Cal Poly students wrap construction on university’s 75th Rose Parade float

A flurry of Cal Poly students buzzed around the university’s latest entry in the annual Rose Parade as the final touches for the framework of the float were welded, sanded and tested.

For 75 years, a float built by Cal Poly Pomona and San Luis Obispo students has joined the parade held each New Year’s Day in Pasadena. That’s a collective lifetime of work, one student leader pointed out.

“This is a long legacy, and we have a lifetime of this under our belts at this point, and that is really impressive,” Cal Poly San Luis Obispo float team President Quinn Akemon said during a tour of the float lab in Pomona. “That is really something you carry for the rest of your life.”

The theme for the 2024 Rose Parade is “Celebrating a World of Music,” which Cal Poly is honoring with its float “Shock n’ Roll: Powering the Musical Current.”

Featuring animatronic electric eels, a manta ray and a giant clam, the float depicts a rocking party on the coral reefs as the eels use their current to pose the guitars.

Matthew Rodarte, president of the Cal Poly Pomona float team, said the float uses three mechanical systems — pneumatic, or air-driven, hydraulic, and electrical systems — all working simultaneously to power the visual elements.

“The level of thought and planning that goes into every little detail of each and every one of these parts is insane,” Rodarte said in an interview. “Your element has to elevate the rest of the flow and make everyone else’s work stand out. Your goal was to take a bunch of discrete parts and turn them into something awesome.”

Rodarte is entering his third season of float building, taking on more responsibility as president.

Float preparation and design begin almost immediately each January after the Rose Parade ends, Rodarte said, leading to a one-year total turnaround for each float.

The Cal Poly float is the only Rose Parade float fully designed and built by students, according to the university’s news release.

“As we’ve developed this float, we’ve really continued to lean into Cal Poly’s learn-by-doing spirit and tried to make this float bigger and more exciting than ever before,” said Akemon, who’s working on her fourth float with the university.

The mechanism testing that takes place before the float gets a green light to leave the Pomona float lab is a coveted moment of success.

“That’s one of the coolest moments for the students,” Rodarte said. “It’s students seeing what students did, and you get to see the moment the float becomes a float. It’s no longer just the steel in front of you and the foam behind you. It is a lot. And full disclosure, I have cried every time we have done that.”

Once the framework and mechanical testing are complete, Rodarte said, it’s time to move the float to Rosemont Pavilion in Pasadena, where it will be decorated with floral elements and later judged.

The route for the Cal Poly float is one that turns the 30-mile journey from Pomona to Pasadena into a behemoth of a task. Only surface streets are used to convey the float, and the float team must navigate through a weft of residential streets while troubleshooting obstacles such as tree branches and narrow passages.

The float is 18 feet wide and 16.5 feet long before any of the estimated 20,000 floral decorations are added.

The night before the parade is so critical that Rodarte says the two animation operators sleep inside the float cabin for security reasons.

Cal Poly schools won the extraordinaire award for their 2023 float, “Road to Reclamation,” which featured snails and mushrooms in a forest floor scene.

This year, the float team is excited to share their latest creation with the world on New Year’s Day, representing a snapshot of a year’s worth of work.

“All of us are extremely passionate about this program, and this program breeds a different kind of person,” Rodarte said. “We do open forums for our presidencies, and one of the things I said in my speech was that I live seven minutes away, but the place I feel at home is right here in the lab with everyone. There is so much love and friendship here.”