LAKE GENEVA, Wis. — After a delay due to warm weather, the Lake Geneva Ice Castles are getting back on track to open up this weekend starting on Feb. 4.
The team began building before Christmas, but with warm weather throughout the end of December and into January, they lost nearly 70% of their build. However, with this recent cold snap, the team has worked overtime to get the display ready for opening this upcoming weekend.
There are about 10,000 icicles being hand placed each day. It’s a lot of work to get Ice Castles up and running for the season — especially with temperatures in the single digits for those working outside.
“It’s been a struggle,” Wally Bullard, Ice Castles event manager, said.
Bullard said this year has been tough on the team thanks to the weather.
“It was warm for a really long time; we got really cold right before Christmas. We had some walls taller than we had now at that point, butt then the melt and the humidity came through and we really struggled,” Bullard said.
How the ice melted posed its own set of challenges; typically, the Ice Castles team said their work melts from the top first, but this time it started melting from the bottom.
“We had a unique problem for us: Usually it melts from the top down, but our build team figured out a way to use the ice that was melting and rebuilt this whole thing,” Bullard said.
Bullard said this much colder weather is coming at the right time, as they have their second chance at an opening weekend right around the corner.
“They really started like wend day last week when it started to get cold and just really have been pushing hard they worked all through the weekend,” Bullard said.
Ice Castles was originally slated to open on Jan. 27, and while that didn’t happen, this extra time they’ve had has been used to get creative and add more elements to the display.
“We’re in a situation where we are going to have a bigger and better castle because of the pushback,” Bullard said.
Ice Castles is adding a light up fairy forest, LED swings, using performers like fire dancers and even adding a sleigh ride. Not to mention, the team has had to rebuild nearly the entire structure over the past week and a half.
The project has been a labor of love that is finally approaching the finish line thanks to the cold weather we all know in Wisconsin.