Review: The Museum of Ice Cream Miamifeatured

There were sprinkles on Collins Ave. As we crossed at 33rd St and walked towards the white stucco building on 34th, we noticed more of the colorful plastic flakes on the sidewalk, pooling in the dip where the sidewalk meets the street like our very own breadcrumb trail: we were nearing the Museum of Ice Cream Miami.

Miami was announced as the latest destination for the Instagram phenom right after we booked our Christmas cruise onboard the Splendor, and in our form of sticky sweet luck, would open to the public the day after we arrived in Florida (after a brief soft opening for Miami’s Art Basel week).

The Museum of Ice Cream first opened in New York, and then expanded to Los Angeles and San Francisco, as an interactive art homage to everything frosty creamy sweet. In other words, the museum exists for no other reason than as a playground for wannabe amateur photogs and Instagram models. And since I unabashedly fall in the former category, we booked tickets (available online only here) as soon as we landed in Florida, choosing the time slot with the most available tickets in the hopes it would mean less people to crop out of my pictures.

Snapping our way through this social media playground wouldn’t come cheap, either: tickets to the Miami location were $38 + taxes and fees (which brought it up another $10), but promised endless photo ops and a bunch of yummy treats.

So we spent an hour and a half snapping and snacking our way through the seven exhibits housed by the museum. Was it worth it? Read on.

The Museum of Ice Cream Miami: Entrance

The Museum of Ice Cream is located right on A1A, Collins Ave and 34th St, but if you missed the errant sprinkles leading the way, the building is hard to miss: MUSEUM OF ICE CREAM is emblazoned at the front in bright millennial pink (above a trove of plastic palm trees, also millennial pink), and a (you guessed it) millennial pink velvet rope cordons off the entrance from the passersby on the street wondering what the fuck they just walked upon.

We flashed our mobile tickets at the door, where a girl in a pink MOIC shirt checked our ID’s (ticket resale is prohibited and they’ll check to make sure the name on your ticket matches your ID), made small talk about what brought us to Miami and where we’re from (dropping that she’d heard that our hometown of Chicago is the next location for the MOIC, take that for what it’s worth) and telling us that we could enter early if we wanted to. Ticket holders have to enter within 15 minutes of their reservation time, so we caught the tail end of the previous group.

The reception room is all pink. Everywhere. The walls, the floors, the signage…it’s all pink. Pink is hard to filter. I don’t love pink. But you know. I’m here. I asked for this when I entered my credit card number into the payment field. An ice cream fortune teller is the first stop. She’s probably there to pace the groups so that there’s not too many people in the first exhibit at once. I assume, I don’t ask, because I’m not the faux fortune teller here: she’s the one asking the questions. What’s our favorite flavor? That’s our ice cream name. Hers is Rocky. Stephanie’s is Pistachio. That’s accurate. Stephanie loves pistachio ice cream. I say Strawberry, even though strawberry ice cream is not my favorite. My favorite is Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, but what kind of name would that be?

Rocky pulls out a deck of tarot cards and asked us each to pick one. I pulled the Trophy card. She asked me if I had a special someone in my life, and unless my frequent flier miles count, the answer to that was a big n-o. That’s okay, Rocky says. I’m destined to marry a wildly successful man and become a fantastic trophy wife. I smile, nod and make my way towards the staircase as she moves on to the next group.

Exhibit 1 – Bunns Shake

The first exhibit at the MOIC is an ode to the 1950s diner and milkshake culture. The bar stools are pink, the walls are pink, but the floors are a sparkly gold. On one side of the room is a vintage arcade game, but it stands there ignored and unused: everyone is either taking Boomerangs at the Shake Your Bunns sign on the wall, or taking videos of the mini milkshakes coming fresh off a conveyor belt, where a MOIC employee swiftly applies a dollop of (pink) whipped cream. While everyone waits in line to shake their tush for the Instas, we finish our treats and head onwards.

We pass the courtyard on our way to the second exhibit, where we’re walked through the rules of the museum: take as many pictures as you want wherever you want, but you can only go forwards and not backwards (so once you walk out of an exhibit, you can’t go back into it) and any treats offered in any given room must be consumed in that room. We linger a bit – the stark white walls are a bright contrast against the clear blue sky, and high above us floats a sculpture of multicolored balloons. Everyone around me dances. I take pictures of the balloons against the sky. It really is a gorgeous day.

Exhibit 2 – Fan-Tastic

After ascending a (pink) staircase, we open a door that leads us into the next exhibit: Fan-Tastic. A MOIC employee leads two dozen people in another dance party in front of giant ice cream cones with fans spinning on the front. I’m not much of a group dancer (or, you know, a dancer at all…at least not without a vodka soda lime in hand), so I stand in the back and Boomerang. This is probably my least favorite room, but the kids in the group seem to dig it.

Exhibit 3 – The Jungle

In the next room, we’re handed frozen chocolate covered banana bites and welcomed to The Jungle, a bubblegum pink room with pink palm trees that grow plastic fruit. A cherry swing sits near the entrance and Stephanie begs me not to pull the obvious Miley/Wrecking Ball thing. Instead, we join a growing line to take a picture on a banana shaped swing. And we wait. And wait more. Everyone wants the perfect shot. This is the jungle – not the plastic trees and the neon fruit – it’s a never ending line of people waiting to take the same picture and complaining about how long the person in front of them is taking in a room that’s absorbing all of the afternoon sunlight and converting it into hair ruining humidity. Stephanie doesn’t want a picture. I can’t pose to save my life so I swing like I’m a child at a playground, probably offending the Instagram Gods somewhere with my lame lack of creativity.

