The ICE Experience

This past Saturday, Stephanie I went to the Gaylord Hotel in Grapevine to see the annual ICE Experience at the hotel. I have never been to the ICE Experience before, but I have always heard good things about it, so it was obvious that I was going to act like a 6 year old at this place.

If you don't know, the ICE Experience is a huge circus tent that is kept at a constant 9 degrees and holds over 2 millions pounds of ice sculptures are shown. This years theme was based off of Shrek The Halls TV Special when Shrek tries to plan the “perfect Christmas” for Fiona and the kids, his plans are disrupted by usual chaos and commotion.

Before the crowd was allowed in the tent, we had to watch a short history of how the ice statues were made and how long it took. You can read more about it here. Apparently the Gaylord hotel brought over a bunch of people from China to start carving the ICE statues in September. It was very amazing to see how much detail went into every statue.

As we entered the tent, Stephanie and I were issued full length parka jackets to help keep us warm in the beyond freezing tent atmosphere. Inside of the tent, they had every Shrek character you could think of, slides made completely out of ice, Shrek videos, and a ton of ice sculptors to take pictures of.

Once the Shrek portion of the ICE exhibit was done, the show ended with a large room decorated with a clear ice version of the nativity scene.

After the ICE exhibit, we walked around the hotel because the Gaylord had 1.5 million holiday lights that decorated the entire hotel, a 52-foot rotating Christmas tree, a life-sized Gingerbread House made out of actually gingerbread and candy, 12,000 ornaments, and Santa Claus himself. It was one of the best decorated places that I have ever seen.

Oh, I cant forget to mention the breakfast buffet we had before the ICE exhibit opened. We ate at the Riverwalk Cantina that actually had a small river flowing next the edge of the patio of the restaurant.

The breakfast buffet was awesome. They had all types of food like custom made omelette's, pancakes, bacon, sausage, eggs benedict, all types of fruit, and any type of breakfast meals you can think of. And the only way to enjoy this meal is with some Mimosas and Bloody Mary's. It was a great way to start the day.