Every year at Christmastime, the Gaylord Texan Hotel in Grapevine has an ice sculpture exhibit. I went to it two years ago when it was about the A Charlie Brown Christmas TV classic special. Last year it was about Shrek, and since I’m not a big fan of Shrek, I skipped out on that one (plus tickets are kind of expensive). But this year, the exhibit was Merry Madagascar, based on the Christmas special featuring characters from the Madagascar movies. Since I like the penguins from Madagascar, I decided to go see it this year. So here are some fun pictures from the trip!

But before we get to that, I thought I’d share some pictures of the Christmas decorations around the Gaylord hotel, because they were also pretty neat.

Here’s a big nutcracker to greet you and tell you where to go.

And here’s a giant Jack-In-The-Box.

And here’s some HUGE SANTA BOOTS!

In the center of the large open area was a big Christmas tree.

A big rocking horse

There was another Christmas tree called the Lone Star Tree that was all red, white, and blue.

Outside there were a lot of train sets. Here’s one of them.

And lastly, this water fountain was decked out with a Christmas tree, too. Very pretty.

OK, enough of the outside decorations. The Gaylord must’ve had a contract with DreamWorks because the Madagascar Ice exhibit wasn’t the only activity they had there. You and your kids could decorate gingerbread cookies with Gingy from Shrek, watch a How to Train Your Dragon adventure, and slide down Kung Fu Panda ice slides. Here’s a picture from that. And yes, that is a costumed Po the Panda dancing around up there!

While waiting in line, they had this neat 3-D DreamWorks logo. Of course, we didn’t have to wait in line because I took off work that day and we went early in the morning.

OK now here are the ice sculptures. This is the Merry Madagascar logo. Keep in mind that ALL this is made of ice, so it’s pretty amazing.

On the island of Madagascar, King Julian, ruler of the lemurs, shoots down a flying object in the sky, not knowing what it is.

But it turns out that it was Santa Claus that they shot down. He crashed and got a big bump on his head and lost his memory! Oh no!

And his sleigh crashed in the jungle.

When the other jungle crew members from the Central Park Zoo see what happened, they can’t believe their eyes!

And the militant penguins have a showdown with Santa’s reindeer.

But all amnesiac Santa wants to do now is dance with the lemurs!

So the New York animals and the penguins take it upon themselves to deliver the presents for Santa.

Of course they have a rough time of it at first, and make a crash landing in someone’s house!

Here they are inside the house.

There’s a big room in the exhibit where kids can slide down some more ice slides. In this room they show the Madagascar animals flying all around the world.

Here’s the Sphinx in Egypt.

Tetris, anyone?

The Eiffel Tower was so tall I couldn’t even fit it in the frame of my camera!

And the Statue of Liberty. Sorry if some of the pictures are a bit blurry or mis-angled. You see, the rooms where the ice was held had to be kept below freezing so they wouldn’t melt. So we had to keep moving so we wouldn’t get too cold! They even provided parkas for us to wear before we went in! So it was kind of hard to take really good pictures in there.

Back in Madagascar, Santa teaches King Julian about the spirit of giving. So here he is giving a coconut to Mort.

And here’s a giant sculpture of the Madagascar gang.

In the last room all the animals have a Christmas party. Here are the penguins around the tree.

Alex the lion

The lemurs

Gloria the hippo

Marty the zebra

And I forget the giraffe’s name. Check out the watermelon snowman!

After the Madagascar exhibit, there was a special room with an ice sculpture of the Nativity scene showing the true meaning of Christmas. I think this was the same sculpture that I saw two years ago. I guess they keep it in cold storage.

And overlooking it all was a giant ice angel.

And that’s all of the ice exhibit. Cool, huh? Literally! Anyway, while I liked the Charlie Brown Christmas story better because I’m more familiar with it, I think the ice sculptures were better in this one, as the Peanuts gang are just round heads. Well that’s all I have for now! I hope all you GamerDad readers have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! –Cary

Tags: Movies with Children, Television