December 3, 2020

My cousin has a home in Florida. And we always go down right before Thanksgiving, and we kind of find new places to visit there. And so, one day I found an advertisement for ice at the Gaylord Palms. And this is an exhibit that they have every year that focuses on an aspect of Christmas or the holidays, and it’s all made out of ice. The exhibit consists of 2 million pounds of ice. They’ve got figures. There’s a slide you can go down. There’s an ice bar, all sorts of things. And we went in the year of 2014. And the temperature there in the exhibit is 9 degrees, and they give you coats to wear, and usually, you layer up as well, and they have mittens because it gets very cold.

But the year that we went, the theme was “The Nutcracker,” and they had exhibits like “The Nutcracker,” where Clara and the magician in front of a Christmas tree, they had the prince and Clara on a ship. They had sugar plum fairies. They had presents. They had big lollipops. They had Spanish dancers and Russian dancers. They had a flying unicorn, and the prince and Clara and a sleigh leaving. They had a frostbite factory of different things. They had a snow globe with a snowman in it, a teddy bear box. And they showed you how they shaped the ice.

And these ice figures are all in different colors. And you can look at them on YouTube. And they have an ornament doorway. And one of the things at the very end that they have is a nativity scene and an angel singing with candles beside her, and that is all clear. So, I would highly recommend that if you want to see something extra special that you look on YouTube. They also have a ice bar, and you can order non-alcoholic and alcoholic drinks. And one of the drinks was a Johnny Appleseed cider, where they pour the cider in a hole on top of a Christmas tree, and it flows all the way down, so it’s nice and cold when it gets into your cup.

Other themes for each year were “Twas Was the Night before Christmas,” “Shrek the Halls,” “Merry Madagascar,” “Frosty the Snowman,” “Charlie Brown’s Christmas,” “Christmas Around the World,” “A Christmas Story,” “Polar Express,” and this year was “I love Christmas movies.” So my sister and I, and my cousin went, and I do have a picture of that.

So, even though if we don’t go every year, because most of the time we’re in Florida before the exhibit opens, we can watch them on YouTube, and they do a walkthrough, so you can see all of the exhibits without actually being there. So, there are a lot of great videos. After that, we went and they have a giant Christmas tree that’s all decorated in this big hotel. And then they have a performance with singers, and dancers, and acrobats coming from the ceiling. It’s just spectacular. And then you can walk through the middle of the hotel, and it’s just a beautiful, beautiful hotel.