Winning design for Burbank’s Rose Parade float is all about summer vacation fun

Burbank resident Linda Ackerman-Cozakos was in middle school when she got hooked on helping decorate the Burbank Tournament of Roses Assn.’s float each year, she said.

“Somebody allowed me to decorate a heart that appeared on [television],” Ackerman-Cozakos said. “It was an experience that I’d never felt before and I fell in love with it.”

It’s a love affair that began long before her father, Garry Ackerman, became president of the Glendale Rose Float Assn., and one that’s lasted 41 years, she said.

In past years, she’s chaired the decorations committee, which she’ll do again this year, and submitted float concepts for the association’s annual design contest, placing second twice and third once. This year, for the first time in four decades, her design won.

It’s a concept she developed along with a co-winner, Adam Ostegard, who currently resides in Shanghai, said Ginny Barnett, president of the Burbank Tournament of Roses Assn. Ostegard has won twice before with 2007’s “Free Dog Wash” and 2009’s “3D Double Feature,” according to the association’s website.

This year’s float will be the city’s 84th entry in the annual Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade on Jan. 1, 2016. The theme for the parade’s 127th year is “Find Your Adventure,” honoring the National Park Service’s centennial next year.

Their winning design, tentatively titled “Vacation Adventure,” depicts a family of raccoons heading off on an end-of-summer vacation in a Woodie-style automobile, towing a tear-drop camping trailer across a stream in which a young bear is fishing. Both the car and trailer are heaped with outdoor gear including a kayak and surfboard.

The design-selection process, which takes place over several months each year, is “totally objective,” Barnett said. Judges do not know who designed each submitted concept during the judging process, she said.

They make their choice based on a number of factors, with the primary one being whether the design “lends itself to the theme of the parade,” Barnett said. Other factors include how fun and interesting judges feel the float will be and what the technical parameters — such as length of the float — would be.

Barnett said she thinks this year’s design is relatable and may have spectators thinking, “That’s what our car looked like.”

For Ackerman-Cozakos, it’s a special opportunity because she’ll now help decide what decorations will be used to make their design a reality.

She’s already got some ideas for how to decorate challenging features, she said, including a fish that’s slipping out of the hands of the young bear.

“I plan on using different colors of onion skin” in order to give it an iridescent shine, she said.

It’s an idea that came to her in the supermarket. She’s already named the raccoon family members, too — Ralph, Rita, Rebecca and Rocky, who is “rocking the surf board” atop the trailer, she said.

However, not all of her ideas come so easily.

“Other things, I lay awake at night [thinking about],” Ackerman-Cozakos said, adding that it’s not a bad kind of sleeplessness.

“Because it’s my float … it’s a very happy thing,” she said.

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Chad Garland, chad.garland@latimes.com

Twitter: @chadgarland