Ice Carving Attraction in Orlando

I hope everyone reading this had a safe and fulfilling holiday season! This post is jam packed with fun holiday goodness, including pictures and video! Enjoy!

The Gaylord Palms resort in Orlando is an enormous place, with a massive atrium filled with tons of plants, waterfalls, rivers, walkways, reproduction stone castles, even live animals, and it's all enclosed. 

It is also home to a very popular ice carving show called, fittingly enough, ICE!, which features over two million pounds of ice carved by Chinese ice carvers flown here from China. The theme this year was Frosty the Snowman, and visitors walked through a colorful winter wonderland of ice and characters from the holiday cartoon.

It was NINE DEGREES in there. Visitors were given parkas to wear. Enjoy these pictures and video of this awesome display, which will run until January 5th, 2014.

In this blog post are pictures and videos of the ICE! exhibit and the Gaylord Palms resort itself. I'm heading back there soon!

Here's a video walkthrough of the ICE! attraction. You don't even have to freeze; I endured the cold so you don't have to.

Here are some pictures of the awesome displays, all made entirely of ice

The entrance area to the ICE! attraction

There are four slides in the "town square" part of the attraction, all made of ice, and HOLY MOTHER OF PEARL IT'S COLD IN HERE!!!

What's an attraction without merchandising? After visitors emerged from the freezing ICE! environment, they could buy hot chocolate, roasted nuts and other snacks, and lots of Christmas swag.

The two-story sports bar has more televisions than any place I've ever seen. This enormous screen is two stories tall! It would be a great set up for the ultimate man-cave! 

Three televisions beside the elevator...?? Really???

One part of the atrium was set up for a very impressive holiday concert, done up in true Orlando style. Check out the video below:

Below: All the rooms in the Gaylord Palms resort have a few of the enormous atrium which is like a self-contained biosphere. You can literally get lost exploring this resort

Our Democracy At Risk - Stop Watching Us

This phenomenal video with actors, whistle-blowers and veterans make the case that our democracy is at a crossroads. If people in this country want their freedoms, they have to stand up to protect them, or find themselves deprived of them. It's already happening, it may happen to you. The dangers to our cherished civil liberties have never been greater, and it's up to all of us to defend them.

The NSA is a wildly out of control agency intent on maintaining its power with as little oversight as possible. The Guardian newspaper, which broke the story, has set the standard in reporting on the NSA's abuses. Keep track of the latest developments with their feature The NSA Files.

The NSA cannot even follow the few constraints it has, constraints imposed upon it by Congress. Even when they are subject to rules, they disregard them. Read about that HERE.

Night At The Museum 2013

This is the third year I've organized the 501st Legion's participation in this fun event, at the Tampa History Museum, and it keeps getting bigger and better. We had a lot of fun this year, and put a lot of smiles on kids' faces. Man, does that ever get old? I think NOT!

The highlight was a group of kids who performed the Thriller Dance, and it's obvious they worked hard at this, because they were awesome. I recorded the whole dance; check it out below: