Forty International Artisans Sculpt a Fantastic Winter Wonderland
How They Do It: The History, Artistry and Design
of Gaylord National Resort's Award-Winning ICE! Attraction
National Harbor, Md.—( August 25, 2009 ) Gaylord National Resort is proud to introduce the National Capital Region to Gaylord National's ICE!™ — a unique, interactive indoor wonderland created entirely of ice. The 15,000-square-foot attraction is the crowning jewel of Christmas on the Potomac, Gaylord National's more than 50-day-long celebration of the holidays.
Open to guests from November 19 to January 10, ICE! will feature TWO MILLION POUNDS of ice carved into a walk-through attraction of ten larger-than-life, three-dimensional holiday scenes, including a Nativity Scene with a 25-foot-tall ice angel and a Christmas Castle with ice slides standing more than two stories tall. Visitors will marvel at the striking detail and beautiful, theatrical renderings of beloved Christmas icons and memorable holiday scenes, all housed in a custom-built structure maintained at a temperature of nine degrees. (Winter coats will be provided!)
History & Artistry
World travelers and arm-chair anthropologists alike will find the story that lies beyond this spectacular exhibit as interesting as the displays themselves. The master carvers who devote a month to create Gaylord National's ICE! exhibit are from Harbin, the capital city of China's northernmost province, Heilongjiang, across the border from Siberia.
Harbin has hosted its world-famous "Ice and Snow Festival" for almost 25 years, welcoming approximately 800,000 visitors annually. Ice blocks are harvested from the nearby Songhua River and crafted by more than 2,000 sculptors into thousands of ice structures, ice carvings and snow sculptures displayed in a 100-acre walk-through Ice Park and a full-sized Ice City.
Although this annual rite was formalized by Harbin's mayor in 1963 and internationalized in 1985, the Harbin ice-carving tradition has deep roots. As long ago as the late Ming and early Qing dynasties of Imperial China, Heilongjiang was home to an indigenous population of forest hunters. During long, cloudy, winter nights, celestial navigation was impossible, so getting lost in the forest was a very real possibility. The hunters' ingenious solution: allowing water to partially freeze in a wooden bucket (from the outside in and the top down), upending the resulting ice block, and seating a candle in its center. The resulting organic candleholder protected the flame from the wind and magnified it, creating an effective ice lantern to light the way between settlements and hunt sites.
Even after the introduction of the compass and the electric lantern, residents honored their brave and resourceful forebears by staging informal competitions among families to see who could create the most remarkable sculptures and carvings, all illuminated by intricately fashioned ice lanterns. Over time, Harbin's traditional Ice Lantern Festival featured ever larger and more elaborate carved ice displays, from chickens, ducks and household items, to pigs, cows and barns, to today's castles, towers and famous landmarks, including the Great Wall of China, Asian pagodas and even the onion-domed churches of St. Petersburg, Russia. Many structures are so large that they rival life-size versions of the real inspirations. The "ice cathedral," for example, stands several hundred feet tall!
The astonishing skills of the Heilongjiang hunters' descendants caught the imagination of entrepreneurs Haiping Ge and Michael Wilson. Ge, a graduate of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, had been closely involved in the Chinese entertainment industry his entire professional life. Wilson, son of legendary magician and Sinophile Mark Wilson, first visited Harbin's ice festival in 1982 as a foreign exchange scholar at Beijing University. Building on their shared affinity for the wonders of Chinese culture, Ge and Wilson created International Special Attractions (ISA), a global entertainment company with offices in the U.S. and Shanghai, specializing in the presentation of entertainment and attractions in the U.S. and the People's Republic of China.
It was in 2001 that ISA teamed with Gaylord Entertainment Company to launch the unique experience that is ICE! at Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee. In 2003, the attraction debuted at Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center near Orlando, Florida; and in 2005 at Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center near Dallas, Texas. Today, ICE! has grown to become an annual event that appears exclusively at these Gaylord Hotels properties simultaneously, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. This enormously popular holiday attraction has garnered dozens of awards, including recognition from NBC's Today Show, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Southern Living and Travel + Leisure.
Design & Execution
Those who enjoy learning about feats of engineering will also take a special interest in Gaylord National's ICE! The attraction's design and execution are technical wonders in themselves.
