Summer Under Glass

We descend an enclosed staircase and are soon careening up and down the sides of a 65-foot-wide funnel, dropping 30 feet every second, then being catapulted back up the sides of the funnel for a few seconds until the next stomach-wrenching drop hits. This ride won the Best New Waterpark Product Award at a convention of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, which means in my book it's the worst of all possible ways to experience sheer terror and have to pay for it.

I have an entire night to recover before heading to my next resort in the morning.

Wilderness Hotel & Golf Resort

The Wilderness is in some ways the most classy of the three biggest parks, sitting as it does along the shores of Lake Delton, and is the only one to include a golf course. Located on 310 acres, the resort also offers ice skating and cross-country skiing on groomed trails.

The Wilderness competes with the Kalahari for the title of America's Largest Indoor Water Park. The debate about which is larger centers on the fact that the Kalahari's indoor park is under one roof, but the Wilderness resort currently has three separate parks, only two of them linked by indoor corridors.

Another section, the 65,000-square-foot Wild KingDome, is slated to open either next month or in early April. Wilderness also recently debuted two new thrill rides. The one that sounds most intriguing: the Cannonbowl, which drops riders 45 feet through a tunnel slide into a giant bowl where they are spun around and oscillated up and down the sides of the bowl, then propelled through a corkscrew slide and into a pool.

During my visit to Wilderness, I stop first at the resort's Wild West Water park, a 70,000-square-foot park with two unique rides. First, the Surge, a wave pool with a twist: When a bell sounds, people on decks above the wave pool can shoot water cannons onto the people below. The biggest ride, the Fantastic Voyage, shoots you down a twisting tunnel in a five-person raft.

A second, 65,000-square-foot park called Klondike Kavern offers, among other things, a 500-foot-long lazy river, two 500-foot tube rides, pools, lounging areas with televisions and, on the upper deck, a laser tag arena.

I end my tour at Baby Bear's Fort Wilderness, a 22,000-square-foot water park designed for kids 6 and under. I recover from my earlier traumas on the scary rides by stretching out in one of the parent-size whirlpools. Baby Bear's, it turns out, is at the end of the day just right.