(28 Feb 2019) LEAD IN:
An icy world of castles, fountains, slides and lights ha been created in North Woodstock, New Hampshire.
The Ice Castles resembles a scene from the movie "Frozen."
STORY-LINE:
Welcome to a winter wonderland.
Ice Castles in North Woodstock features a collection of ice tunnels, caverns and a 97-foot ice slide that cover an acre of farmland.
"It is massively popular, I think more than our founders would have ever imagined it to be," says lead builder Matt Pasciuto, adding that tickets sell out every Friday and Saturday night.
Pasciuto's team is tasked with bringing the site to life every year.
"We have a guy on our staff who programs, basically creates a light program that sends signals to each light individually to create kind of a passive light show as the night goes on," he explains.
"It's sort of set to the music. We try not to make it too intense because it does get pretty weird in here when you have like strobing lights and all that, but we do like to have kind of a little bit of a flow of color and all that. Gives a cast a little extra personality."
The attraction starts small in December, when Pasciuto and the team set up icicle farms: Metal racks that are sprayed with water to allow icicles to grow on them overnight.
The icicles are then harvested by "ice artists," who place them around more than 70 sprinklers.
"Once we turn the sprinklers on, the water starts freezing to those icicles. The water eventually freezes and starts making them grow together. They get bigger and bigger, and thicker and thicker," explains Pasciuto.
"Once they're thick enough, we place another layer of icicles on top of that and another layer on top of that, and basically grow the castle about two to three feet at a time."
It's become a popular site for marriage proposals.
Adam Schellinger and his wife Ashley started coming to the site three years ago when they first started dating.
The couple got engaged on last year's visit, the crowd immediately started cheering.
"So, we've been going ever since the first year and then, last year, it was like his deadline," says Ashley.
"So, he took me to the ice castles again and proposed, because that was our special place."
The couple married in September. The winter wonderland is one of six in North America.
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