A frozen wonderland is about to take over the desert. JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge Resort is preparing to open ice! featuring Elf on Nov. 18, 2026, a 19,000-square-foot attraction built from 6,700 blocks of ice weighing a combined 2 million pounds, according to 12News.
The attraction, themed around New Line Cinema's holiday classic, will run from Nov. 18, 2026, through Jan. 3, 2027, marking its Phoenix debut, according to Gaylord Hotels. The resort's own event page echoes that milestone, noting the display is “making its Phoenix debut this year,” per the JW Desert Ridge Christmas site.
Five Slides, Including One Just for Kids
Visitors can expect five two-story ice slides carved into the display, including one scaled down for younger guests, the resort's site notes. The whole experience is kept at a brisk 9 degrees Fahrenheit to preserve the ice sculptures, per the same Gaylord Hotels announcement.
That kind of cold is no accident. Elsewhere in the country, Moody Gardens keeps its own ICE LAND attraction in Galveston at the identical 9°F, a detail the venue says is necessary to protect its sculptures from melting, according to a Moody Gardens blog post.
How the Numbers Compare
Figures describing the scale of the ice! franchise vary depending on the source. The JW Desert Ridge Christmas site advertises 6,700 blocks of ice totaling 2 million pounds for the Phoenix display, while Gaylord Hotels' broader materials describe the ice! franchise as using more than two million pounds of hand-carved ice sculptures and note that artisans hand-carve 60,000 ice blocks. The two sources do not clarify whether those figures describe the same scope or different versions of the attraction.
Gaylord Hotels also says the sculptures are the work of more than 300 expert artisans from Harbin, who spend roughly 40 days carving the ice using techniques passed down through generations. Moody Gardens' ICE LAND, a separate holiday attraction in Galveston, similarly reports using more than 2 million pounds of ice to build each year's exhibit, with that season's Caribbean Christmas theme running from Nov. 21, 2026, to Jan. 2, 2027.
Part of a Bigger Holiday Expansion
Phoenix is one of eight U.S. destination resorts getting an ice! attraction in 2026, part of an expansion that also includes a debut at Gaylord Pacific Resort in Chula Vista, California, according to Gaylord Hotels. The 2026 rollout spans eight distinct themes nationwide, transforming familiar Christmas stories into frozen worlds at resorts across the country, per So Much Christmas.
For Phoenix, where triple-digit summers are the norm, a 9-degree indoor ice gallery themed around Buddy the Elf offers a novelty that few other local attractions can match this holiday season. The exact scale of the ice behind it may be described differently depending on which company materials you read, but the basic pitch is the same: a massive, hand-carved winter escape built entirely indoors in the desert.
