How much wetness and/or wildness does $25 million get you? That’s the amount Oklahoma-based Premier Parks spent on upgrading the former Wild Water Kingdom in Brampton.

The answer: A lot. In addition to renaming and revamping its three blackout rides and two high-speed slides — both of which deliver seven-storey drops — the recently reopened and renamed Wet ‘N’ Wild Toronto has added a host of new pools and rides.

The towering “Bear Footin' Bay” play structure, for instance, is festooned with sprayers, slides and a giant tipping bucket. My daughters were nimble enough to avoid being soaked by the latter, and could not have been happier when my own nimbleness fell short. However, their gleeful mockery would only sweeten my inevitable revenge.

This watery intro also primed us for "Hurricane" and "Typhoon," a pair of tandem-tube slides that quickened our pulses and whetted our appetites for two of the main attractions: "Krazy Kanuck" and "Caribbean Chaos," which rise together over the former site of a mini-golf course.

Krazy Kanuck was relatively tame, taking as many as five inner-tube riders down back-to-back curves, drops and vortex loops. We tried it a few times, and soon determined that whizzing down backwards increased the fear factor substantially.

Once the girls had built up their nerve, we took the other staircase up to Caribbean Chaos. This slide builds anticipation with an enormous scream-reflecting wall that looms over the entrance to the waterpark. It proved to be just as thrilling as it looked, especially for my daughters who, at my subtle request, were sent down backwards by the ride attendant. As we rocketed up the watery wall and felt gravity loosen its grip, their wide eyes and delighted screams made me grin triumphantly. Revenge was sweet indeed!

A few of the new attractions were still under construction during our visit: Oh Canada!, a free-fall slide with a 360-degree loop; and Klondike Express, side-by-side racing tunnels that loop and drop. The new Wet 'n' Wild Jr. play area, meanwhile, was shunned as being “for babies,” although I did like the look of the shady deck chairs. Thankfully, dozens more were arrayed around the half-million-gallon "Big Surf" wave pool, which is surrounded by the "Muskoka Soakah" lazy river. 

​For GTA-based families who want to combine watery refreshment with watery excitement, Wet ‘N’ Wild fits the bill nicely as the only good-sized standalone waterpark in the area. Just remember to beware the bucket!

WHERE TO STAY
The new Courtyard Toronto Mississauga/West is less than 15 minutes by car from Wet 'N' Wild, and features a full-service restaurant and lounge where you can refuel post-waterpark.

You may be familiar with the Seven Wonders of the World — ancient, modern, underwater, made out of yarn — but what about the Wonders of the World When You Are Seven?

As a parent I’ve experienced two of the latter: Disney World, which I visited with the brood a couple years back; and Great Wolf Lodge, where we headed last weekend after Expedia.ca invited us to the waterpark resort chain's Niagara location as part of the Big World Explorer blogger program.

Both spots deserve to be on my ingenious made-up list, but upon further review GWL has some surprising advantages when compared with its mouse-eared Florida rival:  

1. Controlled climate: There’s a 13-degree difference between Disney World’s warmest and coolest average monthly highs: 20 C in January and 33 C in July. January’s average low, meanwhile, is just 8 degrees. In short, it can be chilly in winter and scorching in summer. But there’s no difference between January and July at Great Wolf Lodge, where the waterpark air temperature is a constant 29 C. Plus, there are no rainy days when you visit a 100,000-square-foot indoor waterpark — although you’re very likely to get soaked.

2. Better food and drink: Quantity doesn’t always produce quality when it comes to family-resort dining. Disney World is home to more than 140 eateries, but their menus focus on uninspiring "American" fare that kids will eat willingly (one hopes) and parents will tolerate out of necessity. Great Wolf Lodge Niagara's seven options keep it simple and surprisingly fresh: If you need to refuel (and relax) poolside, Buckets Incredible Craveables serves juicy burgers, legit poutine and other fast-food. Grizzly Rob's pours local microbrews and Niagara wines, and blends umbrella drinks that would please both Jennifer Lawrence and Hulk Hogan. Want to retire to your suite? The Northwoods Pizza Company delivers steaming slices, spicy wings and fresh salads to your door. You can work up a serious appetite at the waterpark, which is where the Antler Shanty buffet steps in. Oh, and because the in-room coffee is atrocious, Canoe Coffee's lattes and muffins are steps from the lobby.

3. Simplicity: You could write a book about all the ticketing options at Disney World. (Indeed, some have.) At Great Wolf, however, a plastic wristband is all you need to access the waterpark and unlock your room door. Extra-cost activities like bowling and arcade games, along with meals and other purchases, are charged to your check-in credit card with a wave of your wristband. It's almost too easy. (OK, it is too easy when microbrews, daiquiris and magic wands are involved.) There are no shuttle buses or monorails — all the fun is within steps of your suite, and your suite is within steps of the massive parking lot.

4. Weekend friendly: We picked up our girls right after school on Friday, and by 5 p.m. we were soaking each other with rail-mounted water cannons. For GTA residents like us, Great Wolf is a 90-minute drive away, which makes it ideal for a two-night weekend jaunt. Single-night guests can stay till the waterpark closes the following evening, which makes a one-night stay viable. But our two-nighter let us sample the park, then go to town on it, then overdo it. Perfect!

