ICE! at The Gaylord Texan — Attraction in Grapevine

I don’t usually write reviews but I’d like to spare others from wasting their money or time, or at least create reasonable expectations for the experience.

Parking was the first issue: Premium parking was a traffic jam, but I hadn’t paid for that anyway. Instead I followed big lit up signs that led me CLOSE to a parking lot in Timbuktu. Oddly the signs just stopped near the lot, but we were able to figure it out. After shelling out $27.50 for subpar parking, a shuttle bus took us to the hotel.

Hotel/Convention Center Curb Appeal: I incorrectly expected the hotel to be nicely decorated. Instead it was bland. It was rainy too when we visited and everyone stepped off the bus onto cheap tile that was an instant slip n’ slide.

Food/Dining: We arrived early so we went in pursuit of food but there was an abundance of bars but shortage of real dining options (real dining was only open to hotel guests at time of our visit). I paid $25 for a mediocre cheese pizza and then had to navigate around people with no ambition other than to be in the way, just to find somewhere to sit to consume the pizza.

After the pizza, we meandered back towards the Christmas Village madness but stopped for gelato en route. Again there is no where to actually eat the gelato except for literally the floor (there were people everywhere sitting on the floor along the walls), so we plopped ourselves down and enjoyed.

The exhibit itself: Finally it was our turn for the ICE! exhibit. Silly me had assumed a timed entry meant some sort of logical limit to people who could be in the exhibit at any given time. However it appears the Gaylord capped it at SEVERAL HUNDRED PEOPLE for this absurdly small space.

People funneled through a line to get a blue parka that had been worn by thousands of others. We skipped this because I’m not into lice or communial diseases and no one said anything about us wearing orange and red in a sea of blue.

Then we lined up with several hundred other people for a slow moving line in a 9° space before we got into the exhibit. As soon as people entered the exhibit they HALTED and took family pics with hundreds of people waiting. We could barely even see the exhibit and it was painfully slow.

Our reward for slowly creeping along was getting to come to a complete stop near the exit because there were so many people waiting in a line to send their crotch goblins down an ice slide that the exit was literally blocked for several minutes.

We finally escaped and then “explored” Christmas Village which was just overpriced crap and some activities that had long lines. I had prepaid for my kiddo to be able to visit snow mountain (big snow hill) but the line wasn’t worth it and my son was beyond done.

Parking was our final issue: We cut our losses and walked in circles until we found our way back to the shuttle bus. For the Gaylord’s finale they created a single path of exit from the Timbuktu parking lot but did not bother to tell anyone or install any signage. We did finally escape the parking lot and went back to Main Street for some actual...

Pre-pandemic this was a favorite Christmas Tradition with my family, so we were glad it was finally back after two years. In spite of all the complaints I heard leading up to our experience, we found tonight was NOT packed at all, we felt like we had the whole ICE exhibit to ourselves and like a dozen other families. Our two year old pretty much had free reign. It was an enjoyable experience for the most part. Art was cool and the overpriced Auntie Anne’s really hit the spot afterwards.

However I do agree with the initial reaction from EVERYONE who holds this tradition, that Polar Express felt shorter than the themed exhibits of the past. I get the train and scenes were arguable larger than some other themes. shrugs This didn’t really bother me, my two issues from tonight are unrelated to the ICE exhibit itself.

My first issue isn’t necessarily new: they nickel and dime this Christmas village experience and everything is overpriced. I shouldn’t have to figure out a Groupon to do something thats been famously popular for over two decades. I hate that I have to pay thirteen dollars for a carousel ride for my 2 year old. Especially when I can feel how rickety/unstable it is, plus I can see the extension cords giving it power. I shouldn’t have to pay extra on site for this. They need a package that includes individual add ons for these activities; more specifically a package that doesn’t force you to stay at the hotel.

My second issue is the chaotic & overpriced parking really dampens the whole evening. First thing on your way in…the folded signs for parking are not illuminated well…they are incredibly hard to read in the dark. Once you finally find parking it says “get a ticket!!!” I press the button, and the gate comes up, BUT it doesn’t print you a ticket. Next you’ll find the arrows in the parking garage are amusingly contradictory. Once you’re parked you get out head towards the convention center entrance; painted on the walls “bring your ticket with you!!” You didn’t give me a ticket…we do the whole experience…come back out. We see the ticket machine as we walk into the garage, it says “if you lost your ticket please pay here” i didn’t lose my ticket you never gave me one but okay I’ll pay it. So we get our ticket for real this time and get in the car. We file into a line that is building up fast (remember it wasn’t crowded tonight!) I wonder what’s taking so long. We finally get to the thing, and it’s same dang ticket machine. I insert the ticket I just got, and it spits it back out “says unable to read” I tried forwards, backward, upside down…every which way twice. It spit it out every-time, so then I press call for assistance. It rings five times, no answer. So in order to not be more of a burden to the ten cars behind me, I pay for ANOTHER ticket. That’s another $30 on top of the $30 that I JUST paid. I am gonna try to get a refund, but I am not hopeful that the hotel will be...

Horrible parking staff scared my 5 year old child while parking and the rest of the experience was ruined by this. He didn’t want to get out of the car after we parked and kept asking “what if the scary parking lady who yelled is out there?” He was looking over his shoulder and was jumpy the long walk in.

The actual exhibit/experience was okay. It was, as I expected, over priced and short lived. The bathrooms were dirty. One stall was missing a door so everyone got to watch my two year old go pee. Going down the ice slides was fun but the rest of it didn’t interest my kids 2 and 5.

The parking situation is out of control. The price is high—$27 and must fluctuate to optimize holiday profits—permanent parking signage has literal duct tape placed over regular prices. And temporary signs were put up in their place. But the price wasn’t the main problem. The people were. An older man told me the price, I was surprised and asked him if there were other parking options he said “all I know is this garage.” When I pulled over to a loading zone and put on my hazards to google if there were other options and move funds around so I could pay for this garage if there wasn’t an alternative— the old man said “you need to get out of here!” I asked where I was supposed to go and he helpfully offered “away” I was parked in a loading area with my hazards on…I’m still not sure what I was doing wrong—whatever it was, it must have been against the rules so he called his boss. His boss, a woman in her mid thirties, who proudly told me her name was Lindsey Wiggins and she would love it if I complained about her, had an abundance of rage and banged on my window, when I explained myself she started making fun of me for not having money to park. She told me I was stopping traffic when I was in a white striped loading zone with no one else there. It’s true, I’m not the normal class of people who make such expenditures, but I’m a single mom who saved to give my kids a nice experience and she single handedly took that away from us. Lindsey made fun of my 2011 Prius and yelled in such a way that my five year old was saying “go mama go, let’s leave and get of here we don’t have to see the ice” I rolled up my window and Lindsey kept yelling through the closed window. I moved when a car came from the opposite direction and needed to use the same loading zone to exit. We will never go back to Gaylord and I work in training and development and build workshops and training sessions, I will advise against using Gaylord when I’m involved in scouting locations for summits etc. That’s not an okay way to treat people—even...