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Tag: rose parade float

  • Real big fish: Rose Parade float sets Guinness World Record

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    In the pantheon of parade float achievement, world-record titles are coveted.

    The longest parade float, a paper dragon in Gutian, China, spanned a half-mile in 2012. The heaviest, dubbed the “Gnarly Crankin’ K9 Wave Maker,” was an actual swimming pool on wheels that weighed in at nearly 150,000 pounds.

    Faced with some stiff competition, one savvy float-building team at this year’s Rose Parade still managed to reel in a Guinness World Record title by setting its sights on something decidedly fishier.

    On New Year’s Day, a towering 34-foot-tall mechanical seahorse — the centerpiece of the UPS Store float — came rolling down Colorado Boulevard, hooking the “Director Award” for design and the title for the tallest float before Guinness adjudicators also determined it to be the world’s largest animatronic fish.

    “As the structure started to take shape, it became clear just how tall and ambitious it was,” said Katie McCormick, a spokesperson for floatbuilders Artistic Entertainment Services.

    The whole thing was sort of a happy accident, she said. Over the summer, representatives for the UPS Store reached out to Guinness World Records after realizing it could qualify for a title.

    Designed by Charles T. Meier and engineered by project manager Kyle Amerine, the massive seahorse nodded as it coached over a dozen fin-flapping baby sea creatures as they performed a synchronized swimming routine. Measuring roughly 55 feet long and 18 feet wide, the float featured a dense seascape of corals, fish and oversize sea stars, some spanning 4 feet in diameter.

    “It’s just huge and impressive when you look at it on the parade route,” McCormick said.

    The UPS Store float won the “Director Award” for design, the title for the tallest float, and was determined to have been the world’s largest animatronic fish.

    (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

    Like most Rose Parade floats, the platform was brought to life by hundreds of volunteers — many skipping sleep on New Year’s Eve — who embellished it with corn husks, lentils, sesame seeds, orange slices and red carnations.

    Rain on parade morning muddied things for engineers and decorators. Like in 2006, when stormy weather last hit the Rose Parade, some floats failed mid-route, McCormick said.

    “We’re really hoping it doesn’t rain for another 20 years, let me put it that way,” she said.

    But despite its water-sensitive glues and exposed hydraulics, the seahorse completed its route intact. Engineers took special care to protect the animatronic systems on a structure that rose nearly twice as high as many traditional floats.

    Much of the float will be dismantled and reused as crews shift their focus to next parade season.

    For McCormick, the Guinness title marked a rare milestone.

    “In my 18 years, this is the first world record we’ve been part of,” she said. “It’s a testament to the mechanics and engineering that go into bringing a float like this down Colorado Boulevard.”

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    Gavin J. Quinton

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  • Rose Parade float has a firefighter, pancakes, syrup: Here’s why some people were upset

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    Atop the aerial ladder of a bright red fire engine, a firefighter wrangles a hose. From the spout pours not water but syrup, pumped from an enormous bottle. The stream of viscous liquid is aimed at a giant stack of pancakes 9 feet high.

    “Pancake Breakfast” is one of the dozens of floats expected to roll through Pasadena on New Year’s Day in the annual Tournament of Roses Parade. It was built by volunteers from Sierra Madre, a small foothill town that narrowly escaped the worst of the Eaton fire, which destroyed swaths of Altadena in January.

    The design is meant to honor first responders and their role in protecting the town, referencing the community pancake breakfasts that for decades have been a common practice in many towns and cities to raise funds for equipment, training, and fire safety programs while also helping to build ties between residents and firefighters.

    But some residents in Altadena have said the design — and particularly the audio feature, in which a firefighter asks for more syrup — is upsetting, because during the destructive fires many hydrants in their neighborhood ran dry.

    “To depict anything where we are running out of liquid is maybe a little tone-deaf this year,” Shawna Dawson Beer, the author of a community blog about Altadena, told Fox 11.

    “I think unfortunately this speaks to something that we fire survivors have experienced all year and that is a lot of action being taken on our behalf,” Beer said. “Ultimately, all of these folks with the best intentions and biggest hearts just need to actually talk to the survivors.”

    • Evelyn Shaffer, treasurer at the Sierra Madre Float Assn., which holds a contest each year to select the design of a float to be featured in the Tournament of Roses, found the float quaint and the Dalmatian standing watch by the red engine “just adorable.”

    Three active-duty firefighters from Sierra Madre will be standing atop the float on the day of the parade, she said.

    “I really regret that anyone had any distress over the float,” Shaffer said, adding that she felt that not all the information shared on social media was “fully accurate” and that descriptions of the float’s audio did not capture the whimsical tone.

    She said that, in response to criticism in recent days, the audio dialogue had been removed.

    “We don’t want anyone upset. This was not our intent. We took all the dialogue off,” Shaffer said. “So now you have the lovely glugging of the syrup on the soundtrack. That’s it.”

    Shaffer said members of the association vote each year on some 40 float design submissions that are in line with a theme put forth by Tournament of Roses officials. The theme of the 137th Rose Parade is “The Magic in Teamwork.”

    It’s one of only five floats in the upcoming Rose Parade that are built by volunteers from the communities sponsoring them.

    “We are very proud of the design because it’s an homage to our first responders,” Shaffer said.

    Shaffer said she hoped the changes made would allow people to enjoy the float.

    Lead builder of the float, Kurt Kulhavy, told KCRW last week that the aim of the design was to honor firefighters without re-traumatizing those who lost homes and loved ones. They opted for a lighthearted approach.

    News of the controversy online spurred some to speak up in favor of the design.

    “I was [a]ffected by the fires. Im not offended. There are much bigger issues in the world. I think the float is cute. Geez,” one Instagram user commented.

    But a member of the Sierra Madre float association, Dave Andrews, said in a post on Facebook last week that he was not a fan of the design and did not vote for it because it “seemed inappropriate.”

    He said he had been dismayed when he later heard the soundtrack of what he described as a “fake fire call” in which a fire engine is being dispatched to a pancake breakfast because they are running out of syrup, and that he and others had raised concerns to the board.

    In a post on Sunday, he applauded the float association for removing the dialogue.

    “Even though some people perceive [me] as the bad guy for speaking my mind, I respect them for making a compassionate choice,” Andrews said. “Bravo to Sierra Madre for listening.”

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    Suhauna Hussain

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