Fiesta Floats to shut down after losing Rose Parade authorization

Fiesta Parade Floats, one of the top builder of floats for the Rose Parade for four decades, is shutting down operations after being dropped by event organizers.

The Tournament of Roses committee recently declared that Fiesta no longer met the criteria to build floats for the annual parade.

The Irwindale-based company says it is now shutting down, leaving more than a dozen employees without a job.

For more than four decades, Fiesta Floats helped prepare award-winning entries for the Rose Parade. But the company no longer meets the parade's criteria.

The company's owner told the Los Angeles Times they had struggled since the pandemic, when they were forced to temporarily stop operations. He also personally suffered a severe motorcycle accident that landed him in the hospital for nine weeks with a fractured skull and broken ribs. Over that time, he said, the company began falling into debt and losing workers, even as costs sharply rose.

The Tournament of Roses Association previously said the critieria for float builders include financial capacity, having the appropriate vendors to source flowers from around the world, technical ability, and skilled float drivers.

"We congratulate Fiesta on its more than 40 years of working with the Rose Parade and building these amazing floral floats and we wish them the best, but there's plenty of capacity for us to put together the floats and build for the 2025 parade," said David Eads, CEO of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association.

Fiesta Floats was already working on floats for the 2025 Rose Parade and those efforts are now expected to be shifted to other builders.