Where to Stay for a Kalahari Dance or Cheer Competition

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If your team is competing at Kalahari in the Poconos, you already know the drill: the room block opens, it goes quickly, and what is left costs more than it did a week earlier.

This is a practical guide to the alternative — a house fourteen minutes from the convention centre — including the one good reason you might want to stay at the resort anyway.

Read this part first: the waterpark

Kalahari's indoor waterpark is included for registered resort guests. If you stay off-site, you do not get that access as part of your stay.

For a lot of competition families that settles it. The waterpark is half of why the kids want to be there, and if that is your weekend, book the resort and enjoy it.

The rest of this page is for the families where that is not the deciding factor — where the weekend is about the competition, the group is large, and three hotel rooms for two nights has started to look like a serious amount of money.

Why competition weekends are different from normal travel

Competition weekends have a shape that hotels handle badly:

They start absurdly early. Call times before dawn are normal. Hair and makeup start earlier still. A hotel room with one bathroom and one mirror, shared by four people, at 5am, is its own kind of misery.

There is a lot of hanging around. Between the warm-up and the awards there can be hours. Somewhere to go back to that is not a hotel lobby changes the day completely.

Nobody travels alone. One competitor brings two parents, a sibling, sometimes grandparents. That is five or six people minimum, which in hotel terms is two or three rooms, and in house terms is one booking.

Food matters and there is never time. Early breakfast before a 6am call, and a real meal afterwards without queuing behind four hundred other families.

What the house gives a competition family

Slanted Stone Chalet is fourteen minutes from Kalahari — three bedrooms plus a bunk room, three and a half baths, sleeping eight.

For competition weekends specifically:

• Three and a half bathrooms. At 5am with hair and makeup to do, this is the single thing that matters most.
• A gourmet kitchen. Breakfast at whatever hour the call time demands, and a proper dinner afterwards.
• A game loft with shuffleboard for siblings who did not come to watch dance for nine hours.
• A hot tub and a Finnish barrel sauna for legs that have been competing all day.
• Space to spread out — costumes, bags and equipment for a whole family, without living out of a suitcase.
• A stone firepit for the evening after, whichever way it went.

The competitions Kalahari hosts

Kalahari's Pocono convention centre runs 215,000 square feet across 33 meeting spaces, and it hosts national-level cheer and dance events through the year — among them Premier Kalahari Nationals, Journey Nationals, Beyond the Stars, The Masters and The FINALE.

They fall across the calendar rather than clustering in one season, which is worth knowing if you are planning ahead: a spring or summer competition weekend sits in a busier stretch of the Poconos calendar, so nearby accommodation goes earlier than you might expect.

We are not affiliated with any of these events or with Kalahari — we are simply fourteen minutes away.

The honest comparison

	Kalahari rooms	A house 14 min away
Waterpark access	Included	Not included
Walk to the competition floor	Yes	14-minute drive
Bathrooms for six people	1 per room	3.5
5am call time	One mirror	Room to get ready
Meals	Resort dining, queues	Your own kitchen
Cost for 6–8 people	2–3 rooms, surge pricing	One booking

Stay at the resort if the waterpark is part of the plan, your group is four or fewer, or nobody wants to drive at 5am.

Stay at a house if there are six or more of you, the weekend is about the competition, and you would rather spend the difference on something other than a third hotel room.

Booking around a competition weekend

Competition dates are published well ahead and the nearby accommodation goes in the same rush as the room block. If you know your date, book early — and note that minimum stays here are two nights most of the year, which matches a competition weekend anyway.

Book your stay direct and use code INSIDER10 for 10% off.