KCOY Santa Maria, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo - News-Cal Poly Unveils Rose Float Theme

Cal Poly Unveils Rose Float Theme

10/26/09

San Luis Obispo- Cal Poly announced the theme for its 2010 Rose Float... and it is wild.

Student volunteers from both Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and Pomona have been working on the concept and design for months, and now the building process is underway.

Over the weekend San Luis Obispo team members rolled out their half of the float and delivered it to Cal Poly Pomona, where the building will begin.

This year's theme is Jungle Cuts, which includes a giraffe with a beehive, the king-of-the-jungle with a bad perm, and a zebra with a mohawk.

"We wanted to come out with a more cartoony, fun theme, so we came up with a bunch of jungle safari animals that wanted to get their hair cut, and the monkeys playing tricks on them," said Mary Young, student volunteer, and driver of the float.

The float will also feature a swaying tree, 15 thousand flowers, and a waterfall.

"We have a lot of fun animation and different elements working together to pull it off," said Branden Schmiedeberg, student volunteer.

He explains, the Cal Poly rose float is not only going wild, it is going big.

"It's always been a goal of Cal Poly students to go out and do crazy things, so we have two over-height mechanisms, one is a tree that's going to be 22.5 feet for the majority of the parade, the other is a giraffe at 18.5 feet," said Schmiedeberg.

The two tall features will be lowered to clear a bridge during the parade.

For the next two months San Luis Obispo team members will be taking trips down to Pomona to continue working on Jungle Cuts.

Near Christmas the volunteers will start adding the thousands of roses and Gerber Daisies.

And the finished float will make its way down Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena on New Year's Day for the Rose Parade.

"Everything is just moving along and I can't wait to get halves together and complete it even more, it's going really well," said Young.