it was a huge success and eventually the school won several local titles in a row - faced with these results, in 1960 the leadership eventually attempted its luck in rio de janeiro's main parade.

by this time it was renamed g. r. e. s. união da ilha do governador (governor's island union), and spent several decades tilting between the third and the second groups of the samba school championship.

over time, the other smaller groups from the island would mostly die out little by little, and or eventually fuse with the growing union.