The Woodlands Resort
We were looking for a resort to take some time at in the summer time that is in the Houston Area. Most resorts that include small water parks like a lazy river are found in San Antonio or Austin. In Houston there is the Marriot in Downtown but its pretty expensive and its just the river. We have stayed at the Hyatt Regency Hill Country in San Antonio and it was wonderful with a Spa, Lazy River and other activities. When looking up Hilton Brand Hotels I came across The Woodlands Resort just a bit North of Houston. We decided to try it out and see how it is.
We visited on a Saturday-Sunday in August 2023 and there is plenty of free self parking and there is valet parking as well for an extra price. After the quick check in with the friendly people we headed to our room. They gave us wrist bands to wear in order to go to the water park. The room we found was a nice standard Hilton Hotel room with a nice refrigerator we put our drinks in and a very nice bathroom with a “Rain” style shower. It looked pretty new and had a view of a small pond outside. We just booked a standard King Sized Bed and we used some of our Hilton Honors Points to lower the prices as you can use points and money. A room at the resort can be from the mid $200s – mid $300. With the points we lowered the price to less than $200.
It was in the afternoon so we headed on out to the water park. It was pretty crowded as expected being a late summer weekend. We found a large pool with a building with large waterslides inside, a kids pool and splash pad, a medium sized pool and towards the back a nice lazy river with a slide for kids. There were pool chairs, cabanas to rent, an ice cream shop, and a small grill restaurant within the water park. They had water coolers around to get free cold water in the very hot summer this year in 2023. We went straight to the lazy river and got the ample tubes to float on. Its not a huge lazy river but it was long enough to relax. A nice benefit is it is shaded in parts with the many trees in the area. It got fairly crowded but was still nice and relaxing. We also enjoyed the nice pool but skipped doing any of the slides. There were also activities mostly for kids and families such as a scavenger hunt, turtle feeding and at night a showing of Jumanji. There is a Golf Course, bikes to rent and tennis courts available as well. We enjoyed our time but headed back to the room since it was brutally hot. Being in The Woodlands you are near plenty of shopping, restaurants and entertainment. We headed out to see Oppenheimer at an all recliner AMC that is just a 10 minute drive. There is a restaurant on site but we headed off the resort to save a bit of money to eat.
The next morning we went to breakfast and the buffet and used our Hilton Credits to get a discount on the brunch. The buffet was nice with typical breakfast items such as bacon, waffle/Pancake/French Toast, a short order cook for eggs, biscuits and gravy, grits and other bread items. They also had lunch items such as BBQ Brisket, rotisserie chicken, chicken fried steak, gumbo and sides. It was a nice and filling meal but it was fairly pricey. It was $30 a person plus tax and tip. Our credits covered $30 of it. Its a nice meal but I would not do it everyday if we spent more than one day at the resort.
We finished our time at the resort floating the lazy river and swimming in the pool for a couple more hours before we checked out and headed home.
If you are looking for a nice summer getaway within the Houston area The Woodlands Resort is a good place to go and relax. Its a great place for families as well. It is a bit expensive but that is true of all resort hotels. Give it a try if a quick relaxing trip is something you need!