Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons come to life

HISTORY: :: November 27, 2024

:: New York

:: New Yorkers watch as balloons come to life

prior to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

“It’s just all about joy and fun and lightheartedness and about spirit and being together as a family.”

“Lots of colors and they’re so big. And I just want to see Spiderman and Kermit the Frog.”

:: Orlando Veras, spokesman, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

“All the balloons in the Macy’s parade are unique. They’re all different scale and size. They have different chambers. One of the things that people don’t know is that they… have to make a giant balloon of this scale, that are actually multiple balloons that are glued together so you know the hand can be a balloon and the nose is like another balloon depending on how many chambers we call them the balloon has they will take a little longer to inflate up because you not only have to inflate them, but also in the right position inflate the hat, and the hat is not inflated, then you can’t get to the hat if the head is already up.”

Hundreds of spectators watched as workers inflated helium into 17 character balloons, 22 floats and 15 heritage and news balloons.

“It’s just all about joy and fun and lightheartedness and about spirit and being together as a family,” said Rachel Walsh of Mountainside, New Jersey, who came to watch the balloon burst with her husband and two sons, but wasn’t planning to participate in the parade, which will also feature over 700 clowns, 11 marching bands and 10 performance groups.

The parade starts at 8:30 a.m. EST on Thanksgiving Day.