5. Less busy: Great Wolf's superb fun-to-time ratio is made possible by the fact that only resort guests can use the waterpark. We were there on what must have been one of the busiest days of the year: Rooms were sold out and the parking lot was packed. Yet we rarely waited in line for the waterslides for more than a few minutes, and often there was no noticeable wait at all. Plus, there are plenty of diversions where waiting is not an issue: The wave pool, the lazy river, the hots tubs, etc. On the Saturday of our visit, the observed average wait time for the "7 Dwarfs Train" at Disney World was 52 minutes.

6. Forced unplugging: Because iPhones and waterslides don’t mix, we left our devices in our suite. This yielded higher-quality quality time, to be sure, but it did present a problem: How to digitally capture treasured moments like Gracie swirling down her first vortex and Daddy taking a water-cannon blast to the midriff? Again, Great Wolf has the answer: A slide-mounted camera on the four-person Wooly Mammoth raft ride transmits snapshots to a photo booth in the lobby.

So thank you, Great Wolf Lodge Niagara, for providing photographic evidence that Daddy does, in fact, scream like a little girl...

"Daddy, where's the wool?"
 
Because Grace sometimes sounds like a New Jersey gangster, and because my family just checked into Great Wolf Lodge Niagara, I’m pretty sure our six-year-old daughter means "wolf."
 
So I point to the animatronic pack adorning the towering lobby fireplace and reply: "Look Gracie, there are lots of wolves up there."
 
She heaves a small sigh and rolls her eyes for reasons she would later reveal, then quickly moves on to the storytelling forest and 473 other pieces of child-oriented eye candy in the bustling atrium.
 
I’m not far behind. Over the course of my 9.08 years as a dad I've noticed that just about every kid who comes through my door has at least heard of Great Wolf Lodge. Some of them have visited, but all of them aspire to visiting. Grace and her big sister Ava, 9, are firmly among the latter. I've already promised a Great Wolf weekend in moments of festive reverie and early-January desperation, so I jump at the chance to see what all the fuss is about when Expedia.ca invites the brood to GWL as part of its Big World Explorer blogger program.
 
Suddenly, everyone seems to know where we we’re going: Teachers, other parents, a few nannies, the crossing guard, even my doppelganger. “Have fun at Great Wolf Lodge!” they call out when my wife Angela and I pick up our gleeful (and somewhat boastful) daughters from school on Friday afternoon.
 
After noting the 34-degree difference in air temperature between the resort’s indoor waterpark and the Ontario winter outside — it’s highlighted on various wall-mounted screens — we rush to our roomy “KidKamp” suite to drop off luggage, affix wristbands and don swimwear. Next up: A technicolour playground of spraying, bubbling, rushing and cascading mayhem. 
 
We start off with a thorough drenching on the tiered and turreted Fort Mackenzie, which we descend via the medium-sized Beaver and Squirrel Falls slides. (Young stranger in Transformers-themed board shorts, if you’re reading this, you will pay dearly for your merciless spraying. Oh yes, you will pay!)
 
We quickly discover that every slide starts with trepidation and ends with Grace and Ava both gasping “AGAIN!!!” It’s no wonder — just look at the “Canada Vortex” from their perspective: “Take a Slip N’ Slide, which we already worship, stretch it to more than 20 times its normal length, tilt it dramatically downhill, and add banked twists, turns, and a massive swishing vortex that demands toilet analogies.”
 
I also figure Grace’s initial “wool” query must have been rooted in the four-person “Woolly Mammoth” inner-tube slide.
 
Speaking of trepidation, back to the vortex. Why the Canada Vortex? There are no red maple leaves emblazoned on it or working syrup dispensers. The colour scheme is blue and yellow. But no matter: If our goal as a nation is to frighten and delight both six-year-olds and startlingly handsome grown men, then the Canada Vortex it is. Indeed, as our two-person figure-eight-shaped inner-tube plunges down its pitch-black “launch slide,” Grace’s grip tightens on my shins and she screams almost as girlishly as I do.
 
Suddenly, time has no meaning. Fifteen minutes later it’s four hours later. I exist in one of two states: Cavorting in water — in a wave pool, hot tub, lazy river and various play pools — or sipping a piña colada while dispensing ketchup. There is nothing else.
 
I find there is as little, or as much, as I want there to be at Great Wolf Lodge Niagara. We opt for the former on our inaugural two-night visit: Waterpark meets sustenance. There’s milk and cereal in our suite’s mini-fridge, morning take-out from the Canoe Coffee shop, Buckets fast-food and Grizzly Rob's blender drinks in the waterpark, and the Antler Shanty buffet to seriously refuel.  
 
We don’t need wallets or keys, as our sundry transactions are recorded by the sensor-equipped wristbands. And because cellphones and watery vortices don’t mix, we are gently induced to unplug.
 
Reality rears its frost-bitten head on the Sunday evening of our departure. The temperature differential has jumped to 39 degrees, it’s snowing hard outside and, thinking back to our arrival, I wish we could return to a “great wool lodge” of our own.  
 
Then Grace asks: "Daddy, what's a Flodge?"
 
As in "Great Wool Flodge." I wonder what she thinks of those weird-looking sheep on the fireplace…