ICE at Gaylord National Hotel

Dec 10

SafireICE, MomzShare blog events 3 Comments

Everyone,

This past weekend my family had an amazing opportunity to join all my local blogging friends and see ICE at the Gaylord National Hotel and Convention Center.  I had been there a few months ago at a blogging conference and knew it was amazing.  Add Christmas decorations, and you have the most AMAZING place.  Dreamworks partnered with the Gaylord to bring an amazing “Merry Madagascar” theme this year.

We started the day off with cookies and “ogre” milk.

After drinking the milk and being “ogre-fied”,

we headed off to experience ICE (which is actually done across the street in a temperature controlled tent).  We had to convince Professor that Shrek the Ogre was taking a nap, because that was the only thing he wanted to do right then.  But then we were given huge blue parkas (bonus because we were BAD parents and left the kids’ coats at home by the door) and walked into an amazing ice world.

All thoughts of Shrek were dismissed because there were ICE slides.  You read it right.  Huge slides of ice with awesome lights in them that you can slide down.  And slide down we did.

We slid until the boys started shivering.  Then Juice and I gave them our scarves (because WE didn’t forget our OWN coats) and we slid some more.

Even Juice and I got in on some sliding action!

Once we drug everyone away from the slides, we took in the sights of ICE.  Did you know that they start building it a few months before, and people from China come and do it!?  They used 2 MILLION pounds of ice to make all these amazing sculptures.

My favorite?  The Nativity.

After ICE, we decided to try out some ice skating!

This was the boys first time ice skating.  Professor did well.

Pirate flailed around and didn’t spend the whole time on his face because he was hanging on to me.  Butterfly hung on to the edge for dear life.

That would have been me if I hadn’t had flailing Pirate to keep upright.

Juice (who actually knows how to skate) took turns taking the kids around the rink.

From there, we went back across the street to meet up with Shrek.  He, and all of his friends, were no longer napping so it was a great time to get pictures with everyone!

 

 

The day ended with an amazing fountain/light/snow/dancing ogre show in the atrium of the hotel.  They make it SNOW.  INSIDE.

That was my favorite part of the whole day.

If your in the area, this is an AMAZING way to spend the day, or even a few nights! Check out Gaylord National’s website for more information and ways to book your ICE experience.

Safire

*Disclosure: My family and I were invited by MomzShare to experience ICE at no cost to us. All opinions are my own and I totally would spend money on this to do it. It’s that good.*