Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center Aircation: Recap & Hotel Review + ICE Event Photos

First and foremost this is not a hotel I would recommend staying at especially if you do not have kids. The walls are paper thin, you can hear entire conversations of the people in other rooms even if you have your t.v. turned up. There are a lot of kids everywhere so the probability of you being placed in a room next to kids is extremely high. Parking is terrible. I am just going to say this, parking valet took us ten minutes, but getting our car out of valet took us thirty to forty minutes. And the bed was probably the most uncomfortable bed I have ever slept in in a good 14 years. It is very shocking that this highly regarded hotel was in my opinion subpar. As someone who frequents Orlando a few times a year for my entire life everyone has always spoken highly of it. It did not live up to the hype.

We ventured out to Orlando for a short staycation to see ICE at Gaylord Palms. Below are photos of the trip as well as the ICE exhibit. I hope you all enjoy!

xoxo

Atrium view from the room

#44 tree that I posed in front of, I decided to do something wacky.

Disney Springs

Paddlefish has a great view of the river as well as the hot air ballon

We got some tree photos on the Christmas tree boardwalk at night. This definitely helped me up my count for the number of Christmas trees I could pose in front of this year. There were at least ten, but some were in really dark areas so we kept it simple.

Christmas tree boardwalk

Old Hickory Steakhouse located in the Atrium of Gaylord Palms Resort

So, going to the ICE event was the whole reason we stayed at  Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center. You can reserve your hotel room along with your tickets at a discounted price and they actually open the event one hour early in the morning for hotel guests only. You don't want to underestimate how busy it gets. We came last year during the daytime only to find not only was parking horrendous and we had to park almost 25 minutes away in "over flow" parking, but it was a three hour wait in line just to get to the entrance of ICE (and that was the entrance to the actual line). Anyway, so that is why this year I knew exactly what to do.

So, ICE is basically a 20 minute exhibit of carved ice sculptures. You can spend as much time in there as you want, but walking through, stopping, taking photos, it really only takes 20 minutes. We took photos of every sculpture as you can see the theme this year was "A Christmas Story". Everyone has to wear these huge blue parkas because the exhibit is kept at 9 degrees. The ironic thing is that the parkas don't have pockets! So if you go, bring some gloves and a scarf.

Coming to ICE put my tree count well into the fifties! This year will be my highest tree count ever!

I topped out at 53 trees after walking through the ICE exhibit...53 and counting!

Ragland Road Irish Pub

I realized it had been over a year since we stopped in to Ragland Road to get gluten free fish and chips so we came back to Disney Springs so I could get my fix.