Last week, our family had a chance to check out the holiday happenings at the Gaylord at the National Harbor. I’ve been to the Gaylord National a couple of times for different conferences and was sort of familiar with the hotel resort.
When we arrived, the Gaylord has been transformed into a winter wonderland. It definitely put our family into the Christmas spirit. My friends at MomzShare invited our family to check out ICE! This year’s theme is Merry Madagascar. ICE! is a HUGE ice sculpture exhibit.
 |
| Sorry for the blurry photos. This was the best one I took. The photo gods were not with me that day. |
Aren’t the sculptures amazing? I had no idea you could color ice the way they did. Before you go in, you’re given a light blue parka because it is very cold inside. They also have kid sized parkas. Make sure you bring a hat and gloves too. I knew beforehand that it would be freezing cold inside the exhibit, but my body wasn’t quite prepared for it. I’m pretty sure my face was frozen halfway through. As glad as we were for the blue parkas to keep us warm, it made it very hard to keep tabs on your kids because from behind, all the kids looked alike.
The best part of ICE! is the slides made of, you guessed it, ice. There’s 5 ice slides, though 2 of them were closed when we visited and a third slide was for toddlers. Luckily it wasn’t too crowded so the wait wasn’t long. I wish I could have gotten a picture of Sophia going down the slide, but Jaxson missed his nap that day and fell asleep in the ICE! exhibit. Yep, the kid fell asleep. The slide was totally worth the cold nose! Sophia went down at lest 5 times.
After ICE!, we warmed up back inside the Gaylord with the Dreamworks Character Passport. The kids got to meet different characters from Dreamworks movies. I haven’t seen some of them, so I didn’t know everyone’s name. Jaxson was terrified by Shrek and refused to near him. Sophia mugged with every character. Our favorite was when she and I met Gingy, the gingerbread guy from the Shrek movies.
There was a lot more activities including a tree lighting (with real snow!), fountain show, ice skating, train rides and much more. We didn’t stay for everything since the kids were getting hungry and Jaxson was getting cranky.
Visit the Gaylord site for more information about their holiday activities as well as ICE! Tickets to ICE! start at $20 and the exhibit runs until January 8, 2012. Some activities like the tree lighting are free.
Our family received tickets to check out ICE! as well as the Character Passport. We’ll definitely be returning on our own dime to check the other activities.