We're staying at this Renaissance in three weeks. Both of these hotels are very good and well-located for downtown Minneapolis.

Only catch is that the waterpark itself is small and designed mostly for small children. I think a 10-year-old would be kind of bored.

The MSP area has a couple of others...I want to say there's a Club Carlson waterpark hotel out by the Mall of America and maybe a Priority Club somewhere out in the suburbs (a Holidome on steroids). But I don't know whether they're big enough for a 10-year-old to really enjoy or not.

If you have the points and miles to send him anywhere in the U.S., why not send him south where they can just go to a regular outdoor waterpark? Might have to go all the way to FLL or so to get reliably good weather, but mix in a little beach and sun and that could be kind of fun. Lots of cheap Hiltons to be had if you were to pick FLL.

All of that said, we recently did a 9-year-old birthday party at a Great Wolf Lodge. Although I cringed a bit at spending $219/nt. plus taxes for a hotel room in Kansas, it was indeed a huge indoor park that the kids loved. The room slept 7 people and included 7 meals plus the waterpark passes, so at the end of the day I guess it wasn't *that* bad of a deal. So even though it's sort of against our Flyetalker DNA, I would at least consider it...especially if it makes the overall trip easier.