This was QUITE the weekend for me and little man. After a great hike Saturday, we hit Keystone on Sunday for a little bunny hill action followed by the Dillon Ice Castles. The ice castles are one of six like it in the US and apparently a LOT of work goes into hand crafting this magical place from hundreds of thousands of icicles. Once again, pretty lucky to live in a state as amazing as Colorado.
If you’re thinking about going next year (and I’d highly recommend you don‘t wait until then, but you’ll want to go again!), it’s worthwhile to sign up for their newsletter at icecastles.com. Signing up for the newsletter gets you presale access to tickets that are 20% off the standard price. With the presale tickets, you are allowed to pick the date of your choice prior to the general public, which would likely come in handy for someone more organized than me 🤪.
The presale window is only open for a few days, so just make sure to check your email around the end of November (this year‘s email was sent on November 27th). I believe tickets went on sale to the general public this year December 26th and the castles opened on the 28th. I quite naturally forgot that I’d even bought the tickets until I began thinking about taking Breccan to Keystone over the weekend. Because I hadn’t chosen a date, I had to go to the website and select a time slot that was still open, and chose 4pm on Saturday.
We arrived a little after four and the parking was quite honestly a bit of a nightmare. People were just kind of hanging out in their cars, and with a small parking lot and timed entry, that ended up being a bit frustrating. But, it happens and we eventually found a spot. After parking we waited in line for about five minutes, chit-chatted with a pleasant employee, and went in.
This is the third time I’ve been to the Ice Castles and the second time I’ve gone with my son. Both times we’ve went he’s had an absolute blast and I’ve had a great time every time as well. Because we went around 4:15, it was still light out and cold, but not freezing. We were still bundled up from skiing and I would HIGHLY recommend waterproof pants for your whole crew unless you hate fun and don’t want to crawl around and go down the slides...it’s the ice castles people, let that inner kid shine! Oh, and remember, it IS ice, so they will have you sign a waiver and slipping and sliding can happen if you’re not careful.
There‘s plenty of tunnels to go through and two slide areas that we went down. We’d already had a long day and left right as the sun was setting and the lights in the ice were coming on. If you’re going for date night, I would highly recommend going at night. It’s completely lit up and the place takes on a whole new personality. I went two years ago with the guy I was dating and it was straight magical, romantic AF, etc. etc. Also, there will be less unsupervised children running around screaming and knocking into you...you know, if that’s not your thing 🤐.
As always, an absolute pleasure, Ice Castles. See you next year...or possibly sooner 🥰.
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