This year’s homecoming parade went off without a hitch, as per usual. If there’s one thing that struck me this year as opposed to others, it’s that it is obvious to tell which organizations put a lot of time and work into their floats and which ones didn’t.

Disney themes abounded this year. A few of the memorable ones included Aladdin, Cars, Alice in Wonderland and a Shrek float with some striking likenesses to the characters built on it. It even had a large castle with a Princess Fiona actress standing atop it, waving to the audience in Princess Diana fashion.

On the other hand, a Space Jam float’s giant characters were kind of scary to look at, their faces kind of grotesque. No one said pomping was easy.

Though these were all pretty cool, the night also had some obvious winners. Here are my picks for the best (and worst) of the Homecoming 2010 parade.

I would like to first give an honorable mention to the Illinois game themed float of Alpha Phi and Tau Delta. Though its scoreboard only gave us a modest 20-10 lead (or was it 25-10? difficult to say, since reading pomped numbers is no easy task), it did have a mechanical linebacker that occasionally moved in to sack a pomped up Chandler Whitmer.

The runner up, then, had to be Delta Upsilon’s Riverboat Casino, complete with rocking steamboat that actually produced some steam. Cool, huh? This was a very close contender for first place.

And my top pick for this year’s best float is The Little Mermaid by Sigma Sigma Sigma and Pi Lambda Phi. This thing had everything. It was huge, for one, displaying large ocean floor community. It had a gigantic King Triton on the back complete with blinking light-up trident (thanks to some handy christmas lights), a mechanical sea horse and a giant clam on the front. I also have to give kudos to the young woman who played the part of Ariel, lounging in the giant clam, for bearing through the cold night air wearing so little.

There were some less-than-stellar floats as well, including one (I’m not sure by whom) that was essentially a little igloo in the middle of an otherwise bare flatbed trailer with about four or five girls standing around it, occasionally dancing.

I also wasn’t thrilled with Fiji’s. They had barely enough pomping to cover the trailer and it looked like it was thrown together in a night (which, funny enough, I’m pretty sure was the case–there was literally nothing done on it when I looked out my dorm window at Fiji’s parking lot the day before). However, they did have a cool theme (Austin Powers) and a revolving bed in the middle for Mr. Powers to lie on, which is pretty darn cool. So there were some redeeming qualities there.

As for interesting non-float components, I thought the pink breast cancer awareness cement truck stood out, with its bright pink ribbon on the cement mixer. And for those of you wondering, yes, the THON trailer sported this year’s theme: “Together Without Limits.”

All in all, it was a memorable night. If there’s anything else I missed that you particularly enjoyed (or didn’t), feel free to let us know.