Thinking up things to do with the kids over winter break? Check out ICE! at Gaylord National Resort: an amazing 9-degree winter wonderland full of larger-than-life sculptures of Grinch and his crew! While there, have a blast sliding down 2 story tall tubing hills at Reindeer Rush Tubing, twirl like Johnny Weir at indoor ice skating in Winter Square and more! We were recently invited to check all this action out and write about it for all of y’all – so check out the great time we had and read up on our tips to make your visit extra special!
ICE! Featuring Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas!
After we bundled ourselves up with the coveted (and provided) blue parkas, we made our way over to the ICE! area. This year’s ICE! features colorful characters from Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas – all carved from more than two million pounds of ice!
Based on experience (and the ICE! tips we previously shared here), we knew to wear layers, keep our phones in our back pockets and bring touchscreen-friendly gloves, among other things.
As How the Grinch Stole Christmas is one of our favorite family movies, we were excited to quickly skip from sculpture to sculpture, pointing out the Grinch, Sam and our girl’s fave – Cindy Lou! (FYI – Skipping also helps get some warmth into our bods as it’s a whopping 9 degrees inside!!!)
Towards the middle of ICE! fun, kids (& adults!) will be delighted to find some Ice Slides for all to enjoy! While you can stay inside ICE! as long as you want, we found 20-25 minutes to be the max we could do – given the low temps. By this point anyway, the kiddos were excited to head back inside the Christmas Village and check out the Reindeer Rush Tubing. What surprised us most was how much fun we – the adults – would have on these magical tubes!
Reindeer Rush Tubing
Once inside, we warmed ourselves up with some hot chocolate from a nearby drink stand (Priceless tip: Buy 1 and ask for additional cups to then split among the kids; they’ll never finish one on their own and you now saved yourself $4 or so!). We then made our way to the Reindeer Rush Tubing – a new experience at Gaylord National Resort. This was honestly SO MUCH FUN!
The pic’s blurry due to squeals of excitement!
After you grab a tube, you make you way up the stairs to face this 15-foot-high, four-land ice tubing hill. (The tubes are a wee bit heavy, so if your child is under 6-years old or so, you’ll probably be carrying their tube up the stairs.)
Heave ho, it’s up the stairs we go!
The brochures says, “It’s all the fun of sledding with the added speed of ice!” and that’s for sure! We all had a blast going this way and that while bombarding down the hills on out tubes! And with unlimited rides, this thrill alone is worth your visit to the Christmas Village at Gaylord National Resort!
Ice Skating in Winter Square
We wrapped up our fun time with some indoor ice skating in Winter Square. At this point, our youngest was exhausted from all the fun so she headed back inside Christmas Village with Route One Hubs while our firstborn and I had some fun attempting to stay upright / do some figure eights…! 😉
Christmas on the Potomac
Visiting the Gaylord National over the holiday season has become a tradition for our family. There’s so much to see and do that you can really make a whole day of it! And while the tickets for ICE! are on the pricey side – it’s an amazing, memorable experience to witness these true frozen works of art – especially when they’re sculpted into your favorite Christmas movie characters!
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Gaylord National Resort is located at 201 Waterfront Street, National Harbor, Maryland. Now through December 30th, ICE!: $25-$40; Reindeer Rush Tubing: $20.99/person; Ice Skating $16.99.
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Route One Fun received complimentary tickets to attend the above activities at Gaylord National Resort. No additional compensation was received and all opinions – especially the funny ones 🤣 – are our own.
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