The Largest Illuminated Parade in Texas

Denisa's Mother has been telling us for years that the Rio Grande Valley hosts some wonderful events, and we are happy to be enjoying them with her this year.  She had tickets for us for the musical, "Guys and Dolls" playing the first weekend after our arrival.  The high schools in this area are huge, and seem to give good emphasis to the arts.  This musical was performed at McAllen High School with a cast of 30 students from their choir department.  We were amazed at the talent, as these high school students sang, danced, and acted their way across the stage.  The play was well-attended with a sea of white-haired winter Texans that paid $10 per ticket and filled the auditorium.  It is a great fund-raiser for the music department, and great entertainment for the winter visitors to this area.  Win, Win!!

We went directly from the musical's matinee performance to find a parking spot for that evening's lighted Christmas parade.  McAllen hosts the largest illuminated parade in the state of Texas, and we were looking forward to seeing it for ourselves.  All the streets for two miles surrounding the parade route were blocked off from traffic, because they were anticipating over 200,000 people for the event.  Mark made friends with several local policemen as he asked advice for getting close enough to drop off Denisa's Mother and Aunt Doris so they could see the parade too.  Having 85- and 90-year-old passengers definitely complicates our normal method of just parking and walking however far it takes.  With police permission, we drove through several barricades to get closer.  We got them two front row seats in chairs on the curb, so Mark's efforts were successful!  The two of us found seats among the thronging crowd, and waited breathlessly as Santa made his way down the street.

Notice the large group of balloon holders in charge of guiding Santa down the street without hitting those electrical lines that run parallel with Bicentennial Avenue.  These handlers are a blur as they run in a circle to pivot Santa in all directions.

Santa was the first of 36 different huge helium-filled balloons in the parade.  Because the theme was "Movies on Parade," many of the balloons (such as this Jurassic Park dinosaur) were not the usual holiday sightings.  Each balloon was led by a golf cart carrying a large light that illuminated the character for this night-time parade.

Some of the balloons were amazingly tall, and you can see the tiny people close to the boot of this balloon.  This reminded us of the Macey's Day Parade we had seen so many times on television.  This tall Nutcracker wouldn't have been able to make the march down the parade route if it was windy. But the perfect weather made handling the balloons as easy as possible.  It also meant that there was a record number of people in the crowd.  We heard reports that 300,000 people joined us for the parade.

The balloons were dispersed throughout the parade, and they were lots of fun.  But the real show stoppers were the lighted floats.

McAllen has its fair share of celebrities that agreed to come home for the parade.  Riding this float was actor Esai Morales, who appeared in the movies, "La Bamba," "Bad Boys," etc. and has had roles in TV shows such as "NYPD Blue," "Criminal Minds," and "Miami Vice."

There were many more celebrities such as Laura Marano, and David Zepeda, but the only one we recognized was Guillermo Rodriguez--Jimmy Kimmel's side kick on his late night talk show.

The illuminated minions made an appearance in keeping with the "Movies on Parade" theme.

Last year we were really impressed with the Citrus parade in McAllen, where floats used slices of differently colored citrus fruits to decorate the floats.  This was the illuminated citrus float, decorated with the beautiful citrus queens from that fiesta.

There were also Christmas season floats, and this one came with soap bubble "snow" falling.  Since our weekly forecast shows highs in the 80's and even 90's, it looks like this is the only chance for snow this December in the Rio Grande Valley.

But our favorite floats had to be those that were centered around the real reason for the season.  It's hard to see, but this nativity included tiny angels that were held in carriers in front of their fathers.

There were large high school bands from all over the Rio Grande Valley, our second proof of the day that arts is still important down south.  Most of the bands featured strings of multi-colored lights draped across their uniforms and horns for this illuminated parade.  But this band had tiny white lights strung in the plume of each band member's hat.  How illuminating!

It was one of the best parades we have ever seen, and was well-organized so there was a steady stream of floats, bands, and balloons.  Thousands of people attended the Enrique Iglesias concert in the stadium immediately before. So the organizers routed the parade through the stadium so all the concert-goers got to see the floats and balloons without even changing seats.

It was a great day (and night) of activities in the Rio Grande Valley!