Anaheim Halloween Parade celebrates a century of spooky fun with floats
In a warehouse behind Boysen Park, Jody Daily painted a coffin for a “Spider Hearse” float that will debut at the Anaheim Halloween Parade. Volunteers, giving up another Sunday afternoon, affixed lights to it.
The following day, Kevin Kidney built a little dead fly to rest peacefully inside the hearse as part of a creepy caravan that will snake its way down Center Street Promenade in downtown Anaheim.
“We want the parade to be so unique that it doesn’t look like it came from a store,” Kidney said. “The floats are handmade and are all built with wood, paper and fabric.”
The Anaheim Halloween Parade, which takes place on Oct. 26, is also set to be unlike any other as it prepares for a centennial celebration this fall.
City leaders, in wanting to give youth an alternative to a night of mischievous Halloween pranks, first organized the downtown parade on Oct. 30, 1924, to join a fall festival that began the year before.
Back then, decorated cars, costumed marchers and a fleet of floats animated the 2-mile nighttime procession.
Baseball legends Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson, friendly foes for a charity game in Brea the following morning, led the parade that drew thousands and was hailed afterward by the Anaheim Gazette as a “howling success” before it became an annual event.
The media accolades continued. Just in time for its 30th anniversary, the Los Angeles Times lauded the parade as the “biggest Halloween party in the nation” with an expected turnout of 125,000 people.
The event attracted celebrity grand marshals, Disney-designed floats and was even locally televised on KTLA in a continuous run that lasted for decades before a hiatus halted the streak in the early ’90s.
Daily and Kidney, who both work as Disney art directors, first encountered the city’s Halloween history after moving to a Victorian home in its Colony district.
That’s when they looked through a box full of archived photos of past parades at the Anaheim Public Library and soon learned that community members had revived it.
Before long, Daily and Kidney enlisted as volunteers in 2012 and have never looked back.
“It’s a community coming together with a lot of really good ideas,” Kidney said. “Their floats were so sincere, charming and sweet. We fell in love.”
In tandem with frightful floats, the parade route last year made way for marching bands, mariachi youth groups, baile folklórico dancers, classic cars and local politicians.
It has evolved to now also include Día de los Muertos entertainment.
Bob Sanchez, the parade’s Spanish announcer and volunteer, recalled first watching the floats pass by the old Fox Theater in Anaheim’s historic downtown as a child 55 years ago.
For the past decade, the Anaheim resident has helped build the newer fleet, including a revamped haunted house float where lighting is made to look like eyeballs peeking out of its slats.
“We made it so that it is more whimsical,” Sanchez said. “It’s very attractive and we’re very proud of it.”
Prep work on parade floats starts as early as May. Volunteers head to the warehouse on Sundays where they help craft new floats or refurbish old ones.
“We had a family bring their two girls over one time,” Sanchez recalled. “I offered to give them a ride on one of the floats. Later, the dad texted to tell me one of the girls said it was the best day ever! That warms your heart.”
The whole production boasts a roster of more than 200 volunteers, half of whom sign up for the day of the festival and parade to help make it happen.
From the floats to the art to the merchandise, the parade opts for a vintage Halloween aesthetic inspired by the historical photos Daily and Kidney thumbed through several years ago. It’s also a way to stand out amid a competitive field of Halloween events, which the parade can credibly lay claim to paving the path for.
“We’re trying to attract a different crowd to come see us,” said Daily, who is interim president of the Anaheim Fall Festival nonprofit. “We think there’s a place for a charming, trick-or-treat, vintage-style Halloween.”
With a handful of days before the parade, Daily plans to be at the warehouse every morning. The space is already bulging with floats raring to go.
“The event itself is only one day, but we spend months and months working together,” he said. “That’s the sweetness of it all.”
All the hard work is set to pay off. A century later, the Anaheim Fall Festival and Halloween Parade is still expected to be a big draw.
“We’re looking forward to having over 50,000 guests during the fall festival and parade,” Sanchez said. “At the same time, we want to make sure that we maintain that unique charm, so that it has a small-town feel.”
For more information on the Anaheim Fall Festival and Halloween Parade, visit anaheimfallfestival.org.
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