First, the ice...
Approximately 5,000 blocks of ice are used, with each block weighing nearly 400 pounds. From production to final carving of the ice requires three months time. The ice is custom ordered from a manufacturing plant in Ohio. Three different kinds are used by the ICE! artisans:
- Clear ice, which is made using deionized, highly filtered water frozen over three days, resulting in a crystal-clear crystalline structure;
- White (or "snow") ice, which is frozen quickly, resulting in a non-crystalline, opaque block;
- Colored ice, which is produced with the addition of precisely pigmented dyes in shades including lavender, blue, pink, orange, red, green and yellow.
Next, the assembly and carving...
The custom-produced ice arrives on location in mid-October, where the artisans work for more than 30 days to build and carve the attraction. As soon as they arrive onsite, the ice blocks are loaded in to the specially constructed, highly insulated ICE! building. With its nine-inch-thick foam walls, it essentially functions as a large "cooler" to easily and efficiently maintain the internal temperature of the attraction. Carving conditions are carefully managed: if the ice is too cold, it becomes brittle, and if it's too warm, it won't chip properly, so the temperature inside the structure is lowered to its final and optimum temperature — nine degrees Fahrenheit — only when the carving work has been completed.
The artisans each have different roles in creating the exhibit. Some sculpt — one with an affinity for animal carvings, another for wreaths — while others perfectly place and assemble the ice blocks into the shapes from which the sculptors will eventually "find" their works or art. Others attend to the lighting and electrical systems that are embedded within the ice sculptures themselves. No matter their individual task or expertise, each artisan harbors an intense passion for and pride in his work.
Indeed, communication with the U.S.-based ICE! design team often transcends language barriers, as the artisans rely on their gifts of proportion, balance and symmetry to execute the designers' vision without full-scale plans. The designers, in turn, challenge the team to bring ever more life and animation to their figures, such as by creating an impossibly "off-balance" skating polar bear figure.
And finally, the presentation...
The ICE! attraction consists of jaw-dropping creations — extraordinary works of art displayed in sparkling walk-through vistas. Some of the sculptures are comprised of colored ice blocks, yielding brilliant tones and deep hues for highlights and accents. Others are illuminated internally by some of the exhibit's 1,400 specially designed LED tube lights, evoking the ice lanterns of old. Yet others are engineered to support the presence of thousands of visitors over the exhibit's lifespan, such as the ice bridge in the snow forest, the towering Christmas Castle ice slides, and the full-sized ice horse and sleigh. All are meticulously crafted by the master ice carvers of Harbin, China.
Gaylord National Resort is proud to debut ICE! for the wonderment of guests from the Washington, D.C. area, the mid-Atlantic region, and beyond. This exclusive engagement will run from Nov. 19 through Jan. 10, 2010. For more information, including how to purchase tickets or book an overnight stay, visit www.ChristmasOnThePotomac.com.
# # #
Visit www.ChristmasOnThePotomac.com to:
- See video footage of ICE!
- Download hi-res photography of ICE!
[EDITOR'S NOTE]
ICE! is exclusively licensed, produced and operated by the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center. It is accurate to refer to the attraction as "Gaylord National's ICE!" or "Gaylord National's ICE! at National Harbor." (It is not accurate to refer to the attraction as "National Harbor's ICE!".)
About Gaylord National Resort
Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center opened April 2008 along the banks of the Potomac River, less than eight miles south of the nation's capital, in National Harbor, Md., a new 300-acre waterfront destination. Gaylord National Resort is the largest-combined hotel and convention center on the Eastern Seaboard, offering 2,000 guest rooms, including 110 lavish suites; 470,000 square feet of convention, meeting, exhibit and pre-function space; acclaimed restaurants; Relâche™ Spa; Pose Ultra Lounge; and a soaring 18-story, glass-covered atrium. For more information, visit www.gaylordnational.com.
Guest Contact
Gaylord National Reservations: 877-432-8674
Media Contacts
Amie Gorrell, Director of Public Relations, 301-965-2111, agorrell@gaylordhotels.com
Carlyle Fairfax Smith, Carlyle International, 703-898-1333, carlyle@carlyleinternational.us
August 2009
