This year, I finally managed to book the "Magical Ice Kingdom" at Winter Wonderland. I tried the previous two years, but all of the spaces were taken as I had tried to arrange it too late. This year I arranged it early and decided that this would be something that we could do on Thanksgiving after our Thanksgiving lunch (Thanksgiving at Christopher's Bar and Grill), so we made our way across to Winter Wonderland for our time slot. The tickets were also discounted as Winter Wonderland had only been open for a couple of days and this first week is not as busy as the holiday season progresses.
This year's theme for the Magical Ice Kingdom was King Arthur's Kingdom. We walked around the trail and admired the woodland creatures (wolves, owls, squirrels, bears) made out of ice and large columns or stalagmites of ice rising from the floor. Pine trees seculded each area so that we could be surprised before we approached the next sculptures.
As we walked further along, we came upon the sword in the stone (or ice), a wizard (Merlin), a Celtic cross, and a large ice knight standing guard. The first larger sculpture that we came across was two jousting knights on horseback. Most of the ice used was clear, but the knights and their horses were snowy white.
After seeing the knights, we walked a few more steps to discover a fairy and a tree with a face. Merlin (pictured in one of the photographs above) was in this setting.
We walked further around, and we came to the castle with sculptures and a throne room. A photographer was taking photographs of the visitors who wanted to sit down in the thrones. Many people did do this, and they could purchae their photograph at the exit.
The lighting ranged from violet to blue in the throne room. Behind the throne room, visitors could walk up to go onto the slide. I decided to do this, wearing a cotton dress, which was not clever because obviously my legs stuck to the slide and the slide was extremely cold. This would have worked if that had provided a matt to give us to slide down on. (Wearing jeans would have worked as the material is stronger.)
After the slide fiasco, I continued to walk the trail. The next stop was a frozen fountain that people had thrown coins into.
This was followed by a sculpture of the Lady of the Lake holding King Arthur's sword while standing in the lake with two unicorns on the embankment. I thought that this one with the water was cleverly-created.
Further along the trail was the largest sculpture featuring soldiers and an archer in ice chain mail attacking a large snowy white ice dragon with glowing yellow eyes. This was impressive.
A little further along was a bar made out of ice barrels. Alcoholic of hot drinks could be purchased here. I was not able to get photographs because a large group turned up just afterwards and decided to buy some drinks and hang around the bar, but this looked awesome.
The final sculpture was a round table made of ice with a sword and chalice in the middle of the ice table. This was situated inside a stone (ice) circle of ice boulders.
I did not particularly want to leave, but we were getting a little cold by then as the temperature in the Magical Ice Kingdom was around -10 degrees Celsius so that the sculptures would not melt. When we did leave to go back outside, the outside weather felt almost tropical, and the outside weather was chilly before we entered the Magical Ice Kingdom.
I also had booked Bar Ice, Winter Wonderland's very own Ice Bar. The Ice Bar is new to Winter Wonderland this year, and it is actually a part of the same building as the Magical Ice Kingdom. We had to wait about an hour before our time slot came up, so we wandered around Winter Wonderland. Ice Bar London has a permanent location off Regent Street that changes its theme every few months, and I went the summer before last with friends and covered this in Nights Out: ICE BAR. My next post will feature my experience at Bar Ice Winter Wonderland.
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