We all have that one friend who is a diehard adrenaline junkie who loves to discover their next greatest adventure. That friend is me! This feature is all about uncovering Lake Nona and Orlando’s greatest activities, especially if you enjoy living life on the edge!
How much does a polar bear weigh? Enough to break the ice! This month might not be the most extreme adventure, but the temperature and the cost might up the ante a bit.
This month, I grabbed a small group of friends and attended the annual ICE! event at Gaylord Palms. Its Christmas Around the World theme had us entering the magical and freezing ice celebration kept at only nine degrees. Nine degrees!! That’s pretty much unbearable for us Floridians, but you’re provided with a cool blue parka to keep you nice and toasty. If you’re anything like me, you have plenty of winter clothing like your favorite sweaters and hats tucked far away in the back of your closet because Florida doesn’t have much, if any, winter weather. Now is the time to break out those clothes! All was good until my hands started to go numb as the parkas don’t have pockets. Definitely grab your gloves and mittens if you have them! And I’d advise against wearing your flip flops.
This family-friendly spectacle will take you through holiday scenes, including traveling to the North Pole to see Santa and his elves in the toy factory. This event might not be for you if you really can’t stand the cold or don’t have younger family members to take along. The highlight of the night was sliding down the ice slides, and you can hit them as many times as you’d like. Seeing how other countries celebrate Christmas depicted in ice was pretty cool, pun intended.
The celebration goes on from Nov. 21-Jan. 7. Overall, the event is definitely tailored toward the little ones, so if you go, you might want to gather up the kiddos and make it a family event. But beware, the ICE! event is costly. There are only five rooms with ice sculptures, and it took maybe 30 minutes to observe everything, mostly because we were taking photos for the article. But even so, as intriguing as it might be to see all the different colored ice sculptures, to complete the walk-through that quickly was disappointing. We actually circled back thinking we had taken a wrong turn at some point just to find out that no, we were indeed done with the event.
There are several different activities to enjoy outside the actual ICE! show like Build-A-Bear, photos with Santa, snow tubing and gingerbread decorating, and those all cost extra and are not cheap. The snow tubing looked like a blast, and it was pretty apparent that’s where all of the kids, and adults, too, were having the most fun.
Parking costs a whopping $22, and for it to cost more than parking at Disney for an entire day, for an event that may take an hour of your time, there’s just no way to justify that extremely high parking fee. Then there are the ticket prices – they’re advertised as roughly $30 for an adult, $15-$17 for a child and $27-$29 for a senior. I realize now why I’ve been to this event only once before about a decade ago.
So there you have it, Nonaventure braves through the winter and exorbitant pricing to celebrate the Christmas spirit in one of the most popular tourism locations of the world: Orlando, FL.
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