Access Review -
Thanksgiving Parade Balloon Inflation
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ID: image of some parade balloons with the text "Access Review" on top.
Note
This is a breakdown of my experience going to see the balloon inflation for the 2024 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. This system may somewhat change year to year, but hopefully this is at least a bit helpful!
I am also happy to clarify any specifics, just send me a message or an email and I will respond when I can.
For more information, check the Macy’s website. Here’s what the route looks like:
What to expect:
The entrance is on 72nd Street by Central Park. You walk the length of that street in a blob until you get separated into 9 different lines and go through security (which is just a metal detector). I went around 1:20pm and got through security around 2:05, so this portion took ~45 minutes.
The rest of the walk after this took me about an hour. I walked about 2 miles.
In regards to crowds, I was definitely glad to have my headphones and mask on the entire time and got quickly overwhelmed taking the headphones off for security, but I almost never felt squished enough that I was being touched by other people and in many sections was able to walk completely freely.
Along the route after security there is occasionally medium volume music playing.
Once you go through security, you walk up to 76th street, then there’s two double backs (so you walk this route 3 times). After this you go around the Museum of Natural History where the balloons are – there are places to sit around the museum and portable toilets on the far side.
After the balloons section (on that far side) there was a bit of a smush of people going through that bottleneck, but it was pretty brief.
You then walk by the floats that are all fenced off and the path ends at 86th street.