Why We Chose Fiesta Parade Floats

Location Fiesta Parade Floats, Inc, Irwindale, CA

I started researching this project early in 2012. I sent email inquiries to everyone I could identify. I got no replies until June when I received this response from Fiesta.

Thank you for your offer to help decorate our floats for the 2013 Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade. It is a lot of hard work but the experience of a lifetime. We will begin to decorate the floats with dry materials and seeds on weekends in November and December from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Please contact me in October if interested in working any of these days. We also accept a limited number of volunteer decorators on December 26 through December 29 from 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. and on December 30 from 8:00 a.m. until completion (we must have all the floats completed by sunrise on December 31). In order to decorate on December 29 and 30 you must have worked a prior shift(s).

We do require that you volunteer for at least a six-hour shift. The earlier in the schedule you volunteer the more there will be to do and the more experience you will have to assist in the final decoration stages. Many people volunteer to decorate every day, as it is so exciting to see the floats take shape. Although many hands are needed to complete our floats we are unable to take large number of volunteers so there is a limit of 6 passes per mailing address. We want to make sure that everyone has a special project and we strive to make it a special event for all our decorators.

Fiesta Float Supervisors oversee and assign the actual decoration tasks. In addition, we have a staff of AIFD floral designers from around the world who create the floral designs and our own detail artists who are assigned specified areas on the floats. All added together, each Fiesta float averages 10,000 man-hours per float just to apply the decoration materials.

There are jobs for volunteers of all ages and artistic skills; however, we cannot have anyone under the age of 12 in the work areas. A parent or legal guardian must accompany all minor children.

We are located at 16016 Avenida Padilla in Irwindale, approximately 12 miles east of Pasadena. Passes are required to enter our facility beginning December 26 and available beginning early December. Your name has been place on our Decorator’s List but you must contact us in late November / early December with the number of people that will be joining you so passes can be mailed.

Parade tickets are available through Sharp Seating ( 626-795-4171) and Rose Bowl Game ticket information is available from the Tournament of Roses Association ( 626-449-4100). Order early for best selection. Local airports include Los Angeles International, Burbank, John Wayne (Orange County), Long Beach and Ontario International.

If you have any further question please give me a call at 626-610-0974. Decoration week is a very fun and exciting time. We hope that you can participate and enjoy this event as much as all of us at Fiesta Parade Floats do. Thank you for your interest.

Their message was complete, informative, and welcoming. As time went by a few other half–hearted replies came in but none as professional as the one from Fiesta. One subsequent email confirmed that my rig was welcome in their parking lot. In September I responded and very soon received a complete volunteer package. This convinced me that Fiesta was used to dealing with volunteers and assured me that the experience would be a good one.