Ice!

In Nashville, TN there's a little place called Opryland, a hotel with an indoor jungle garden, complete with a mansion on the hill, and a small Venice like town. You can take a boat ride, or go to the spa without setting foot outside. It's a fascinating place.

They like Christmas. In the winter, they put up a lot of lights, decorate the jungle with Christmas scenes and elves, and generally do cool Christmasy type things. They have a Rockettes Christmas show. They also have Ice! It's an indoor exhibit of ice sculptures, and Ice slides. I always thought this meant a room of sculptures, but we finally went in winter 2005, and it's actually better than that. It's a series of "rooms" created entirely of ice. It's 15 degrees, and they give you blue parkas to wear so you don't freeze, but you freeze anyway. The entire room is made of ice in each section. When we went, one room was a living room scene, with floors and wall, fireplace, piano, cat, dog, little girl, little boy, stairs, etc. and its ALL ice, very cool. The ice slides are in the largest room, done up to look like an ice palace (w/clear and painted ice). There were only 4 slides, 2 tall and 2 short. They are not the thrill that I have experience on wooden slides in German salt mines (More on that some other time) but they are fun enough for the kiddies. Other scenes include: a nativity scene, a large angel, a toy factory, Santa and his sleigh (but only Rudolph) a carriage you can climb into and have your picture taken, and a forest scene.

All in all, it's a very interesting time, and great for Christmasy photos. It's not too expensive, considering what it must cost to do and keep cold in Tennessee(about $12 each) but the major drawback for me is that it only takes about 15-20 minutes to walk through. It could probably take longer with kids and a shutterbug in tow, but still falls way short of my expectations in that regard. This is something that's definitely worth doing just to get it out of your system, but you wouldn't want to drive a long distance just for it, and probably won't ever do it twice. I'd give it a B.