A welcome sight this time of year is our temporary neighbor, the Rosemont Pavilion. This year, the Pavilion will house the Cal Poly University float entitled The Road to Reclamation. The float was designed, animated, and built by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (SLO) and Cal Poly Pomona students. It will feature a fallen branch that serves as the center of a community of giant snails, mushrooms, and a colorful assortment of fungi and mosses. The Road to Redemption is Cal Poly’s 74th float to make its way down Colorado Boulevard for the 134th Pasadena Rose Parade.

The 2023 Tournament of Roses theme is Turning the Corner, indicative of the hope and promise that the new year brings. Annie Doody, Cal Poly Rose Float president, said The Road to Reclamation tells the story of the process of change. The fallen branch featured on the float is a nurse log fostering new life and growth, reclaiming something lost, which aligns well with this year’s parade theme.

Annie oversees the float’s design, construction, and decorations. This is not her first rodeo (or parade). Annie worked on her first float when she was eight years old. It was called Bedtime for Buccaneers. She remembers it having a lot of irises that created a cool ocean effect. She was drawn to the Rose Parade because she had never seen anything like it. She considers the floats as giant moving pieces of performance art. She wanted to learn how to make something beautiful and help create and be a part of it.

It takes dedication like that to produce a Cal Poly float. The process began in February with a concept contest based on the theme of celebration of change. Of the 120 submissions, they liked the idea selected because people don’t often look at a dead branch and think of it as a catalyst of change. They also liked the snails and mushrooms because nothing like it had been done before. The students spent February through June working on the design and animation of the various elements. The chassis base is constructed in two pieces. Pomona students work on the front half, while the Cal Poly SLO team focuses on the back. Annie says communication is key when constructing one float at two campuses. In mid-October, the Cal Poly SLO portion will be moved to the Pomona campus, where the halves will be joined, and the teams will begin layering and attaching the design elements. Finally, on December 19, the float will make its way to the Rosemont Pavilion, where an army of students and volunteers will work tirelessly to add flowers and other natural materials to the float. The finished product will be a towering 23-foot tall, 55-foot long forest scape of moving snails, massive mushrooms, and a ladybug with wings that flap. As always, we are excited to go to the 2023 Tournament of Roses Parade, especially The Road to Reclamation float!

Neighbor Spotlight - The Road to Reclamation