ICE Festival at Gaylord National Resort

My mother-in-law has this fun tradition where we visit a location around the holidays to see the Christmas/holiday decorations. We have been going to Storybook Land in New Jersey for a while and we LOVE it, adore it and I will eventually write a post all about the wonderful times we have had there. She suggested that we look at going to the ICE festival and I was like “what?” because it sounds cold…and icy. I did a bit of research, not nearly enough and I’ll explain that in a bit. We ended up booking at Gaylord National Resort for the weekend after Thanksgiving. It was cheaper to go then and because we needed two rooms, it saved us some money. We drove down which saved us some money too. Flying in would be expensive and we live about 3-4 hours from the Washington DC area. Here is the lobby of the hotel and man did this get us into the holiday mood as soon as we walked in:

Check-in was a breeze and we had requested rooms that were in close proximity. They put us across the hall from each other which was perfect. My mom and MIL were in one room and we were across the hall in another room. The rooms were a good size. I ended up booking the “Christmas on the Potomac” package. It included the room, entrance tickets to the ICE festival and a $100.00 resort credit. We ate at the hotel and used the $100.00 on food. The food here is expensive but we thought it was really delicious! We checked in the Friday after Thanksgiving and decided to wait until Saturday to see the ICE festival. I read online that being the first group in was the best because there was less crowds. I did find this to be accurate and we are happy that we waited until the next morning.

The next morning, I ordered room service for all of us. My guys love room service and drinking hot chocolate in bed! I got everyone up and moving because I wanted to get down the escalator and be first in line for the ICE festival. You have to take the escalator down to the food area, walk back towards the convention area and take a right and walk all the way down to the end of the long hallway. The ICE festival was so much fun, but be warned, it is COLD!! I put long johns under the boys’ clothes, put on their heavy jackets, snow pants, winter gloves and hats, PLUS they had the blue parka coats over all of that and they were still cold. Just be warned! I originally read to just use the parka coats…NOPE, not warm enough!

My guys favorite thing was the ice slides. The blue parka that they give you makes it a great slide…just lean back and let go! The boys loved this and we must have gone down 10 times. They would get off and waddle around to go down again. There is a slide to the right for little ones and the left is for taller kids. My husband and I both went down the slides and raced the kids. It felt great to beat my kids on the slide…haha…just kidding, they beat me, but it felt good to be laughing and acting like a kid!

Once you walk all the way through the ICE festival, you will then be directed to return your parkas and you will enter to this. There is a carousel, train, ice skating, scavenger hunt, cookies, hot chocolate, and a spot to make your own gingerbread house to take home. Nothing here is included and each thing is individually priced. We figured it was a trip so we would try a few things. We did not do the gingerbread house because we didn’t want to carry it home in the car. My guys were too big for the train and they didn’t want to ride the carousel. They did however want to go ice skating so we bought tickets for that. Ice skates are provided! They also have little push horses for kids who weren’t able to skate. Just a heads up, people are very intent on getting them and will rip them away from you or your child. Just be prepared! We also did the scavenger hunt but that was more for me! I love those sorts of things so my guys were sweet enough to run around and participate. You could also meet Santa and there was a HUGE gift shop too!

We spent the better part of the morning enjoying the ICE festival and the activities that followed. We left around lunch time and let the boys write a letter to Santa in the lobby area! Super cute area and we didn’t have to worry about doing it once we got home.

If you haven’t gone to the Gaylord Resorts to see the ICE Festival, go!! This year is How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which would be amazing to see. We haven’t decided if we will go back each year or every other year! Stay tuned to see if we go next year to see the Grinch in Washington, DC!