A Taste of the Museum of Ice Cream

This pop-up museum in the Meatpacking District is the ideal place to cool off and is a scoop of heaven for ice cream lovers of all ages.
 

There’s nothing that screams summer more than ice cream. It is the tastiest way to cool off from the sweltering New York City humidity. This summer, New Yorkers have been graced with the best way to beat the heat: a pop-up Museum of Ice Cream. Tickets as of right now are extremely limited (some are being sold for $100 on Craigslist), so it feels like I won a Golden Ticket to go.

The Museum of Ice Cream is the brainchild of 24-year-old co-founder Maryellis Bunn, and her co-creator Manish Vora. Bunn’s dream was to swim in a pool of sprinkles, and that is exactly what visitors get to do in this Willy Wonka-like fantasyland that will leave you in a sugar coma. Photos and selfies are highly encouraged.
 

Located right across the street from the Whitney Museum of American Art and the High Line, visitors are greeted right away with ice cream, with options of scoops from big names like Blue Marble, Oddfellows, and Black Tap ice creams. I opted for a Good Humor Strawberry Shortcake bar.

Next, visitors are whisked into a room with edible sugar balloons filled with helium. You can then suck out the helium and prepare to hear yourself talk in a high-pitched, squeaky voice.
 

Beyond a curtained door, there is the Chocolate Chamber that would make any fan of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory squirm with delight. The room smells like chocolate and is laden with cocoa pieces on the floor. Ogle at the chocolate fountain and giant screen of chocolate lava while “Pure Imagination” plays in the background.Around the corner is a giant bowl of ice cream scoops in collaboration with FOX to create a large, warrior-sized sundae fit for any die-hard ice cream lover.

Once you pass through the chocolate heaven, you enter the most anticipated exhibit of the museum: the Sprinkle Pool—a 3-foot-deep sea of one trillion sprinkles. You can run, jump, or wade in the colorful pool (no diving), then step out and indulge in some gummy candies filled in jars before you exit the room.
 

Immediately outside of the Sprinkles Pool room is a Taste Trip Ice Cream Experiment created by food scientist Irwin Adam of Future Food Network. They offer a “miracle berry” that changes your taste receptors to turn sour foods into sweet foods. Let the berry dissolve on your tongue from 2-3 minutes, then take a pink- and blue-swirled soft serve cone with two lemon slices and bite into the lemon. It’s a strange sensation, but it actually works, and the lemon tasted like pink lemonade! Also on display in this room is a wall of ice cream-themed art from local artists.
 

Finally, the last room is TinderLand (sponsored by the dating app Tinder), where you and a loved one can sit on a giant ice cream sandwich swing, or teeter on an ice cream scooper seesaw. The best part of the end of the museum? Free bottles of water to wash away all of the sugar.

The museum will be open until September 4, and tickets are extremely limited. It is located at 100 Gansevoort Street. For more information, visit museumoficecream.com.

If you can’t get tickets to the Museum of Ice Cream, don’t fret: Brooklyn-based ice cream shop Ample Hills Creamery just opened a mini outpost on Gansevoort Street back in May to curb your ice cream cravings.

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