(no subject)

[skygiants]

Last night I went to Zoolights with genarti and jinian. This is an recurring holiday season event during which a local zoo gets itself gussied up in the evenings, drapes lights all over everything, serves overpriced vaguely festive fair food, and lets you check out the nocturnal animals and have photo opportunities with reindeer.

The animals were excellent, the reindeer also so, and the hot apple cider as tasty and overpriced as one would expect. Eventually, we ran out of nocturnal animals to bother and wandered into the region marked "Lights and Sights!"

Well, there were absolutely lights, and there were also ... certainly sights ...



This horrified reindeer is one of the first things you see on entering "Lights and Sights!" It's a pretty good approximation of our faces as we traversed the exhibits.



This is our collective favorite exhibit, a whirling ice-skating hellscape in which a collection of assorted Barbie dolls rotate in solitary peril, bathed in demonic red light. Please note that about half of them are at a 45-degree angle to the ground and look like they're about to bash their head into the side of the ice skating rink. Please also note that a significant percentage are trying to ice skate in PENCIL SKIRTS.



Wizard of Oz Christmas? OK, sure, but the placement of the Tin Man's can of (shiny? red???) lubricant in this exhibit should .... perhaps be reconsidered ....



We decided not to ride on the Donnie Darko carousel.



(Me: "Who are the heads?" jinian: "Eh, minstrels that displeased the king, probably.")



At first glance, this scene seems cute! Until you notice that the adult bears are eyeing each other and the Christmas tree with a distinctly nervous attitude. This may be because



Santa's head is hanging on the wall? This bear family killed Santa???



Speaking of Santa: "Santa's been trapped here for YEARS," said genarti, when she called me over to this particular exhibit. "The elves get older and older, but he just ... stays the same ....?"



To complete the pantheon of Santa-related horror, Zombie Santa watches us all from above.



He's always watching. And always waiting.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, CHRISTIAN FRIENDS. I'll be over here, with the gambling and fried foods.

Comments

[lilysea]

Seeing the nocturnal animals sounds really nice. ^_^

[skygiants]

It was! Lots of very active and energetic small monkeys, etc. (And some other ones who were clearly very grumpy at all the unaccustomed activity during what was usually their nice dark private time.)

[genarti]

It was! And there was a certain amount of hilarious contrast between the animals who were balls of resigned grumpiness and the ones who were scampering all over the place.

I also really like holiday lights festooning things, so that part was great fun too.

[thewickedlady]

I DON'T REGRET NOT GOING.

[jinian]

To be fair, there were also adorable Arctic foxes and a spinning barrel ride!

[jinian]

But then there were Zombie Santa's white, white face and the peachy bulging flesh showing through his worn-away beard.

[skygiants]

IT WAS DEFINITELY AN EXPERIENCE :D?

[sovay]

We decided not to ride on the Donnie Darko carousel.

To be fair, I would not ride a carousel that played "Mad World," but I would appreciate the hell out of its existence. And also faintly worry.

[skygiants]

Honestly I think "Mad World" in some circumstances might be LESS creepy than creaky, slightly off-tune holiday jingling.

[sovay]

Honestly I think "Mad World" in some circumstances might be LESS creepy than creaky, slightly off-tune holiday jingling.

My default mental carousel music lately is "And the Band Played On." Thanks, Strangers on a Train.

[shati]

Such wise eyes!!

[skygiants]

SHE'D FIT RIGHT IN.

[aquamirage]

one the one hand, my soul is writhing in terror

on another hand, at least now I'm reassured there's something worse than the King of Prussia Mall Zombie Baby Tree

[sovay]

the King of Prussia Mall Zombie Baby Tree

What.

[aquamirage]

I'm having a hard time finding a good picture of it but imagine a large Christmas tree whose top part is decorated primarily with freaky off-brand American Girl type dolls that are sort of worn out and dirty and reappear each year, even more worn out and dirty

[sovay]

a large Christmas tree whose top part is decorated primarily with freaky off-brand American Girl type dolls that are sort of worn out and dirty and reappear each year, even more worn out and dirty

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.

[genarti]

@________________@

This sounds hilariously horrifying and also like it'd fit right in with the clearly decades-old Zoolights dioramas!

[skygiants]

Somehow I managed to spend my whole childhood without encountering the King of Prussia Mall Zombie Baby Tree, which I think means I won the Main Line Childhood Sweepstakes.

[aquamirage]

that reminds me that I was for real going to go to the Dickens festival this year but I MISSED IT because I thought it was much closer to Christmas than it actually is

[in_the_blue]

WOW.

I'll just be cringing quietly in the corner.

[skygiants]

I mean, to be fair, after the other Santas we saw, you can hardly blame the bears; I might've beheaded him before letting him hang out with my children, too.

[vivien]

I've seen some pretty over the top and/or questionable Xmas displays.

This one WINS!!!!

[skygiants]

We're pretty sure that none of the exhibits had been updated since MAYBE 1955. Maybe once the Barbies all skated proud and upright!

[hokuton_punch]

Wow, those are - some sights, all right! o.o

[skygiants]

THE ADVERTISING DID NOT LIE

[genarti]

I think my favorite part was how after all of these, every time we got to a genuinely cute display of little Victorian houses or model trains or whatever, we started automatically looking for the fridge horror.