We leave the line for the banana swing and join the next line to take a picture in the “secret” coconut room. A MOIC employee makes an announcement asking everyone to be courteous in their picture taking and snap their pictures and make their way to the next exhibit so the next person in line can take their pictures. The party ahead of us doesn’t heed the warning and takes no less than 100 pictures on three different kinds of cameras (a real camera, a camera phone and an Instax) before deciding they’re satiated. I observe, trying to absorb their posing prowess. It doesn’t work and I end up in what I call the junior high gym class pose because that’s just about all the movement I can manage in a room that is, for all intents and purposes, a (pink) mirrored crawlspace.

Exhibit 4 – Melted Ice Cream

The next exhibit isn’t really much of an exhibit: it’s a faux ice cream shop that doesn’t scoop, but in an oversized freezer against the wall, offers milk cartons of melted ice cream. It tastes like a milkshake and offers only the slightest relief from the rising midday heat. A letter board asks what your favorite ice cream is. I skip it because, you know, I’ve already lied once and chocolate chip cookie dough is too time intensive to find the letters for.

Exhibit 5 – Sand Castle Dreams

The next exhibit is the sand castle room, where giant pink sandcastles honor the beach culture of Miami. In the middle of the room is a giant (pink) sand pit where you can make your own sand castle, but I’m not here to make sand castles – I’m here for the Instas (and I don’t want my hands to smell like Play Doh for the rest of the day). We take our shots and keep walking.

Exhibit 6 – Sweet Sculptures Studio

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to take a walk through the Gumdrop Forest of Candyland, this next exhibit at the MOIC might get you close. A series of larger than life plastic candy confections are waiting to be stacked on tall poles, ready to be arranged however you want them to be.

This is not the most photoworthy room so we head towards the back, where there’s another snack: a variety of gummy candies. The sugar high can only help fuel creativity, right? Because I still can’t pose. Not if my life depended on it. I probably should have brushed up on some America’s Next Top Model reruns before we left.

Exhibit 7 – Pop

Up another flight of stairs (the museum is four stories total) was the roof. This was my favorite room. As we entered, an overly enthusiastic MOIC scooper offered us key lime ice cream, in either a cup or a cone. The ice cream was super tasty, and since it was cooler outside than it was in the museum, we enjoyed them out on the terrace, where there were some beautiful views of the gorgeous art deco style buildings lining Collins Ave and the water.

Back inside was a cascading display of colorful plastic popsicles and a variety of props (clear stools, non-tethered popsicles) to pose with. I stand and smile. Stephanie’s already over it.

Exhibit 8 – The Sprinkle Pool

As we exited the Pop exhibit, we followed the signs on the ground that point us in the direction of the marquee exhibit: the sprinkle pool. As we wait for the elevator, a MOIC employee tells us to start thinking through our poses and angles because this would be a timed experience. I’m all set there because, you know, my signature pose is to stand and smile. Sometimes I get sassy and point a toe or pop a hip.

When we get down to the pool, we’re asked to place our shoes and bags in (pink) gym lockers. A MOIC employee advises us to just go in and get our pictures as we wait, even though the pool is filled with people tossing sprinkles and Boomeranging like there’s no tomorrow. I tentatively dip my toes in, unsure of how deep this pool goes. It’s a solid foot or so and I immediately sunk in, rapidly enveloped by colorful plastic quicksand. Stephanie tried to get a picture that didn’t have a meticulously posed Insta queen or an overly enthusiastic child gesticulating in the margins, but it just wasn’t going to happen. Too many people grabbing at too many plastic sprinkles in a very small pool. I give up on the idea of a photo where I do a zenlike float on top of the sprinkle pool and settle for the junior high gym pose…again.

I get out and switch with Stephanie. The MOIC employee is trying to rotate the current group out and a new group in, but no one’s going anywhere anytime fast. We try to wait it out, but these sprinkle tossing Boomerang experts aren’t going anywhere. We can’t get a picture in the pool. It’s impossible to even get a semi-decent picture of the pool. The classic feet-in-sprinkles pose is the best we can do.

The Grand Exit

We grab our shoes from the lockers and make our way down a flight of stairs, just past a row of gold gym showers. And in typical fashion, the visit ends in a bright pink gift shop, where you can take home a sprinkle tiara (for $42) or a keychain ($12) to commemorate the experience. I have a nine-day cruise ahead of me to spend my money on terrible souvenirs, so we exit unceremoniously through a nondescript door and onto Collins Ave.

I did have one souvenir, though: plastic sprinkles gathered in the ankle cuffs of my pants, shaking out and leaving a trail up Collins Ave as we walked back to the car. And they were the gift that kept on giving: we would continue to find them for the rest of our trip: in the car, in the carpet of our hotel room, in our luggage. There’s a solid chance there are still plastic sprinkles in my suitcase.

Was it worth it?

The MOIC was an interesting experience, for sure. But it was also an expensive experience. It was fun…and stressful. Everyone is paying all of this money literally just to take pictures for their social media feeds. For that much money, everyone wants the perfect picture, and with that many people, it’s nearly impossible to get the perfect picture. I’m glad we went, just to experience it once. But I wish there was more commentary. Who made these installations? What do they convey? How do they connect to the Miami community? Ice cream is the medium, not the message. And there is a message here – it’s just lost in a sea of plastic sprinkles, somewhere inside the (pink) walls.