A sculpture from ICE! How the Grinch Stole Christmas at the Gaylord Texan. (Jeremy Holland/Dallas Voice)
I’d hate to see the air conditioning bill at the Gaylord Texan this winter. It’s ICE! How the Grinch Stole Christmas display covering about 20,000 square feet of space requires its convention center space to remain at 9 degrees.
Carved out of two million pounds of ice, scenes from the Dr. Seuss classic come to life in freezingly amazing color-dyed ice sculptures.
Walk through time averages 20 to 40 minutes. While you want to linger and look longer, the rooms are kept so cold it’s hard to truly take in the magnificent sculptures. I kept telling myself, “This is why I moved to Dallas from Albany, N.Y.” I was certainly dressed warm enough — a sweatshirt and down jacket that I brought and the long parka that they hand out.
The ice sculptures were created by 40 artisans from Harbin, China, home of the world’s largest ice festival. It took them about six weeks to carve the creations — some intricate and tiny other large enough to walk through.
Want to spend more than a half hour and in a less frozen environment? There are ice slides and ice skating outside the exhibit. For kids, there’s a carousel, gingerbread decorating, a scavenger hunt and plenty of shopping opportunities. From the convention center where ICE! is installed, walk over to the hotel and enjoy holiday decorations and plenty of dining opportunities.
After our walk through ICE! we enjoyed hot chocolate from a stand just before the exit to parking.
Tickets start at $28.99 for adults and $19.99 for children. Gaylord Texan, 1501 Gaylord Trail, Grapevine. ChristmasatGaylordTexan.marriott.com.
— David Taffet
