Trade in the triple digit weather for a 23-degree Fahrenheit (-5 degrees Celsius) climate at Minus5 Ice Bar—one of the coolest places to chill in Sin City. “We put about 4,000 people a week through the ice bar in the summertime,” says Noel Bowman, president of M5 Management Co. “It’s in heavy, heavy demand. We’re equally busy all year long. We get a fair amount of people in the winter as well.”
With two Vegas locations (The Shoppes at Mandalay Place at Mandalay Bay and Monte Carlo), Minus5 Ice Bar is far more than a bar. “We are an attraction with bar and nightclub elements,” Bowman says. “We whisk you into a winter wonderland with 90 tons of ice, put coats on you, and you drink cocktails out of glasses made out of ice. You get to interact with ice. We have photographers roaming around to memorialize your experience. And it’s a blast. It’s a great way to cool off from the heat.”
Everything inside the ice bar is made of Canadian ice. The concept, Bowman says, came from pop-up ice hotels he saw in Europe 10 years ago. “The hotels would erect in the middle of winter and would melt away come springtime.” With that inspiration, and seeing ice exhibits in China and elsewhere, Bowman opened the Mandalay Bay location in 2008. “We managed to create this ice oasis in the middle of the Mohave desert.”
To build something of this magnitude, however, takes 10 ice carvers more than 1,600 hours. “When we build from the ground up, we try to get the best of the best,” Bowman explains. “There are only a few of these guys in the country. There are not many who know what they’re doing at this level. We bring the crew and it takes about two weeks. Each ice brick weighs around 250 pounds and it’s brick by brick, block by block. They build the structure and from there carve art out of it. It’s quite the process.”
And Minus5 Ice Bar is always evolving. “One of the great things about the experience is that we can always put up something new. This incarnation (at Mandalay Bay) is about Vegas. We put all of the iconic casinos and the Vegas skyline and buildings in some of the walls. Game of Thrones is really hot right now, so we did a replica of the show’s iron throne. Everyone loves to sit on it, get their photo taken and put it up on Facebook. We also have an underwater area. It’s a fish wall where the lights go a certain way. We have a major LED light show going on in there. It almost feels like you’re underwater swimming with the ice fish. That’s the beauty. We’re always recreating ourselves.”
And Monte Carlo isn’t the same as Mandalay Bay. “Ice is completely different over there,” Bowman says. “We have a Route 66 theme over there where you’re going down the highways of Arizona in the back of a Cadillac made of ice.”
Bowman says the ice bar stays up to date on current events and most recently featured Batman and Superman ice sculpture to coincide with Dawn of Justice. The ice bar keeps up with pop culture, too. “We did a deal with Kim Kardashian, who got married to a basketball player (Kris Humphries) years ago. We replicated her ring, a 500-pound replica—they got divorced a month later, so we actually smashed the ring. We like to have fun with it. We don’t take ourselves too seriously.”
Some might not want to freeze their assets off for that long in the ice bar, but some do. On average, guests last about 45 minutes inside, while others take their experience to another level. “The daytime is a lot more museum-type people who walk around and are curious about the ice, but as the night goes on it turns more into a rowdier party crowd. We’ve had people stay in for four hours. Guys like to get down in their boxers and have contests on who can stay in the longest. There are a lot of funny things that happen at the ice bar.”
As far as cocktails inside the ice bar, the Iceman is one of the most popular drinks on the menu. “It’s basically our version of a piña colada. And our thought was that you’re drinking a coconut-inspired drink; you’re thinking beach, but you’re in the cold. A lot of the drinks have a tropical flair to them.” The warm lounge outside the ice bar features different drinks that use dry ice, giving off a fog and smoke effect.
Besides innovative libations, Bowman says the 3,000-square-foot lounge at Mandalay Bay is perfect for large events and private functions. “One of the main reasons why we revamped this location is because we wanted to double the size to accommodate for the big demand.” In terms of a permanent ice bar, it’s now the largest ice bar in the world. Many people host their events at nightclubs and banquet halls, but Bowman says the ice bar adds something completely new for such events. “We had a car company come in. We made the Toyota Tacoma, their latest version 2015 (at the time), out of ice and guests drove the ice truck. It’s a neat, neat place to have an event in.”
Mandalay Bay, 11 a.m.-2 a.m. Sun.-Thurs., 11 a.m.-3 a.m. Fri.-Sat. 702.632.7714
Monte Carlo, 11 a.m.-2 a.m. Sun.-Thurs., 11 a.m.-3 a.m. Fri.-Sat. 702.643.7800
