'Nessie's Lakeside Laughs' Prepares to Make a Splash at 2025 Rose Parade
Embracing the promise of a new year, Nessie rises from the depths of Loch Ness to play with her new land-dwelling friends in “Nessie’s Lakeside Laughs,” Cal Poly Universities Rose Float team’s 2025 entry for the 136th Rose Parade, themed “Best Day Ever!” It is the only student-designed and constructed float that will sail down the 5.5-mile parade route in Pasadena on Jan. 1.
Measuring 55 feet long and 21 feet high, “Nessie’s Lakeside Laughs” is the 76th float jointly produced by the Cal Poly Pomona and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Rose Float student teams. The ebullient party scene featuring the mythical Loch Ness monster and a host of Scottish critters — a smiling Highland cow in a spinning innertube, playful puffins, cheeky beavers and an energetic Scottish terrier — is adorned with an estimated 37,000 fresh flowers and dried natural materials.
The triumph and satisfaction of delivering a float from design to reality is what hooked civil engineering student Anna Wu, who began her Rose Float career as an entry-level participant and rose through the ranks to become this year’s Pomona team Decorations Chair.
“This is what made me fall in love with the program,” Wu said.
A New Familiar Place
The final stages of preparing the float are underway during Deco Week. The days are filled with a flurry of activity as students and volunteers add blooms and a variety of hand-processed dried materials to the float. Also re-tested and, if needed, troubleshooted, are the mechanisms that make various parts of the float move, from big movements such as Nessie’s swinging neck and tail to the comparatively smaller movements of beavers and puffins playing along the lake shore.
This year’s Deco Week has the Cal Poly Universities’ team decorating their float in a 120-foot by 40-foot tent dubbed “Brookside Pavilion,” a short walk from where they were stationed last year in Rosemont Pavilion. Though new to the Pomona and San Luis Obispo teams, it’s a familiar space to Pomona team Rose Float Director Cary Khatab, who said that Brookside predates the Rosemont location, the latter only being used for the last six years.
“What we get from alumni who volunteer is that this [location] isn’t something new,” said Pomona team president Brooke Handschin (’24, mechanical engineering).
Brookside Pavilion also offers more outdoor space to station volunteers for a range of tasks — filling nearly 30,000 finger-length vials with a water-plant food mix to extend the life of fresh flowers; arranging small bundles of purple statices; combing out the fibers of the coconut husks and dark corn silk; and patiently gluing pink Himalayan salt crystals, luminescent lunaria petals, blended orange and yellow marigolds, white rice, green lentils and mung beans and shiny black beans on fishes, the oars of the Scottish terrier’s rowboat, the letters on the Cal Poly Universities sign, and portions of the float itself.
Khatab said the volunteers are assigned according to their best skill sets (patience and attention for prolonged periods for fine-detail work such as seed-by-seed gluing and preparing fluffs of cotton for puffin bellies) and physical attributes (ability to climb the higher levels of the float itself).
Wu said that “Nessie’s Lakeside Laughs” features more than 10,000 bunches of blue irises; more than 600 purple cabbages; about 900 white onions to simulate water foam; about 8,000 statices; 7,000 vermillion and hot pink carnations; 4,000 Full Monty roses; and about 1,000 ocean song roses.
For Nessie’s visual texture, fresh materials include hot pink and pale pink carnations, Full Monty roses in striking pink, gerbera daisies in vibrant pinks and fuchsias, split peas and green lentils.
Nessie isn’t the only named creature on the float. Pulling from pop culture and puns, the Rose Float team named the beavers Justin Beaver, Sabrina Carpenter and Presto, whose “fur” are made up of coconut husk and corn silks, their tails texturized by thumbnail-sized pinecone scales. There’s Brody the Bovine, a collie named Mocha (“furred” with dark corn silk) and terrier Doc (adorned with a collar of sunset-colored orchids); and seven puffins named Cocoa Puff, Cheeto Puff, Egg McPuffin, Finn (swimming puffin), Buffin and Dr. Puffer, and The Puffinator.
Past the Pandemic and Into the Future
“Now that we are several years coming back [from the pandemic], people want to build community and get involved,” Khatab said. “Between the two campuses, it got better recruiting for student leadership, beyond being known as an organization that builds floats. It’s community and learning.”
During the pandemic years, Khatab said, participants numbered around 60. This year, there are between 150 to 200.
Deco Week saw about 300 volunteers each day since Dec. 26, split into two six-hour shifts, said Pomona team vice president Matthew Rodarte (’24, electrical engineering). The volunteers are a mix of alumni, university faculty, members of the public and organizations such as the Girl Scouts, travel agency Adventure Caravans, iPoly High School staff, and SoCalGas employees.
For the two universities’ Rose Float executive teams, this year’s Rose Float signals the end of an era. For Rodarte, Handschin and her San Luis Obispo counterpart Collin Marfia, a master’s student in higher education, counseling and student affairs, Rose Float has been an important part of their student experience.
“This has been my life for the last four years,” Handschin said, who has occupied multiple roles including hydraulics lead, construction chair and float driver. She is now seeking employment opportunities after her internship wraps up. “On the other side, I have grown a lot in the program. It’s my time to leave and let others experience their own growth opportunities.”
Two weeks ago, before the “Nessie’s Lakeside Laughs” left the Rose Float Lab from the Cal Poly Pomona campus to Pasadena, graduating and newly graduated seniors staged their own “yearbook” senior portraits in front of the float.
“It’s hard to keep us away,” Marfia said, who, like Handschin, is preparing himself and seeking career opportunities in higher education or museum education.
They’ll be back next year — as alumni volunteers.
How to Watch the Rose Parade
The 136th Rose Parade will be held on Jan. 1, starting at 8 a.m. in Pasadena.
- In person: Arrive early, possibly the day before, to secure your spot along the street or pay for premium seating tickets. The Parade Day Guide has safety tips and information about the parade route and road closures.
- Network and cable television: KTLA-5, NBC, ABC, Univision, Great American Family, and Rural Free Delivery (RFD) TV
- Streaming: NBC/Peacock, KTLA, ABC and Univision channel apps; Hulu+, Christmas Plus, Fubo, Pluto TV, Live TV, DirectTV, YouTube TV, and Sling TV
- Follow Cal Poly Pomona: Follow he university's official Instagram account (@calpolypomona) to see photos, video and behind-the-scenes moments on Jan. 1.
More Cal Poly Universities Rose Float Stories and Videos
- Read: Cal Poly Rose Float Celebrates the ‘Best Day Ever’ at the Lake with Nessie
- Watch: Cal Poly Universities Float Move Out 2025
- Flashback: Cal Poly Universities’ 75th Rose Float Wins Innovator Award
