides for the entire family to enjoy.

Outside the Water Park, there will be a diverse range of attractions such as a rope course, mini bowling and mini golf – as well as a games arcade in our family entertainment centre.

Visitor day passes for local families will be made available after we have comfortably accommodated resort guests.

In total we expect to offer approximately 520 family-friendly guest rooms, with accommodation types that can sleep families of four to six, all the way up to larger suites that can sleep up to 10-12 individuals. It’s perfect for multi-generational and multi-family getaways.

We know traffic considerations on the A619 are very important to all those who live in and around our proposed site.

We’ve conducted a number of traffic surveys to ensure future traffic flows for our resort are taken into account in local authority planning for busier junctions such as the Treble Bob Roundabout. We are also exploring the possibility of a shuttle bus to nearby train stations to encourage guests to arrive via this route.

The entrance to the resort will be on the A619. We expect most of the traffic to approach from the west travelling from the M1, with the remainder travelling from the east.

Unlike other resorts we do not have set change-over days reducing peak flow traffic. Saturdays when commuter traffic is lowest are likely to be our busiest day with around a third more traffic.

We have shared proposals with Derbyshire County Council to boost the safety of both road and pedestrian traffic around our entrance.

Our proposal is a filter lane protected by chevrons for vehicles coming from the west turning right into our resort. New footways will be provided adjacent to the A619 to provide pedestrian connections to the Wildes Hotel and homes to the west and Whitwell to the east.

Our proposed designs are based around an assumption that the majority of the guests for approximately 520 guest rooms will travel to and from our resort by car. This reflects the fact that a large proportion of our guests will be travelling with young children and luggage for an overnight stay with us.

We have ensured sufficient parking for all our guests, workforce, and for day visitors to our conference centre and resort. We have allowed for 900 parking spaces and over 100 EV charging stations. 50 parking spaces will be accessible for those with disabilities.

We have shared our proposals to widen the road and footways with Derbyshire County Council, to help create a pleasant route for guests and local people to reach the resort on foot. In addition to onsite accommodation for colleagues, we are expecting to run a shuttle bus for workers and visitors to complement onsite parking.

We will hold all of our construction contractors to a clear construction traffic management plan, to minimise traffic at peak commuting times and encourage construction traffic (particularly heavy good vehicles) to travel to and from the west.

Having carried out new traffic surveys we have modelled the flow of traffic to and from our site. During the week we expect the largest number of vehicles arriving and departing our resort will take place late morning through midday each day, accounting for approximately one in five visitors to our resort.

The majority of traffic is expected to come from the M1 to the West, and we have modelled what this will mean at key junctions such as the Treble Bob Roundabout. We typically expect only two additional cars per minute during the peak hours.

We are bringing the spirit of the Great Northwoods to Derbyshire, blending our iconic rustic lodge architecture with materials that reflect the characteristics this region is known for.

The tallest elements of our resort will be the guest room wings, which will stand seven storeys tall with an elegant pitched roof to reflect its visibility in the local landscape.

The conference centre and indoor water park take their inspiration from agricultural barns, featuring facades with a timber panelled appearance.

Existing hedgerows will be supplemented with additional planting that reflects local ecosystems to embed the site into existing landscape, with waterslides located to the south-west rear of the site with views filtered by newly planted woods which will enhance the biodiversity of the area.

We are committed to responding sensitively to the character of the landscape and ensuring that our proposals deliver long-term ecological benefits.

The design approach minimises impacts on existing boundary planting and creates opportunities for new habitat creation through the introduction of a new publicly accessible park and additional woodland planting.

The new woodland planting will enhance the natural surroundings, with wildflower grasslands to enhance ecological diversity, and new wetland features included in our landscaping. Together, these measures will balance habitat creation with guest experience.

We will restore and reconnect existing hedgerows along the site boundaries where possible, addressing gaps and degraded sections with native species informed by local plant species. These enhancements will improve habitat connectivity for all the species we’ve identified through our wildlife surveys.

The site lies within a landscape including Hickin Wood and Whitwell Wood. By creating new green corridors and woodland planting, the scheme will help strengthen connections between these ecological assets. The result will be a resilient, multifunctional green infrastructure that blends the development into its setting and provides new, valuable habitats for local wildlife.

At our previous event, some residents shared their stories of past flooding at our site, and our plans for water, sewerage and drainage reflect this.

We plan to capture water runoff from our roofs and car park and funnel into specially designed rain gardens. These will bring biodiverse flora, fauna and greenery to our site and improve the quality of water that is discharged from the site.

We have been in touch with Severn Trent and have plans for a separate wastewater system to minimise impact on local residents and businesses. We plan to reduce our water consumption by utilising low flow/consumption water fittings and appliances throughout the development and an extensive rainwater harvesting system will be used across our resort for toilet flushing.

Our star attraction is our fully enclosed water park which employs a specialised filtration system to use approximately 70 percent less water than traditional filters. Our four pools and water park use about the same amount as one Olympic sized swimming pool. Since our waterpark is indoors, we lose very little water to evaporation, and it is constantly recycled using our high-tech filtration and water treatment system.

Great Wolf Lodge is committed to being a good steward for the environment and since 2007, we’ve run a brand-wide initiative called Project Green Wolf. This helps us to operate in ways that are conscious of the planet, follow sustainable building practices and allow us to run our resorts in an environmentally responsible way.

We incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles into our business operations and are committed to lessening our environmental impact through improving our efficient use of water, energy and producing less waste.

We have retained a specialist consultancy to help us develop a tailored Sustainability Strategy for Great Wolf Lodge Derbyshire which follows a whole-system approach to design, construction and operational stages of the development lifecycle.

A key aim is to reduce environmental impact caused by the development by reducing the use of materials, energy and water. The development will be designed and constructed with circular economy principles in mind to reduce the carbon footprint of materials at every stage.

Our Pack Members enjoy flexible schedules designed to fit their lives, while they bring smiles to our guests.

Careers at Great Wolf Lodge are all about creating a fun, immersive environment for our guests to enjoy.