Ice skating without ice?

We were at Mall of Asia last Sunday after attending the christening of the son of my colleague. We passed by the ice skating rink since Bela would love to watch the skaters as they glide and do their thing on the ice. She would excitedly say “Skate, skate.”

But unfortunately, there were no skaters when we passed by as they have to take a break as the technicians have to do something with the ice, like they were polishing it or something.

But ice maintenance like this can be totally eradicated if the ice skating rink in Mall of Asia uses the iceless ice skating rink invented by the Japanese. The ice skating rink is made of plastic panels manufactured by Mitsubishi and will be introduced in Japan this coming June.

An ice skater has tried this new iceless ice skating rink and she claimed that the more it is still not best for the more complicated figure skating moves.

This is really a cool invention specially for tropical countries like us. Right now, I think there are only two ice skating rinks here in the Philippines – one in Mega Mall and one in Mall of Asia. Maybe the reason for this is the high cost for maintaining ice skating rinks. The inventors of this iceless ice skating rinks claimed that skating rink operators can save approximately $190,000 annually for their electricity and water bills if they use this fabricated rinks. If this is true, that would be good news. Who knows, in the coming days, all SM malls will now have an iceless ice skating rinks.