ICE!: Behind the scenes at Gaylord Hotels’ holiday exhibit

by Leigh Caldwell on

Each holiday season, the four Gaylord Hotels in the United States import about 100 master ice carvers from Harbin, China’s Winter Festival to carve elaborate, life-size exhibits for the resorts.

I recently got to peek behind the curtain and watch the artists at work at the Gaylord Palms Resort near Orlando, Florida.

The ICE! exhibits are a wonder to walk through, with room out of room full of sculptures where everything – even walls and stairs – are made out of ice.

ICE! gets its start months before the exhibit premieres in November, with a theme and technical drawings to plan the exhibit. The carvers start their work about 30 days before ICE! opens.

Bringing in the ice is a logistical feat in itself. Each sculpture starts as a 400-pound ice block trucked to Orlando from Adel, Georgia. The timing of the ice’s arrival is carefully planned because all of the colors in the exhibit are added when the ice is frozen and not on-site.

Larry Walter, one of the show’s on-site producers, said two to four trucks of ice are delivered each day, with largely clear and white ice being delivered at the beginning of the process and the colored ice coming to add the finishing touches later.

The artists start the carving with chain saws to shape the ice. Fine detail work is done with small chisels and other hand tools.

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All this work happens in rooms at the hotel’s convention center that are chilled to 9 degrees Farenheit. Visitors to the exhibit are loaned parkas to walk through.

This year’s ICE! exhibit at the Gaylord Palms has the theme “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” The rooms are set up as if you are walking through the poem. The whole thing is lit and musically scored like a show.

Once the exhibit opens, most of the artists return to China. But a team of about 10 stays behind at each resort to do touch-up work and be on call to take care of any mishaps. Walter said guests usually can’t resist touching the sculptures, and things do wind up breaking off from time to time.

The other Gaylord hotels have different ICE! themes. The Gaylord National near Washington, D.C. has “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” The Gaylord Opryland in Nashville, Tennessee has “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town.” And “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is the theme at the Gaylord Texan near Dallas, Texas.

There are a couple of popular features that make their way into each ICE! exhibit, regardless of the theme. There’s always a “slide room” with ice slides for kids (and some adventurous parents) to play on. And ICE! always ends with a life-size Nativity, done completely in crystal clear ice.

The ICE! exhibits all open in mid-November. You can save a few bucks on tickets if you buy them online in advance at the Gaylord Hotels Web site.

Here’s a video look at my behind-the-scenes visit to ICE!:

I asked Walter what happens to the sculptures after the exhibit closes in early January. He said everything is bull-dozed, crushed and moved out to an area of the resort’s parking lot to melt, which usually takes just two days in Florida.

Cold water without a cooler – Road trip tip

by Gadling Staff on

Sometimes, we travel without a cooler (when we’re taking a shorter trip or don’t have enough room). But even without the cooler, we always have a way to have ice cold water with us.

To make cold water last the whole day, put a couple bottles of water in the freezer the night before*. Naturally, they’ll all turn to bottles of ice. An hour into the day, after the ice melts a little, you have a nice cold drink of water. When you see a water fountain, you can add more water — or, add water from unfrozen bottles.

In most developed countries, tap water is as good (or better) than bottled. Plus it’s cheaper and greener (of course, it’s ok to use the same bottles over).

* Be sure NOT to insert FULL bottles into the freezer! They might explode or leak when they melt, if the bottle has cracked from the pressure.

Government department in charge of airport security can’t stop losing their own stuff

by Scott Carmichael on

How upset would you be if you lost your laptop computer? How upset do you think your boss would be if your company lost not one, but one thousand of them?

The loss of 1000 computers within a single government department is apparently not much of an issue, because that is how many went missing at the Department of Homeland Security in 2008.

The department is in charge of the TSA as well as Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (the old INS).

During an audit, a total of 1,975 pieces of equipment could not be located, at a total valuation of $7.5 million. Included in the list of missing items are 235 night vision goggles, a $116,000 truck and 13 other vehicles.

The departments claim the number of missing items is perfectly normal and that they are “well within loss rates deemed acceptable by industry for asset accounting“. I’ll be sure to use that excuse next time I lose something.

Remember, these losses are on top of the thousands of items that mysteriously go missing from luggage of passengers entrusting their belongings to the TSA. Shipping your luggage suddenly doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. US Senator Tom Coburn has more about the embarrassing losses on his personal site.

Snowy roads in the Netherlands may be smelling sweet this winter

by Katie Hammel on

There seems to be a major salt shortage in the Netherlands this winter. According to Radio Netherlands Worldwide, the country normally uses about 70,000 tons of salt to de-ice the roads each winter. So far this year, over 100,000 tons have already been spread on icy roads around the country. If the temps don’t warm up fast, the Netherlands could run out of road salt.

To combat the shortage, some cities are using sand, which doesn’t work as well and is not good for the roads. But at least one town has gotten a little more creative. The town of Etten-Leur has spread 18 tons of scented bath salts on its roads in an effort to keep them ice-free.

So, if you find yourself driving in the Netherlands, you may notice the roads smelling a little sweeter than normal. According to the news report, the “coloured bath salts smell of lavender, green tea and mango.”%Gallery-79319%

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Winter festivals in the Midwest

by Katie Hammel on

What is it about snow that just makes us want to play in it? A fresh, fluffy layer of snow means snow angels and snowmen, building forts and having snowball fights. And for some people, it also means making really, really big snow sculptures like these found on WebUrbanist.com.

To see some smaller, but no less impressive, snow sculptures in the Midwest, check out one of the area’s many winter festivals.

In Ohio, the Toledo Zoo Frozentoesen offers a whole month of special winter events at the zoo, including ice carving, free admission days, and animal interactions.

The Madison Winter Festival, which takes place from February 19 to 21 in Wisconsin, goes beyond just spectator sports. In addition to ice and snow sculpting, the event features some pretty hardcore winter sports like cross country skiing, speed skating, 5k races, snowshoeing, and bike racing over snow.

In Michigan, head to Bavarian-themed Frankenmuth for Snowfest. Held January 27 to February 1, the fest features snow and ice sculpting and a huge warming tent with traditional German food, music and drinks. And as someone who has been there I can say that not only is the event a very fun time, but you’d be surprised how quickly a few pints of beer and some really badass snow sculptures can make you forget the bitter cold.