The Rose Parade, also known as the Tournament of Roses Parade (or simply the Tournament of Roses), is an annual parade held mostly along Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, California, United States, on New Year's Day (or on Monday, January 2 if New Year's Day falls on a Sunday).
Produced by the non-profit Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association, the parade usually starts at 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time (UTC–8), and includes flower-covered floats, marching bands, and equestrian units. The parade is followed in the afternoon by the Rose Bowl, one of the major bowl games in college football. It has been uninterrupted except during World War II in 1942, 1943, and 1945, and in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.Pasadena Tournament of Roses Unable to Host 2021 Rose Parade on New Year's Day, Pasadena Tournament of Roses, July 15. 2020
First held on January 1, 1890, the Rose Parade is watched by hundreds of thousands of spectators.2009 Tournament Times, a publication of Tournament of Roses Association The Rose Bowl college football game was added in 1902 to help fund the cost of staging the parade. Since 2011, Honda has been a presenting sponsor of the Rose Parade. Accordingly, the company has the parade's first float, which like all floats, follows the parade's theme.
History
Members of Pasadena's Valley Hunt Club first staged the parade in 1890. Since then the parade has been held in Pasadena every New Year's Day, except when January 1 falls on a Sunday. In that case, it is held on the subsequent Monday, January 2. This exception was instituted in 1893, as organizers did not wish to disturb horses hitched outside Sunday church services.
Many of the members of the Valley Hunt Club were former residents of the American East and Midwest. They wished to showcase their new California home's mild winter weather. At a club meeting, Professor Charles F. Holder announced, "In New York, people are buried in the snow. Here our flowers are blooming and our oranges are about to bear. Let's hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise."
Over the next few founding years, the parade added marching bands and motorized floats. By 1895, the event was too large for the Valley Hunt Club to handle, resulting in the formation of an ad hoc non-profit organization – the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association. By the 11th annual tournament in 1900, the town lot on which the activities were held was renamed Tournament Park, a large open area directly adjacent to Pasadena's world-famous institution of higher learning, Caltech. Activities soon included ostrich races, bronco busting demonstrations, and an odd novelty race between a camel and an elephant. The elephant won the race. Soon reviewing stands were built along the parade route and newspapers in Eastern Seaboard cities started to take notice of the event.
The stately Italian Renaissance-style mansion of William Wrigley Jr., the maker of Wrigley's chewing gum, was offered to the city of Pasadena after Mrs. Wrigley's death in 1958, under the condition that their home would be the Rose Parade's permanent headquarters. Tournament House is the name given to the former home where the organization is headquartered.
The first associated football game was played on January 1, 1902. Originally titled the "Tournament East-West football game," it is considered to be the first Rose Bowl. The next game was next played on New Year's Day 1916. They have been played annually since then. The game derives its modern name from Rose Bowl Stadium, which was built for the 1923 game.
In 2002 and 2006, when the Rose Bowl Game was the BCS National Championship Game, the "Granddaddy of 'em all" was not held the same day as the parade. The 2002 game was played on January 3, and the 2006 game was played on January 4. Not all fans were pleased with the change. Some thought the atmosphere and tradition of the Rose Bowl was lost. Once the BCS title game was separated from the host bowl, it no longer affected the date of the Rose Bowl Game, even when the title game returned to Pasadena in 2010 and 2014.
Since the mid-1990s, a flyover by the Northrop B-2 Spirit signals the start of the parade, except for 2006 and 2026 due to rain, preceded by a musical performance. Since 2019, the parade concludes with a special guest doing the ceremonial forward pass from the parade to the Rose Bowl followed by a prerecorded video message by an athlete or special guest and a musical performance.
In July 2020, it was announced that the Rose Parade for 2021 would be canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was assessed that the construction of floats for the parade could not be performed in a safe manner. The event itself, due to large crowds and outside visitors, was also considered to be at a high risk of causing more instances of COVID-19 infections. The parade was deferred to 2022. However, the parade number was still changed; what would have been called the 132nd parade officially became the 133rd parade.
In November 2020, it was announced that a TV special titled The Rose Parade's New Year's Celebration would take the parade's place and premiere on January 1, 2021.
Description
The Tournament of Roses Parade has followed the same route mainly following Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena's main thoroughfare and a segment of the former US 66, for many decades. The day before the parade, the entire environs of the neighborhood streets south of the intersection of Orange Grove Boulevard and Colorado Boulevard are sealed off and reserved for the marshaling of the dozens of floats, bands, equestrian units, and other elements. This sealed-off section acts as the "Formation Area", and the Formation Area Committee manages it.
On the parade morning the elements are merged and dispatched in front of Tournament House. The parade starts heading north on South Orange Grove Boulevard beginning at Green Street. At Colorado Boulevard it passes the main grandstands, and the main television and media stands, and proceeds east on Colorado Boulevard. The parade then turns north on Sierra Madre Boulevard.
The floats must travel under the Sierra Madre Boulevard/I-210 freeway overpass, requiring over-height floats to reduce their height. The parade ends at Paloma Street near Victory Park and Pasadena High School.
