I brought my family to Great Wolf Lodge and my 4 kids liked it more than trips to Disney. I loved that it cost far less, too.

• Great Wolf Lodge is a family-friendly resort with 20 US locations that all have indoor water parks.

• While my family typically vacations at Disney, we decided to try a Great Wolf in North Carolina.

• It was half the price of Disney and my kids liked the water park and interactive games more.

My family loves Walt Disney World but chose to stay at a Great Wolf Lodge resort this summer because it was half the price. It was just as memorable and included a huge suite and tons of activities.

My family loves visiting Walt Disney World and we try to travel to the Florida theme park as often as our schedule and budget allows.

We last visited Disney World in February and wanted to return again this summer, however opted instead try a Great Wolf Lodge resort in North Carolina when we saw that a Disney trip would cost more than twice the price.

A stay at Great Wolf Lodge was not only less expensive, but included a spacious room, lots of fun activities, and gave our kids the same feeling of escaping to another place, just like a Disney vacation. My kids loved how much the lodge had to offer and by the time our stay was over, they said they liked it more than our Disney trips.

Here's how our stay went.

Unlike Disney, Great Wolf Lodge has 20 locations across the country, all of which are located near major landmarks or cities.

A major advantage that Great Wolf Lodge has over Disney is that they don't have only have two US locations. Rather, Great Wolf's website shows that they have 20 lodge locations across the country, all of which come with indoor water parks, and are located near major landmarks or cities with a lot to offer.

My family picked the lodge in North Carolina, however, because we were excited to explore the surrounding including popular beach cities like Myrtle Beach and Hilton Head, along with historically significant places like Charleston, South Carolina; and Savannah, Georgia.

We also added stops and a couple night's stay at boutique hotels in these cities for a few days following our time at Great Wolf, before driving back up to Charlotte, North Carolina, to fly home to Utah.

Doing so allowed me to expose my kids to other beautiful parts of the country beyond Florida, which is one of the things I don't love about visiting Disney so often, where I feel like our options are more limited.

In the future, I hope to visit additional Great Wolf Lodge resort locations near other landmarks and popular destinations.

During the booking process, it was immediately clear that a Disney vacation would cost more than double the price of Great Wolf Lodge.

The cost advantage of Great Wolf over Disney is hard to ignore. I booked a trip for my family of six to Great Wolf Lodge for two nights and three days and the total cost for our room $1,323.74, which also included access to the resort's water park for all three days and loads of activities.

We also paid an additional $319.96 for our kids to get Wolf Passes to participate in additional games.

In comparison, the price for those same two nights and three days at Disney World at one of their cheapest resorts, Disney's Art of Animation, would have cost us $4,431.02 for all six of us for lodging and theme park tickets.

If we had chosen a higher-tier resort, like Disney's Contemporary Resort, we would have paid $6,026.49, according to my research.

We were impressed with the resort from the moment we arrived and stepped into the lobby.

The first thing I noticed as we pulled up to the resort in Charlotte, North Carolina, was how big it was.

The resort is comprised of 402 guest rooms spread throughout multiple buildings, in addition to another building housing an 80,000-square-foot water park adjacent to a massive lodge and lobby area. My 6-year-old daughter thought it felt like a city, and I agreed. The hotel was so large, that we couldn't see from one end of the sprawling resort to the other.

Like Disney World Resort hotels, Great Wolf made my family immediately feel like we'd escaped life as we knew it and been transported to a fantastical new place. But instead of being surrounded by Disney sculptures and animated movie memorabilia, we were deep in a forest surrounded by leafy trees, starry nights, woodland creatures, and fairies.

Upon entering the lobby and reservations desk area, we were greeted by a costumed character named Wiley the Wolf and snapped a photo together. While I checked in, my children ran to a nearby stage where employees and a cast of woodland creatures were singing songs and telling stories in what I later learned is called, "The Great Clock Tower Show."

I booked a hotel suite that was not only cheaper than any room I've stayed in at Disney, but much larger, too.

We booked a premium room called a Deluxe Wolf Den Suite. It was huge and included 765 square feet to comfortably fit my family of six in one room.

It came with two full bathrooms with a tub in each, a kitchenette, two private balconies, two flat screen TVs, two bedrooms, and a large living area. There were three queen beds, two full-size sleeper sofas, and a cave-themed sleeping area with bunk beds and an adjacent smaller bed within the same aptly-named wolf den.

The woodland theme continued throughout the room, including paw prints on the shower curtains, a campfire mural, rustic furniture, and log pillars and beams.

The website said the room could sleep up to 12, so it's no wonder our family had no problem finding a place for each kid to call their own.

