This post is in partnership with Massanutten Resort and Visit Shenandoah Valley who hosted our weekend stay. All opinions are my own. You can read my full Disclosure Policy here.
On our recent family vacation to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, we stayed at Massanutten Resort and absolutely fell in love with this property. When I posted photos on my personal Facebook profile, so many friends raved that they had been there and couldn’t wait to get back. Now that I’ve been there, I understand why. We can’t wait to get back either! Watch the video below for the highlight reel.
There is so much to do in Shenandoah Valley, and THIS is where you want to stay and make your home base. Be sure to give yourself enough time to just enjoy the resort. There an insane amount of family fun waiting for you here! Read on for the highlights of our stay and some tips on planning yours.
Regal Vistas at Massanutten Resort
There are tons of lodging options at Massanutten Resort so you can find something that works for your family and your budget. We stayed in the Regal Vistas, which is the gated community area of the resort. It’s gorgeous, and the lodging here are like duplexes (complete with a garage for your car!) so we felt like we were at home the whole time.
The view from the back porch wasn’t too shabby either!
Regal Vista properties include a fully furnished living room with a dining room table, a full kitchen that’s stocked with dishes and pots and pans, two full and gorgeous bathrooms, and two bedrooms with king-sized beds. My family of 4 was VERY comfortable here!
The Regal Vistas are on the higher price point end of the scale, however, I really feel like they’re a great value not only because they are obviously so spacious and beautiful – a perfect place to call a home away from home – but also because you can live in them like you’re home.
So instead of eating every meal out at a restaurant, we hit the local grocery store and ate breakfast and dinner in almost every day. That saved a bundle. And I’m not talking about PB&J for dinner. There’s a grill and everything else you need. We cooked out every night!
Family Adventure Park
Our absolute favorite part of being at Massanutten Resort was enjoying the Family Adventure Park. We spend hours here and just had so much fun.
A couple of tips: Try to arrive early, or as close to opening time as you can. We waited in line for a little while. It wasn’t too bad and they keep it moving, but this is where they’ll weight and measure everyone in your party, you can choose your passes for the day (which we needed some help with and appreciated that they were patient with us!). You’ll get to the fun stuff faster if you get there when they open.
Make sure everyone in your party that’s planning to play has close-toed shoes. You can’t climb a wall in flip flops! So plan ahead for that. And I’d check the website and get an idea of what your group will be able to do based on heights and weights.
The first thing my kids wanted to do was the Kids’ Adventure Course. This is for ages 12 and under (so my daughter just made the cutoff!). They had SO much fun on this. It’s a series of ropes and bridges with a zipline at the end. And the kids are harnessed in so they are completely safe the entire time.
One little girl got scared when it was her turn to take the zipline down and the staff was just amazing with her. I can’t say enough about the employees at Massanutten. Everyone was so kind and so helpful everywhere we went.
You can see they had a blast doing this. With the Adventure Park pass they got, they were able to go around twice and they chose to do it back-to-back, which saved them from getting unharnessed and then re-harnessed when they wanted to make the second trip. Also, I think they’d have just done this all day if they could!
The next thing we hit was the climbing wall, and the adults can do this, too!
The climbing wall has 3 options: easy, medium, and hard. My husband and daughter started on the medium wall and neither of them got very far, so we all moved to the easy wall and all 4 of us (yes, myself included) made it to the top.
To come down, you just push away from the wall and fall, and the harness and rope will slowly lower you down. It’s good practice for the next thing: the Quick Jump.
On the same structure as the climbing walls is the Quick Jump, and you go up the stairs in the middle and at the top, you basically jump off onto a landing pad. Let me tell you, when you are standing on the ground this looks like no biggie. Suuurree, I can totally do that. Turns out I’m a chicken and I got up there and said, NOPE, not happening. It’s a long drop when you’re looking down.
The rest of my family is braver than I am and all three of them just stepped right off. It’s a 30-foot drop and the rope has resistance so it really lowers you down slowly. For me it was easier to take pictures of them doing it than it was for me to convince myself to jump off the ledge! Do you think you could do it?
Turns out tubing isn’t just a winter activity, at least not here! Summer tubing is a thing, a thing I’ve never tried before so we were anxious to give it a go.
Grab a tube and take a ride up the lift to the top of the hill, and then ride down the hill! These tubing lanes are 600-feet long and they actually go pretty fast! The kids went down solo and my husband and I attached our tubes and rode down together.
The Mega-Zip is for older kids and adults (it’s recommended for age 7+) and here’s a shot of my husband sliding down it! At 800-feet long, you can go up to 30 miles per hour!
All of these Family Adventure Park activities took up the morning for us, probably about 3 hours or so. I would highly recommend giving yourself at least a couple of full days to enjoy the resort and be sure to hit these activities. We had so much fun here!
More Family Fun
While the Adventure Park is where we spent the majority of our time at the resort, there is SO much more to experience and I want to share some of those features with you too. First, there are plenty of dining options at the resort!
We enjoyed lunch at Base Camp, which is adjacent to the Family Adventure Park (and we had worked up quite an appetite!). Everything was delicious. The rest of the family had burgers and sandwiches and I got an amazing smoked salmon pizza. Soooo good!
The Campfire Grill is a popular eatery and you’ll want to save room for these skillet s’mores. Hello!
Unfortunately we ran out of time to hit the water park but look how amazing it is! This is an indoor-outdoor water park, which is awesome because you can still enjoy it and have something fun to do with the kids if rains.
The indoor portion includes pools, lazy rivers, and even hot tubs for mom and dad to relax in!
There are a variety of scenic lookouts on the property which are great photo opps! And be sure to keep an eye out for wildlife. We saw so many deer and my kids were pretty entranced by a family of groundhogs we saw near the Adventure Park, too.
As you can see, there’s so much to do at Massanutten Resort and I could easily keep writing. When we checked in, we were given an activities calendar which included so many more unique options: art classes for the kids, outdoor adventures, exercises opportunities for adults, and more. You can stay as busy as you want to here, or as relaxed as you’d like to be.
When planning your trip, keep in mind that you’re going to want to have plenty of time to enjoy the resort, and enough time to go see the local sights nearby. I’d definitely make a full week of it if you have the option to do so. This is going down in the Frank Family Books as one of our top vacations of all time!
Learn More
You can find out everything you need to know about Massanutten Resort on their website. And be sure to browse the Visit Shenandoah Valley website for more tips on what to do while you’re in the area. We can’t wait to get back here for a longer trip!
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