Recent parades
The 2009 parade featured 46 floats, including some new entries, such as Jack in the Box's Jack-O-Licious, City of Mission Viejo's Making a Splash, RFD-TV's Hee Haw, and the City of Roseville's Entertaining Dreams for a Century.
The 2010 parade saluted the men and women serving America throughout the world with a flyover at the beginning of the parade by four F/A-18 jets, performed by pilots of Strike Fighter Squadron 22, the "Fighting Redcocks", from the Naval Air Station at Lemoore, California.
New floats that joined the 2011 Rose Parade were: Beverly Hills Tournament of Roses Committee, Cunard Line, Dole, Los Angeles County Firemen's Benefit & Welfare: Never Forget 9/11 "Remember, Reflect, Renew", UNO 40th Anniversary, "Messina Wildlife Management", Namco Bandai Games, "Quikrete" Cement & Concrete Products, "Saving America's Mustangs Foundation", and Shriner's Hospitals For Children.
The 2012 Rose Parade had 43 floats, 21 bands, and 18 equestrian units with approximately 400 horses. The honor for being the last units in the parade went to All American Cowgirl Chicks (Equestrian), Needham Broughton High School (Band), and RFD-TV (Float). It featured the first-ever Swedish entry, the Royal Swedish Navy Cadet Band.
The 2013 parade featured 42 floats, 23 marching bands, and 21 equestrian units. New for the 2013 Rose Parade were floats from Nurses' float "A Healing Place", Delta Sigma Theta, and the city of San Gabriel centennial float "Celebrating Our Journey". It began with the Wells Fargo/Opening Unit, American Honda's float, the United States Marine Corps's Mounted Color Guard and the U.S. Marine Corps West Coast Composite Band. Farmers Insurance's "Love Float" featured the wedding of a Virginia couple, Nicole and Gerald of Chesapeake, VA. The couple was selected through a first-ever public vote by the American people. The parade's closing unit featured Coco Jones of the Disney Channel.
Featured in the 2014 parade were 45 floats, including new floats from eHarmony, K9s4COPS, Public Storage ("Adventures In Space"), Youtube, January 1, 2014 and SeaWorld. Actor, director, writer, producer Garry Marshall played the role of "director" on Burbank's "Lights...camera...action!" float. KC and the Sunshine Band were featured on Stella Rosa Wine's "Stellabrate Good Times" float. Performing on the e-Harmony float was Natalie Cole, singing "This Will Be". NBC's The Voice joined this parade too, along with Daryl Hall and the Harlem Globetrotters. The AIDS Healthcare Foundation float ("Living the Dream: Love Is the Best Protection") featured a wedding of a California couple, Aubrey Loots and Danny Leclair; some people called for a boycott of the parade as the couple are actually both men. Nancy O'Dell, along with Jonathan and Drew Scott (of the Property Brothers) co-hosted the parade.
The 2015 parade had 41 floats. New participants were ABC's The Bachelor, American Armenian Rose Float Association, Kiehl's Since 1851, Northwestern Mutual, United Sikh Mission, and Zappos.com.
The 2016 parade featured 44 floats, 19 equestrian units, and 20 marching bands. New participants were Los Angeles Lakers, City of Irvine Chamber of Commerce, South Dakota Tourism, the California Milk Advisory Board, PBS (featuring Downton Abbey), and Union Bank. It marked the end of Bob Eubanks and Stephanie Edwards's participation in the parade for local television station KTLA. Singpoli Group's float "Marco Polo East Meets West", constructed by float builder Paradiso was judged as the sweepstakes winner, the "Most beautiful entry in the Parade with outstanding floral presentation and design."2016 Float Awards Announcement, Tournament of Roses, January 1, 2016
The 2020 Rose Parade featured 40 floats, 17 equestrian units with over 450 horses, and 20 marching bands. The Co-Grand Marshals of the parade were gymnast Laurie Hernández, actress and singer Rita Moreno, and actress Gina Torres.
The 2022 parade featured 43 floats, 18 equestrian units, and 20 marching bands in addition to the special units. The grand marshal was actor LeVar Burton.
The 2023 parade's grand marshal was politician Gabby Giffords.
Floats
Originally the parade featured flower-decorated horse carriages. Over time, floats built by volunteers from sponsoring communities supplanted the carriages. Currently, most are built by professional float building companies and take nearly a year to construct. Some communities and organizational sponsors still rely on volunteers. The Valley Hunt Club still enters a flower-decorated carriage. The Cal Poly Universities Rose Float still relies solely on students who volunteer, with the present day requirement that "every inch of every float must be covered with flowers or other natural materials, such as leaves, seeds or bark". Floats are self-propelled on generally used-up truck chassis, in contrast to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade which uses trailer-based floats pulled by new, intact sponsor-provided trucks.
Typically 48 to 72 hours before parade day, one can view several of the floats being decorated with flowery mantles in the various 'float barns' that dot the Arroyo Seco / Rose Bowl area in West Pasadena, not far from the start of the parade. It is a rule of the parade that all surfaces of the float framework must be covered in natural materials, such as flowers, plants, seaweeds, seeds, bark, vegetables, or nuts, for example. No artificial flowers or plant material are allowed, nor can the materials be artificially colored. Last-minute volunteer opportunities are usually available.