By contrast, most standard rooms at Disney World only sleep up to five, so my family always has to upgrade to a family suite at Disney's Art of Animation Resort when we stay there. That suite is always fun, but only offers 565 square feet, one bedroom with a queen bed, one murphy bed that pulls down from the wall in the living room area, and a pull-out sofa bed in the same room.

We loved Great Wolf's entertainment options and how many activities were available to guests.

I thought that staying at Great Wolf Lodge was not unlike a theme park.

Our reservation included unlimited access to the park's massive indoor water park plus other daily attractions and entertainment options such as a drawing class, character meet-and-greets, arts and craft projects, family-friendly yoga and aerobics, nightly dance parties, and much more.

Beyond the included activities, the resort also sold passes for premium attractions for an additional fee. There were two options for $59.99 each that provided access to different activities, and a Wolf Pass for $79.99 that combined those passes for access to all premium activities.

We chose the Wolf Pass, and received an interactive magic wand with unlimited access to play an accompanying wand game, a preloaded arcade card, candy, one game of indoor bowling, one scoop of ice cream, a bag of sand and gemstones to mine, an XD theater show with 3-D glasses and moving seats, one game of laser tag, one round of outdoor miniature golf, swimming goggles, and other games.

It ended up being more than our family could do in three days, especially because our kids loved spending time at the water park. But we took advantage of nearly everything our passes had to offer and I can't think of any Disney hotel that comes close to offering so many activities on-site and out of the parks.

The aforementioned magic wand was particularly cool and felt like something out of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal. My kids loved using them around the resort as part of interactive games.

Our kids couldn't get enough of an interactive game called MagiQuest where each child used a magic wand to play the game. Our kids' wands were equipped with built-in technology that allowed them to interact with various touch points around the resort.

During dinner, for instance, our youngest daughter realized that, to her delight, if she pointed her wand at a nearby mechanical bird, it would move and sing. My other daughter kept pointing hers at an artificial tree branch that extended over our table, causing the leaves to shake gently and light up.

But the real purpose of the wands was to solve self-paced individual quests throughout the resort. The quests varied in difficulty so it was fun for all of my kids, and each one involved interactive portals, magical runes, glowing pictures, and fairytale creatures.

I monitored these quests and my kids weren't exposed to any concerning story elements, but I don't think the quests will be stimulating for kids of all ages. For example, our 4-year-old son found the idea of everything enchanting at first, but got bored after 15 minutes because he couldn't understand the continuous story element or tasks associated with each challenge.

Our older children loved it though, and dashed from magical item to item, checking off task boxes, solving riddles, and laughing at the characters and elements they were introduced to along the way.

While we loved all the activities, the water park was easily the best thing about the resort.

Each Great Wolf Lodge location comes with an indoor water park with unique water features.

Our family loves water parks and we've been to every one in our home state of Utah, but we've never experienced one like Great Wolf before.

Because it was indoors, I wasn't sure what to expect, and incorrectly assumed it would be small. I was completely wrong as the water park was massive at 80,000 square feet and I thought it had more to offer than most outdoor water parks I've visited.

There were several play areas including a splash pad for toddlers, a giant wave pool, a basketball pool zone, a floating challenge course, a four-story water tower treehouse, and multiple water slides for all ages.

My 4- and 6-year-olds loved the kiddie slides while my older 9- and 11-year-olds couldn't get enough of raft and race slides.

The water park was included in our stay. By comparison, at Disney World, water parks require an additional theme park ticket.

There weren't that many restaurants at the resort but we liked everything we ate and especially loved the prices.

The resort has six on-site dining options, which were not included in the price of lodging.

Most were only open for specific meals. The Loose Moose Cottage was only for breakfast, Buckets Incredible Craveables opened for lunch, and dinner was served at the Lodge Wood Fired Grill.

For all-day options, we could choose between a bakery, a creamery, Dunkin' Donuts, and a pizzeria.

While the restaurants were fairly limited when it came to meals, we enjoyed the options that were available. I also estimated that for on-site dining, we spent a third of what we typically pay at Disney by choosing Great Wolf.

We ultimately discovered that Great Wolf Lodge is a wonderful alternative to Disney World for a magical, memorable vacation that's far cheaper. We'll definitely be back.

My family discovered that Great Wolf Lodge is a wonderful alternative to Disney World for families seeking an immersive, thematic experience with tons to do included in the price.

Of course, I'll admit you can't beat the thrill of theme rides and magical moments that are unique to Disney's theme parks, but there's also something to be said for the amount of interactive togetherness and variety of activities we enjoyed at Great Wolf that we don't get as much of at Disney resorts.

Looking ahead, we'll still continue visiting Disney from time to time, but with Great Wolf Lodge operating so many locations across the country, we're likely to return to it again and again when considering our family's future adventures.

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