We All Scream For The Museum of Ice Cream

The Museum of Ice Cream - delicious treat or not worth the hype? I think it might be a bit of both. When you hear about something so intriguing and scroll through image after image of people eating tasty ice cream, it's easy to be convinced to splurge on a ticket. Heck, I was persuaded to venture to the museum twice - once in August 2016 when it was just a pop-up location and then again this past Christmas for their annual "Pinkmas" celebration.

If I am being honest though, my two experiences there had exactly two things in common: I got to eat a bunch of ice cream and I got to overpay each time. Don't get me wrong, I am easily entertained and I am happy with the unique features and exhibits each had to offer. But overall, I would say that the price they charged was just slightly too high for what they offered.

 

Museum of Ice Cream Pop-Up - August 2016 

When the Museum of Ice Cream Pop-Up came to New York City in 2016, it was advertised as a limited engagement that would sell out quickly (and it did!). However, for something that was supposed to be so exclusive and hard to come by, it certainly didn't feel that way when we arrived.  We showed up a little before our scheduled time only to find an extremely long line of people already waiting to get in. After waiting for what felt like forever to finally be shown into the Museum, we entered to find it just as crowded inside as it was outside. On the plus side, we were greeted with our first scoop of ice cream to taste once we got there.

Our first stop in the Museum was the Cone Room, which was decorated with a wall of fake waffle cones and other cone artwork and installation. Within it, there was a station that was making edible sugar balloons filled with helium. I am not exactly sure what this had to do with ice cream quite frankly, but we wanted to try everything the pop-up had to offer. So we waited. And waited. And then almost gave up. But in the end, we got our sugar balloons. They made for an interesting and fun photo, but they were awkward to eat and we definitely didn't get a full "helium" inhalation experience. 

Next up was the Scoop Room where the Museum attempted to create the largest group ice cream sundae. They had a big bowl that each attendee was able to add one scoop of "ice cream" to. I put ice cream in quotes because, although edible, it was not typical ice cream and had additives that kept it from melting. It did not look appealing at all, had a weird consistency and we didn't even consider tasting it.

From there you walked through the Chocolate Room, which was basically just a projection of chocolate onto the wall. It was nothing to write home about and we would have been fine skipping the whole chocolate exhibit all together. 

After that was the room we were originally most excited for - the Sprinkle Pool Room. I don't know exactly what we were expecting, but what we found was extremely disappointing in every way. It was basically a tiny pool of small pieces of plastic. They didn't have the shape or colors of sprinkles and the whole pool barely fit two people. With the large crowds at the exhibit, we had to wait a long time to get a chance to climb in and even then, we had about 2 minutes to take a photo and get out so the next group could have a chance. 

 

Moving on from there, we entered what was the best and most interesting part of the museum - an area where you ate a "pill" that altered the way you tasted foods. So things that were typically sour instead tasted sweet and vice versa. They offered an ice cream cone and a lemon wedge to each visitor for the experiment - it was a weird sensation, but very cool to experience. 

The Museum also offered some history tidbits throughout, as well as some Photo Ops such as an ice cream scoop see-saw and an ice cream sandwich swing. However, with the amount of people they let in at once, we ended up walking past most of it. They weren't cheap on the ice cream, but at the same time it was also not plentiful. It was definitely more focused on being a Museum for ice cream themed photos and decorations then on eating ice cream.

Museum of Ice Cream: Permanent Exhibit - December 2022

A lot of time had passed since our first experience at the Museum of Ice Cream Pop-Up and with new permanent exhibits and a Pinkmas holiday theme, I bit the bullet and bought us tickets to check it out again. They were definitely not cheap tickets - approx. $45 per adult and then another $8+ per ticket processing fee. In the end though, the thought of unlimited ice cream and a special Christmas theme won me over. 

The difference between our two visits was definitely night and day. Most importantly, there were only a handful of people in the Museum with us during our recent Pinkmas visit. We did not have to wait for ice cream, fight to take photos or stand in line to slide down the three store spiral slide through the middle of the museum (one of the new fun features!)

When we first got there, we were greeted with mini glasses filled with Pink Hot Cocoa - they were delicious and a great touch. We were tempted to ask for more, but knew we had a lot of ice cream eating ahead of us. At the entrance you could see the spiral slide, which helped build up the excitement for what we were about to experience.

The first room we entered was just a stand with soft-serve vanilla ice cream with cookie dough toppings and a freezer with cherry ice-pops. It was decorated with a few pink Christmas trees and had a handful of seats, but not much else to see. From there we moved into some other weird rooms - one with a disco ball and mirrors, one filled with fake sweets where you could make paper gingerbread houses (which neither Craig or I could figure out how to do), then another modeled after a pink subway card, and the last just had a bunch of pink and yellow bananas hanging from the ceiling. Interesting? Sure. Necessary or on theme? Probably not.

After that came rooms with more ice cream that each had their own little gimmick, as well as even more pink Christmas trees. You could spell out words and phrases with alphabet magnets, take a photo with a giant ice cream scoop, pretend to be inside a snow globe, put an paper ornament on a tree, or sit in a butterfly chair. And of course, let's not forget about the three story slide.

I have to tell you, they were not kidding with the unlimited ice cream - every room had a station with new flavors and types of ice cream to try. The amount of ice cream offered was far beyond that of the pop-up and probably more than any one person really needs to eat (but of course we ate it anyway). Some of the flavors we tried included chocolate fudge, caramel apple, peppermint, peanut butter and orange creamsicle. Would we say they were the best quality and tasting ice cream we've eaten? Definitely not. But tasty? Absolutely. 

 

The second to last room was the infamous sprinkle pool. They definitely learned their lesson when it came to this, because they dedicated quite a lot of space to it this time around. The plastic in the pool took the shape of sprinkles, albeit larger ones, and they were shades of pink to go with the theme. They had a smaller adults only pool, plus a larger main pool that even had a slide you could go down straight into the pool (of course, I slid down twice). We got some great photos before Craig got skeeved out thinking about how dirty the pool probably was. 

 

The Museum ended in a room of interactive games that were meant more for kids, so we walked through that pretty quickly. We definitely left feeling stuffed with a phone full of fun photos. To call this a Museum of Ice Cream is a little misleading though, as it was not filled with facts and history you would typically expect from a museum. Was the hype worth the cost though? We're not really sure unfortunately.