Polar Ice House

A great place to skate… stick n puck… and they have the best hot chocolate around. It usually isn’t very crowded unless a school is here or the y-​camp is skating. Lots of restaurants to choose from within 100 yards too so you can make a great night of skating. Staff here are excellent and they have been known to actually sharpen skates unlike many ice rinks. Also nearby is the pro shop and they are great as well with sharpening skates if you have your own. Skating is inexpensive and stick n puck is a dollar cheaper (7 bucks) if you get a polar ice house club card (it’s free).

While I was visiting Raleigh, I was given the opportunity to curl for a night with the Triangle Curling Club, which currently plays matches at the Polar Ice House. As for the Polar Ice House itself, it’s located in the Factory complex in Wake Forest, and from what I saw, has two ice rinks, a common area with snack bar, a number of small locker rooms and other amenities fit for an ice rink. The ice was decent, not great, but not decrepit either.

I went on friday night free skate, cause my friend loves this place. The only bad thing i have to say is it was a teenagers birthday party the night we went and there were over fifty teens skating around acting like little jerks. But thankfully one of the staff (who also was a teenager) came out and layed down the law (kids were skating dangerously around and in front of people, purposely slamming into walls and each other, throwing snowballs). The rink is beautiful and well maintained. If you have your own skates bring them the rentals are a hodge podge of dull skates with poor laces.

Came here for open skate on Friday and I have two lasting impressions: 1) it’s cheap and 2) It has to be better than what we experienced here this evening.
According to a friend, we came on a night that usually is fairly empty to the point that you can practice crossovers around the circles without worrying about hitting anyone, but just our luck– a group is here tonight! And not only a group, but a group of possibly the most obnoxious teens ever. They were making snow angels mid-​ice, decided to scrape the ice with their skates and have snowball (or ice chunk) fights, and best of all: they were skating and sliding into their friends/​innocent bystanders while pretending to check them. I realize some of them might have been falling legitimately, but when the same four kids keep knocking into people, someone’s going to get hurt. It was really hard to skate in the middle of it all without hurting someone, even as someone who has played hockey for the better part of 27 years. And there were A LOT of people on the ice who weren’t trying to be total douchebags.
The rink could have used better regulation from the staff without requiring someone to go complain (I swear it wasn’t me– he was walking on the ice as we were getting ready to go say something), but it was nice that they did something about the cluster-​eff that was going on.
I know that rinks get cut up with enough skaters, and Zambonis can clean that up real nice, but the ice wasn’t in that great of condition early on in the evening, so an hour in, you can imagine how awesome it was after all the kids were digging holes in it to throw at their friends. Yeah.
I won’t go into detail about the lovely brown spots that at first, I thought were blood… they weren’t. It was chewing tobacco. Yuck.
Sigh. Maybe rinks just aren’t hallowed ground down here like they are up north?
I’ll definitely come back again, and hopefully there’s no teen groups coming in when I do. What could have been a really fun time was just an OK time.

Just finished my son’s birthday party here and I have to say without a doubt it was the most successful and fun party we’ve had to date! The packages are reasonable and much cheaper than anything you can do on your own and the staff takes care of everything! They give you invitations, order the cake, do the decorations, set up, clean up, serve, assist, etc. All I had to do was show up and let the fun begin! They also threw in some «extras» that made my son’s day (they let him dump the zamboni, gave him a staff shirt and ID badge). Ashley (our party coordinator) was amazing and phenomenal with the kids — a world of patience and so energetic! For a four hour party you can’t beat this!

Two sheets of ice, great staff, excellent hockey program for kids and adults. As an adult, I play league hockey here, and my kids do as well. They have quite a few public skates, a good learn to play for kids, and a very nice birthday party package. Having played hockey at all of the other rinks, none of which currently have two sheets of ice, I have to say the Factory is one of the best!