Take a First Look at Disneyland's Float for the 2016 Rose Parade

December 29, 2015, 2:15 PM · The Disneyland Resort is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year with a float in the 2016 Rose Parade, which steps off in Pasadena on Friday morning. Today, I was invited to watch as volunteers decorated the float with the flowers, seeds, leaves, and grasses that are required to cover every inch of every float in the annual Tournament of Roses parade.

Frozen Rose Parade float

Disneyland's float includes three units, featuring the Frozen, Sleeping Beauty's Castle, and the upcoming Star Wars Land. I spoke with float designer Scott Auerbach about what fans can expect to see this New Year's Day, either in person on the parade route in Pasadena or watching on TV.

Frozen producer Peter Del Vecho, left, and director Chris Buck were helping with the decoration on that unit.

Peter Del Vecho and Chris Buck

Volunteers were using blenders to pulverize flowers into the proper texture for the purple and white covering.

Will it blend?

Decoration takes several days and requires hundreds of volunteers.

Castle float

Decorating the spires

This year's Rose Parade will allow viewers their first look at Disney's upcoming Star Wars Land, which will be represented on one of the three units in the float.

Star Wars Land in the Rose Parade

A volunteer brushes glue for floral material on the underside of the Millennium Falcon.

Millennium Falcon

Another volunteer carefully applies the seeds that will form the contrail behind the Falcon on the Disneyland float.

Seeding the float

We will be covering the Tournament of Roses parade from the corner of Orange Grove and Colorado boulevards this Friday morning, Jan. 1, 2016. Follow us online, on Twitter and on Instagram for our live parade coverage, including photos of the completed Disneyland Resort float.

Replies (5)

December 29, 2015 at 2:19 PM · Best pun of the day, so far:

December 29, 2015 at 6:09 PM · I must say that was very (puts sunglasses on) punny.
December 29, 2015 at 9:15 PM · As usual, your coverage of the Rose Bowl Parade floats is one of the highlights of the year!
December 30, 2015 at 9:23 AM · Thanks Robbie - looking forward to the fabulous parade.

Happee New Year... (Rubeus Hagrid spelling of happy).

December 31, 2015 at 11:07 AM · Those are White Slaver parade float workers. They look beaten down. Just horrible.

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