Moody Gardens chills Galveston with $5M Ice Land

GALVESTON – Moody Gardens will turn 28,000 feet of parking lot space into an ice-sculpture park this November. The Ice Land exhibit will cost $5 million and is expected to open November 15. Parkas will be issued to people entering the exhibit.

Moody Gardens will set up a large tent in July. By November, the tent will be more than 30 feet high and chilled to a temperature of 9 degrees in order to accommodate 900 tons of ice carved into a Christmasy SpongeBob SquarePants-themed Ice Land.

The ice for the exhibit is already being created in College Station and stored in a facility in Galveston County. The exhibit will be paid for entirely by The Moody Foundation, which funds, operates and supports the city-owned tourist attraction.

Moody Gardens will continue its Festival of Lights, which will run consecutively with the Ice Land exhibit, and they will debut an educational Ice Age exhibition in November. The Ice Land exhibit will coincide with Dickens on The Strand in downtown Galveston.

Tourism officials said Monday that the Moody Gardens exhibit would be included in a concerted push to make Galveston the “Christmas Capital” of Texas — competing with places such as Grapevine and Fredericksburg.