NEWS
& EVENTS

January 08, 2009

Contact: Amy Hewes
College of Engineering
805-756-6402
ahewes@calpoly.edu

Cal Poly Rose Float Wins Viewers Choice Award

Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Cal Poly Pomona captured imaginations—and votes—with their “Seaside Amusement” float during the 120th Rose Parade on New Years Day.

The float won the inaugural KTLA Viewers’ Choice Award for the Tournament of Roses, receiving 3,219 votes out of a total of 10,618 votes submitted. It portrayed a dazzling boardwalk scene with a working rollercoaster, Ferris wheel, bumper cars, and parachute drop.

“While the parachutes raise and lower the riders, you can look at the roller coaster moving along the real track, and at the same time the Ferris wheel is rotating and the bumper cars are moving along the float. It is complicated,” described Nancy O'Dell during the broadcast.

The float was the 61st co-produced by the two Cal Polys—and still the only entry in the annual parade that is designed, built and decorated solely by students and volunteers. Students in the Rose Float programs at each campus build half of the float, which is trucked to the Pomona campus every November.

Cal Poly San Luis Obispo student Shawna Swanson, a fifth year art and design major, created this year’s float concept. Her idea was chosen from about 80 submissions. The float took about a year to complete, with dedicated students volunteering months of their time, as well as 15 to 16 hours per day in the week before the parade when tens of thousands of fresh flowers must be applied.

The Cal Poly universities’ 2008 float, "Guardians of Harmony," won the parade's Fantasy Trophy.

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