Rose Bowl Pre-Parade Activities

December 31, 2004

Our trip started around 4am with a trip to the airport for a 6:50am flight to Los Angeles. This was Heather's first flight, so I used my miles and got 2 first class tickets. I flew in the baggage section:) The flight was great until it came to land. The pilot overshot the runway and did a touch and go (my first in a commercial plane). Unfortunately this made us late to the Parade Float viewing area which was closing at 1pm for Judging. But we got out of the airport in our rental car and to Pasadena without incident around 11am.

It was raining but let up after about 15 minutes. The line into the main warehouse looked about 2 hours long, so we went into the smaller tent with 5 floats first. Even though the number of floats was fewer, it was a much nicer set-up. You got right up to the floats and talked to the workers. They had demonstrations set up and it was really informative. After finishing there, we got into the long line for the main warehouse about noon. We got into the building about 1:15, when they were starting to pull the floats out to line them up. In this building you were up on a catwalk and had a great view, but were much further away from the floats and had no interaction with the people working on the floats.

We then drove to Hollywood and checked out the Walk of Fame, the Chinese Theater and the new Theater/Shops complex. We then headed for the hotel where we met up with David & Julie. Since our next day was starting very early, we watched the ball drop on TV at 9PM PCT and then went to bed.

Main Trip Page Days: 1-Rose Pre-Parade 2-Rose Parade(1) (2) 3-DisneyLand(1) (2) 4-San Diego Zoo (1) (2) 5-Pandi Adoption Day