2013 Rose Parade, Pasadena, CA
I'm anal for numbers and by parade time I was totally invested in Fiesta Parade floats. So I had to make a competition out of this and rack up the score. And don't kid yourself, I'm sure Phoenix and Fiesta did the same thing.
AWARDS
A total of 24 awards were presented. As you read through the titles, you can see that not every float can compete for every award. I'm quite sure that most float builders—commercial and private–aim their efforts at specific awards. However, I'm not knowledgeable enough to sort that out so let's just go with 24 as a common denominator.
FLOATS
There were a total of 40 floats in the parade. The breakout by builder was: Phoenix–19; Fiesta–10; AES–4; Private/Self Built–6; Paradiso–1
Phoenix built 19 floats out of a total of 40 (48%)
Fiesta built 10 floats out of a total of 40 (25%)
Phoenix won 11 awards out of a total of 24 (46%)
Fiesta won 7 awards out of a total of 24 (29%)
Of the 19 Phoenix floats, 11 won awards (58%)
Of the 10 Fiesta floats, 7 won awards (70%)
AND THE WINNER IS (drum roll please)
Paradiso. One entry, one award (100%). Their entry for City of San Gabriel Centennial titled Celebrating Our Journey won Directors' Trophy for outstanding artistic merit in design and floral presentation. Based on the description of the company Paradiso, I'm sure they won the only award that mattered to them. Watch for them in the future.
A CLOSER LOOK AT FIESTA
I gave a close look at each of Fiesta's floats in another post. This is a rack up of their total parade performance.
What got us excited, was the fact that 'OUR' Dole Float won the Sweepstakes Trophy for most beautiful entry. Reputedly the most prized award of the parade.
So figure this out. Here we are, two folks from Ohio, who go to California to work for a week for zero pay on a float built by a private company to advertise another private company, neither of which have a clue who we are and I'm sure don't give a care. And we are doing a victory dance because they won the biggest prize. Makes perfect sense to me.
