[Bart Wieling]

Hi guys,
I am very excited about halloween and have everything ready right now for this year,
But i am also pumped about next year that i want to make a parade float.
And here is the problem,
I have no idea what the theme and the design its going to be.
By that i want you guys to ask if some one has any idea's in this or have some drawing where i can get my inspiration of?
It has to be between scary/horror and fun like the disney land floats and i dont want it to be too big and not too small.
I really hope you guys have any idea and i thank you for the reading.

Friendly greetz Bart

And happy almost halloween everybody

 

[Danny-Girl]

Bart how big are you thinking about? Will you float have wheels? I'm from New Orleans so float making was the thing to do . floats can be the size of a shoe box up a vehicle .

 

[Bart Wieling]

I am actually have no idea,
I am going to have a kiddy's go kart and build an motor in it.
I want to be an flat ground around the height of the chest by people and the length doesn't matter.
If it's going to be an big one i can built longer then i want i don't have a deadline just in the two year i want to build him
Just an float that stands out.
(+i want a lot of props and lights on it, i am kind of new to the parade thing but i wanted to make one for a very long time)

 

[hauntedgraveyard]

What sort of parade will you be entering thus float in? A local area parade, so a smallish float is fine, or a large city parade?

I have had lots of experience with parades. I worked on one if the largest Mas' bands in Toronto's Caribana for a few years. I have worked on smaller local parades for several years. Huge difference in sizes.

I would assume you are looking on the smaller scale.

The current float I am helping with is for my office, we enter it in three parades. We have won first place a few times ☺
We have a flat bed trailer as a base. It is large, it was meant for farm machinery, so it can carry a huge amount of weight on top if it. This is probably much larger than you may need.

You could start with an open trailer, one that you can pull behind a car. The best idea though, is to have a pick up truck pulling it. You will need a generator for all the lights etc.

Our float is fully lit up, but with LED lights so they only draw a little bit of power. The fumes are terrible, that is why it is better off in the back of a truck.

You can build the sides with plywood. You could make a haunted house, or whatever you like. But you will need a frame.

Everything needs to be screwed down, so any props put on it need to well attached. You can attach strings of lights very carefully with a large staple gun.

When you design the float, don't stress about little details. They cannot been seen 3m away. Go big and bold.

If it is a night time float, don't do a black float. Use lots of lights. LED strings and spots work well.

My bunch of nuts from my office will take several days, with about 6 people working on it to complete. It probably costs about $2000 to put together. We thought it would last years too, but sadly we need to put in about a few hundred dollars each year. Unless you can store it in a garage, expect it to get weathered and critters will make it their home. We had ants, wasps and mice in our float when it was stored.

It is so much fun to see the kids faces when we go by. Our night time float is the best ever, we have a hot air ballon basket with a huge flame that gets blasted several times on the route (I am a Re/Max agent, so we have access to the balloon), and the float is a castle.

A Halloween float will be awesome!

 

[Grey Lady]

I wanted a small shed to serve as my ticket booth so I talked to my brother, the builder, and he thought we should make it mobile. So he built a small distressed shed on a 6x10 flat bed trailer, it even has a small porch for props to sit on. We painted it to match the haunted house, put lights inside and the 'broken' windows can be removed for ticket sales. This past summer we used it as our parade float pulled by the hearse, of course It was a simple but effective float.