Shmow-zow! Slam-bam-in-a-can! Rhombus! Iceclops!
In case you couldn’t tell, I am flipping excited about today’s post, dedicated to, you guessed it, the greatest show on television: “Adventure Time”!
Of course, this isn’t the first time that we’ve ventured to the Land of Ooo at Movoto Real Estate; we stopped by once before to evaluate the value of Finn and Jake’s treehouse. Today we return, not to the sunny and warm grasslands near the center of the continent; but somewhere much colder, darker… and a bit more expensive.
Just how expensive is the Ice King’s Castle? According to our evaluation, a cool $858,550.
So grab your favorite princess, a pair of long johns, and maybe hide some pizza in your beard for good measure, because we’re heading to the Ice Kingdom. Of course the one rule here is No Trespassing—but I’m willing to bet he’d make an exception (especially if you bring along Princess Bubblegum).
Don’t Just Lick Stuff, Let’s Evaluate!
Like our other fictional real estate evaluations, in order to find the value of the Ice King’s Castle, we needed a few things. Of course we had to be fast… and quiet… and very good at dramatic silence… but we also needed three other tools:
- The location of the Ice King’s Castle
- Its size
- Comparable properties
Finding the location and the size were easier than Jake doing a downward dog; but when it came to finding comparable properties, well, that’s when I needed to jump into my Imagination Zone. More on that in a moment—for now, let’s take a look at where the Ice King lives.
This Is My Domain!
The Ice Kingdom is the Ice King’s domain, just as the Candy Kingdom is Princess Bubblegum’s, and the Wildberry Kingdom is ruled by the Wildberry Princess. The Ice Kingdom is made up of hundreds of pointy, snow-capped mountains. It is a land where penguins and other cold weather critters roam around, and of course, is the location of the Ice King’s Castle.
But where is it in the real world?
I suppose this is where a bit of background could come in handy. The Land of Ooo actually takes place on Earth—it is just a version of our world that has gone through an apocalypse called the Mushroom Wars, or World War III. All of the weird settings and characters in Adventure Land are basically mutants—cute, colorful, cartoon mutants.
In our last “Adventure Time” post, we deduced that Finn and Jake’s treehouse was most likely in Fort Collins, CO, for its proximity to grassland, mountains, deserts, badlands, its central location, and of course, the characters’ non-discernable American accents. Keeping this in mind, it only makes sense that the Ice Kingdom is also in North America—just somewhere further north and much colder.
Somewhere like Canada. But Canada is a pretty broad area, don’t ya know, so I needed to do some further research to find the specific location.
The show mentions that the Ice King, who was previously known as Simon Petrikov, lived in a major city before the Mushroom War. Of course nothing in today’s Canada will be exactly like the cartoony, post-apocalyptic Canada of “Adventure Time”; but I imagine that the Ice Kingdom might be similar to Ontario—you know, after the Mushroom Wars made everything slightly trippy—and more specifically, somewhere like Sudbury. Why Sudbury in particular? Well as we saw in the episode “Evicted,” the Ice Kingdom is bordered on at least one side by water, and dotted with snowcapped mountains and hills, much like Sudbury, Ontario with the La Cloche Mountains to the southwest and Lake Huron to the south.
If you happen to be wondering how Finn and Jake can just hop up to Canada within moments to save a damsel in distress, or how the Ice King can suddenly be in Colorado, may I remind you that we are dealing with a world where one of our main characters is a magical talking dog and we’ve just gone through a mutant-creating world war. Finn and Jake can hop up to the Ice King’s Castle because of magic! Because this is a world where the rules of time and space are skewed! Plus… it’s a cartoon.
So now we have the location of the Ice King’s Castle. But how big is it?
Wow-cow-chow, That’s Big
Yes, the Ice King’s Castle is big, but perhaps not as massive as you’d think. See, the Ice King’s Castle is basically a hollow mountain capped by snow and ice; the main entrance, a face-like set of windows near the top. But in looking at stills from the show, watching a few episodes (for research purposes only, of course), and in reading various descriptions of the place from fan sites, it is pretty clear that the Ice King doesn’t use the entire mountain as his home.
He has a main living room (filled with a bed, drum kit, gym equipment, and usually littered with pizza boxes and dirty clothes), and of course, the cage where the Ice King keeps kidnapped princesses.
There are also several secret rooms, including a basement filled with monsters and technology; a chamber full of ninja collectibles; a room dedicated to “The Past” where he keeps memorabilia of himself and objects from when he was still Simon Petrikov; and another basement area with a portal to the Spirit World.
And of course, he has a kitchen, dining room, and several tunnels and hallways connecting these various spaces.
Based on the pictures and shots from the show that I used, I was able to roughly measure the square footage of these rooms—about 1,500 square feet for the entire main living area (including the Princess Cage; not including the Princesses), 400 square feet for the room of The Past, about 1,000 square feet for the entire basement; about 450 square feet for the kitchen and dining areas; and at least 500 square feet of tunnels and hallways, which seem to be rather extensive.
All told, the Ice King’s Castle inside the mountain is about 3,850 square feet. To put that into perspective for you, the portion of the mountain that the Ice King actually lives in is over 1,000 square feet smaller than Finn and Jake’s treehouse.
What’s Like The Ice King’s Castle?
Unfortunately, nothing really. In fact, the closest thing I can think of would be Smaug’s lair inside the Lonely Mountain—but that doesn’t really help us in terms of finding a real world value. So in order to come up with the price per square foot of the Ice King’s Castle, I turned to the local real estate listings in Sudbury, and of course, I had to get a little mathematical!
After looking at several homes, which at least featured multiple bedrooms, a large kitchen and dining area, and a finished basement (sorry, no portals to the Spirit World), I found that the average price per square foot in Sudbury is $236 CAD—that’s about $223 here in the U.S.
Getting Mathematical
With a price per square foot of $223 and a size of 3,850 square feet, plus the power of math and just a little bit of apple juice (which, of course, always makes you feel better), I determined that should the Ice King ever want to give up his Castle, it would be worth $858,550 USD—that’s over $100,000 more than Finn and Jake’s place, even though it is 1,000 square feet smaller. Turns out, real estate in the Ice Kingdom is pretty pricey.
Or as one human boy might say, “It’s pretty math… you psychopath.”