Wisconsin Dells Review - Crabby's and Wizard Quest

First up, Crabby's. This is an all you can eat seafood buffet with a pirate theme. As some of you know, we are very into pirates and also as some of you know, I'm very into "all I can eat" so this sounded like a win win. Sadly, it was not a win win but instead pretty much a lose lose :( First of all, the price was pretty high (you will find this is a common themes in all my Dell's reviews). It is $29.95 a person for adults and only slightly less for children. We had a free coupon for The Boy so it made it slightly more bearable. We got seated and ordered drinks and when they arrived, all of them were supposed to be in souvenir glasses, yet none of them came that way. We told our (non-English speaking) waitress who told us they were out of the adult glasses but that she would take some off the bill for the cost of the glasses. We went to the buffet and found that although it was all you can eat, it was basically "do all the work yourself" as well. The shrimp was peel and eat, the salmon was a nasty looking fish that you had to dig pieces out of etc. As it turned out, not only was it labor intensive, none of it was very good. The mashed potatoes were bland, the mac and cheese was running, the Mahi-Mahi was dry and over cooked, etc. Another issue we found was that 2 people in the entire resturant spoke English. This made asking questions such as "Is the sushi cooked or raw" quite difficult. I finally managed to hunt down the manager, who was able to answer my question. The best part was the all you can eat crab legs, which takes forever to crack and eat and you probably can't eat enough to make up the cost of the meal. The drinks were also not good. Heavy on the ice, low on the alcohol and quite expensive. In the gift shop, the problems continued. I found a shirt that I wanted for Radioactive Freak, only to be told that they didn't think they had it in the right size. They eventually did but I had to wait for quite a while while they looked for one. The "animated pirate show" was also completely lame. It was a crusty, dusty animatronic pirate and parrot that talked very softly to each other. I was able to make out about every 3rd or 4th word because it was so quite and garbled. Tough to get the joke when you can't hear it :( I wondered if they were on the verge of going out of business since everything seemed pretty run down and they were out of a lot of stuff. I wish now that I had looked it up online before we went because they rated about 2 stars and those reviews are not wrong.

The next morning we went to Wizard Quest. This one gets another negative review, sadly :( The Boy and I did it together and neither one of us enjoyed it. We chose to do the easier level since he can't read and it would have been too hard to try and do all the challenges in the alloted time. As it turned out, we still couldn't solve all the puzzles and TB got bored after an hour and we left only partly done. The premise is that 4 wizards, one from each realm, has been captured and you have to solve some puzzles to get enough magic to free them. The easier level starts you with enough magic points, all you have to do is find the wizards. In reality, you spend a lot of time crawling around on your hands and knees, in the dark or semi dark, looking for symbols on things and doing a TON of reading. You start in the air realm, although they don't tell you that until you have gone through the other 3 and then have to go back to that realm. We wondered through the Earth, Fire and Water Realms, finding little or nothing. In the Earth Realm, we were able to dance with the fairies (which did nothing but deduct magic from us). Other than that, we couldn't find the wizard or complete any of the challenges in the level. We moved on to Fire, where it was nearly dark and there was nothing to do or see. There was a ball pit to cralw through but I couldn't fit and TB was scared because it was pitch black inside. Moving on to the Water realm, we crawled through some seaweed and found black light posters. We also crawled through some tunnels and found a puzzle to solve that was actually broken so it didn't count for anything. Still no wizard. At that point, TB was done and we headed upstairs to leave. Once upstairs, I figured out that that was the Air realm so we looked around in it for a minute. We found another puzzle that was broken and didn't count for anything, again. We did manage to find and free the wizard of that realm. After we found it, we went back to the other 3 trying to find them one more time and busted again. TB asked to leave so we did.

This would be an ok attraction for adults or possibly even much older children but for TB and I, it was boring and difficult and confusing and just generally not much fun. If you go as an adult, make sure you are small, limber and in good health. Also, make sure you take all your smart friends that are good at puzzles.