Inside Gaylord Ice! Meet the artisans who turn 5,000 tons of ice into winter wonderlands

25.12.2023 - 15:15 / thepointsguy.com

You don't usually need a parka inside a hotel, but most hotels aren't chilled to a frosty 9 degrees Fahrenheit.

That is unless you visit one of the five Gaylord Hotels across the U.S. during their annual Ice! experience. Ice! brings favorite holiday stories like "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas," "The Polar Express" and "A Charlie Brown Christmas" to life with immersive walk-through displays created entirely from ice — 10 million pounds (5,000 tons) of it to be exact.

Related: Save up to 50% on Ice! at Gaylord Hotels for 2023

Taking that much ice and transforming it into a themed winter wonderland takes a level of creativity, skill and precision that can only be found in one place — Harbin, China. It should come as no surprise that some of the world's most prolific ice carvers originate in Harbin. The city's temperatures regularly average below freezing, and it is home to the world's largest snow- and ice-carving festival, the Harbin Ice Festival.

In early November, approximately 200 master ice artisans from Harbin, China, made the long journey to Gaylord Hotels across the U.S. to begin this year's transformation. With the help of an interpreter, TPG spoke with one such ice carver, Xu Rui, who is part of the team creating this year's "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" displays at Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center near Washington, D.C.

Each location has a different theme, and the themes change annually. This year's Ice! themes include:

You don't have to be a Gaylord Hotel guest to visit Ice! as there are individual attraction tickets available. However, if you stay at one of the hotels, you can save money on a room and ticket package.

Rui and the other artisans spent a little more than a month creating the ice installations, but their work began long before they even left China.

"Usually, it takes a couple of months to prepare ahead of time. We receive a 400-page book with hand-drawn, to-scale illustrations that show everything we will be constructing," Rui said. "We also spend a lot of time watching the movies the installations are based on to analyze the characters so we can best display them in our work," he added.

Like many of the artisans, Rui grew up in Harbin. "Harbin is a very cold place, and we are always surrounded by ice," he told TPG. "I showed an interest in ice sculpting, so my dad, who is also an artist, taught me from an early age. I started learning oil painting and sculpture and then moved into ice carving and sculpting," he continued.

Related: 10 holiday destinations for festive family fun

Other sculpture mediums are similar to working with ice.

"Being an ice artist, you first have to learn the same skills you would use in traditional sculpting," Rui explained. "Ice