The Polar Express will roll into Gaylord Palms Resorts for the holiday season again this year.
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The Kissimmee resort’s annual story-driven ice-sculpture display – Gaylord now stylizes its name as “ice!” as opposed to the “ICE!” of previous years – will feature elements from the animated film “The Polar Express,” starring Tom Hanks. It’s a return engagement. The 2004 film was the inspiration for Gaylord Palms’ 2019 event.
“Our customers constantly talk about when is it coming back, and I think we’ve been like ‘Yeah, we’ll eventually rotate around again’ or ‘We’ll find the right opportunity,’” said Niko Nickolaou, senior director of special events and creative for Gaylord Hotels.
“The stars have aligned this year, and we are super-excited to bring Polar Express back,” he said.
Visitors can expect to see an enormous black-ice version of the film’s locomotive again and other familiar scenes. There have been changes since 2019. Last year, Polar Express was stationed at the Gaylord National Resort in Maryland.
“Every one of our ice shows, as it rotates and debuts at a new spot, it grows. It’s tweaked to be more efficient for guests,” Nickolaou said. “Creatively, there are little adjustments to kind of tie the story a little bit better or interactives that are kind of evolved and developed. So, there’s always something that we’re doing with it.”
Definitely returning is the slide room, featuring five downward slopes made of ice that folks ride down to ground level. This year it represents the film’s Glacier Gulch. The 2019 version was the first time Gaylord utilized forced perspective, Nickolaou said.
“On the left-hand side of the slide room, the scene where the runaway train was happening, you have the train racing down the hills, and then you have the slides over to the right,” he said. “So you have the train wrapped all the way up there with the big moon behind it.”
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Work is underway on the exhibit, which opens Nov. 14. Workers started forming ice blocks in June. A set of artisans from Harbin, China – a hotbed for ice sculptures – will arrive in Kissimmee in late September to begin crafting the pieces.
The “ice!” display is the centerpiece of the resort’s Christmas at Gaylord Palms event, which includes activities such as snowball throwing, ice tubing. Christmas shopping and the Naughty or Nice Escape Room. The resort is introducing a Christmas Carousel inside the Snow Factory, and entertainment will include “#LIT,” a light show in the atrium, and a stage production called “Pomp, Snow & Cirque-umstance.”
Once complete, visitors will walk through a dozen scenes built from 2 million pounds of ice inside a structure kept at a below-nippy 9 degrees. The exhibit has evolved to include more selfie-friendly/Instagrammable moments. Designers incorporated more lighting and colors over the years.
“I think I talked about the color gold for a good day, and it was all different hues of gold to get the perfect one,” Nickolaou said.
“We continue to push the envelope of what artistry can be done through the medium of ice,” he said. “You’re going to start seeing those new techniques across the portfolio.”
The “ice!” franchise is expanding this year, with new locations in San Diego and Phoenix, bringing the total to eight resorts. And three new intellectual properties are being introduced: “Home Alone” at Gaylord Opryland in Nashville, “The Nightmare Before Christmas” at Gaylord Rockies near Denver and Harry Potter at Gaylord Texas near Dallas.
“Our partners are amazing, and to be able to be trusted to to get access to these stories and carve it in this medium is so flattering, and it really kind of speaks to the artistry of what this project is,” Nickolaou said.
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