N-Ice

After a full day at Animal Kingdom and Epcot, there was still more fun in store that evening. And my husband and I didn't know exactly what it was going to be -- our friends were taking us somewhere for a surprise. We wound up at the Icebar.

While the Icebar does have a more conventional lounge area for dancing and drinks, its main draw is a separate room inside a giant freezer. You're given a coat and gloves to wear (a real novelty in Orlando), and then make your way inside an actual freezer set to 18 degrees. Inside, everything is made of ice -- the bar, the tables and chairs, the decorations, and even the drinks themselves. Every drink you ordered (and they were tasty) came in a half-inch thick tumbler made of ice.

When you did leave the freezer for a while to warm up, that didn't mean you had to leave the wacky drinks behind. In the lounge area, there were drinks served in giant test tubes, as smoking dry ice made their cherry garnishes bob up and down...

...and another group of drinks served with a flaming garnish.

After days and days of lots and lots of walking, no one was up for dancing. But we happily rotated between the freezer and the lounge for an hour or two, enjoying the odd atmosphere. It was way too expensive to be a regular thing, so it's just as well it's not a Denver local club. But for a fun, celebratory night, it was great fun -- and a nice change of pace after a week of being various shades of uncomfortably hot all the time.