- Tuesday, January 17, 2017 2:14 PM
- DisneyDan
Hello everyone,
Last month (December), we visited the Gaylord National in National Harbor, Maryland, for their annual Christmas offerings. If you have been following us for a while, you will know that we do this every year.
The name for the entire event is "Christmas on the Potomac", and this usually encompasses numerous offerings, such as a character dining experience, a Christmas village, gingerbread house decorating, and ICE! The themes of the dining and ICE! change every year. This year ICE! was themed to holidays from around the world, and the character dining was Charlie Brown and friends.
Let's start with the character breakfast.
While this past year was not the weakest one we have been to, it certainly was the most expensive yet. Not only does the meal go up in price every year, but this year they even charged us to get our photo with Snoopy! Apparently the reason was some lame licensing thing, which I simply didn't believe, because not only were Charlie Brown and Lucy available for any photo, the Gaylord down in Orlando had the same breakfast and did not enforce the no personal photographs rule. Why would the licensing be different within the same company? Not to mention the fact the camera they used was terrible, and in terms of licensed photos, most people with a decent smart phone could take better shots! Anyway, needless to say it made us pretty mad, and did detract a little from our enjoyment, however, the characters this year were better than last year (last year featured just two characters from Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and it was pretty dire).
Let's take a look at the characters - and yes, you do see that correctly, I did sneak a few photos of Snoopy on my phone while we were waiting!
After breakfast, before we headed into ICE!, we wandered around the hotel and checked out some of the other festive offerings. I didn't take too many photos as we have seen it all many times, and it never really changes much. We did go to meet the gingerbread man though, whose name this year had apparently been changed to Nutmeg.
Now we come to ICE! The official title this year was Christmas Around the World. As I say every year, the exhibit seems to get more and more expensive, and takes less and less time to see. We do like seeing it, and the ice sculptures are undoubtedly incredible, but I do feel that less is offered each time we go, sadly. The best part, for me, is always the ice slide, which I love to try out every time!
Have a great day everyone,
Dan.