We bought tickets back in late October because they were running a special flash sale and figured it'd be a fun holiday activity to do with the kids again this year. Our time to get in was 3:30 pm but as soon as we saw the LONG line to get in we knew it was going to be much later than that before we actually got in to see the ice sculptures. While we were waiting in line Dakota and I went to the ticket booth to ask about getting an Ice! patch for her Daisy vest. (They offered two weekends with special prices for girl scouts and we happened to be there for one of them!) Dakota was also the only kid willing to take pictures with some of the decorations; Harper was grumpy about waiting in line and Landon, well he feels that 16 is too old for that crap.
This years theme was Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. It is amazing to see what these ice carvers can do with huge hunks of ice and I did enjoy the informative video ahead of entering the ice exhibit. You can read a little about that here. Before going inside they make everyone get one of their blue parkas. They keep it at a frosty 9 degrees inside so you wear your own coat plus the one they give you and somehow you still end up freezing!
I didn't take many pictures inside because one year my phone froze because of the extreme cold. I didn't want to take a chance of that happening again.
We weren't in there very long but it was certainly long enough. My hands and feet were blocks of ice when we finally reached the end! If you look really hard in the photo below you'll see Harper peeking out from behind the E. (I forgot to mention that we were there with our buddies the Wakefield's!) Kota is standing in the I, Colin is in the C and Wyatt is climbing through the E.
Originally our plan was to eat dinner and then stay for the fountain show in the lobby but my kids weren't feeling it at all. So, we ended up grabbing some pizza from the Marketplace and then headed home. (The food at the Marketplace was about a 3, maybe 4, on a scale from 1-10 and they offered no tables to sit at. We ended up parking ourselves on benches outside of the restaurant in the hotel picnic style.)
Thoughts for next year: don't bother with this one. It's extremely expensive and they want to charge for every little thing they have there. Our discounted tickets ran $19 a person and with 5 of us, that's pricey. We didn't do any of the other activities because we thought their prices were ridiculous. Photo with Santa starts at $30. Gingerbread decorating: Gingerbread Family Kit = $30, Gingerbread House = $39. Build a Bear Scavenger Hunt $9.99 per person. Breakfast with Rudolph = $26.99 per kid (4-11 yrs.) , $39.99 per adult. Ice Skating = $16.99 per person. There were other things as well but as you can see, they are all WAY over priced. So, next year I think we'll try something new in it's place. Possibly the Festival of Trees which a few people told me was really nice.
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