DISCLOSURE: I was an invited guest of the Gaylord Palms Resort to find out about their holiday celebrations and to step inside the ICE! tent, but all opinions and overuse of exclamation points are all my own!!!
You know that the holidays are in full swing when the Gaylord Palms Resort welcomes a team of artisans from China to Kissimmee to begin the month-long carving for ICE! featuring The Polar Express.
Gaylord Palms team members gathered in the lobby to greet the artisans like celebrities with a standing ovation.
The ICE! attraction is crafted each year onsite at Gaylord Palms by these artisans from Harbin, China, home of the world’s largest ice and snow sculpture festival, who travel more than 6,000 miles to Florida. They hand-carve more than two million pounds of colorful ice, creating larger-than-life sculptures.
This year, as guests explore the attraction, they will discover more than ten favorite scenes from “The Polar Express,” along with the event’s two-story ice slides and the popular Frostbite Factory live ice carving showcase. The ICE! experience concludes with a separate area dedicated to a traditional Nativity created with crystal clear ice.
And after we welcomed the artisans, it was time to put on our blue parkas and take our first steps inside the tent where ICE! is created!
It’s absolutely amazing to see how these ice artisans bring these giant blocks of ice to life, and I couldn’t think of a better holiday story to feature than the Polar Express!!!
ICE! and Christmas at Gaylord Palms opens on November 25 and runs daily until January 5, and you can find more information about the festivities here.
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