Thanksgiving Parade

What: The worlds largest parade and the offi­cial kick off of the Amer­i­can hol­i­day sea­son, the Thanks­giv­ing parade in Man­hat­tan see’s the famous streets of New York come alive as an assort­ment of floats, fal­loons, bal­loon­i­cles  and over 60 giant heli­um bal­loons – fea­tur­ing children’s heros, hol­i­day fig­ures and enter­tain­ment icons, march through the heart of New York in front of some 3.5 mil­lion spec­ta­tors.

Offi­cial­ly spon­sored by Macy’s, the parade also fea­tures live music from local, pop­u­lar and icon­ic acts, as well as free Broad­way enter­tain­ment, cheer­lead­ers, clowns and high school march­ing bands, as amongst the chilly New York weath­er, and with a tra­di­tion­al post parade thanks­giv­ing meal, the fes­tive sea­son offi­cial­ly begins.

When: The Thanks­giv­ing parade takes place on the fourth Thurs­day of Novem­ber – which is also the day many Amer­i­cans will gath­er with fam­i­ly for a tra­di­tion­al thanks­giv­ing feast.

Where: The Thanks­giv­ing parade takes place in New York, Man­hat­tan. With the route tak­ing the parade and bal­loons from the start of West 77^th Street down the road of Cen­tral Park West, turn­ing east on to Cen­tral Park South head­ing down from 59^th street to 34^th street until it reach­es 6^th avenue, where it then heads west again reach­ing to fin­ish­ing place of Macy’s her­ald square.

Dura­tion:  The parade itself begins at 9pm on west 77^th street and lasts for 3 hours fin­ish­ing at 12pm (east­ern time) out­side the Macy’s her­ald square – for those wish­ing to watch from the streets of New York it’s advised to arrive at 5:30am to secure your spot, bring­ing food and plen­ty of lay­ers.

Tick­ets:  The thanks­giv­ing parade has no tick­ets offi­cial­ly sold for it, so you’re left with three options to wit­ness the parade.

The first, is to join the mil­lions of peo­ple watch­ing the parade on the New York streets, with this option you’ll need to be and at your spot on the parade route by 5:30 am (we’d rec­om­mend the Colum­bus Cir­cle as the point at which to view) – and remem­ber to bring lots of lay­ers, food, fold­able chairs (if want­ed) and a good cam­era. 

The sec­ond option requires you to strike it lucky – there is a ‘grand­stand’ for the parade, which offers seat­ing and a great view, unfor­tu­nate­ly though these seats are all reserved for Macy employ­ees or vol­un­teers – so to score a seat there you need to be well con­nect­ed, or take your chances on some of the less rep­utable tick­et­ing web­sites and hope for the best.

And the third, and best option – albeit expen­sive, is to score a bal­cony or win­dow spot on one of the hotels that offer view­ing plat­forms or win­dow views of the parade route. Although expen­sive, this option skips the wait­ing times and cold of New York and allows you to watch in com­fort. The best hotels for this option are:

Res­i­dence Inn New York Manhattan/Times Square

Hilton Gar­den Inn New York/West 35th Street

Hotel Cen­tral Park

The Quin Cen­tral Park by Hilton Club

Hotel Bel­le­claire

Hotel Penn­syl­va­nia

New York Hilton Mid­town

Man­darin Ori­en­tal, New York

The Ritz-Carl­ton New York, Cen­tral Park

But be pre­pared to book well in advance and a hit to your wal­let.

Need to Know:  If watch­ing with the mil­lions of mem­bers of the pub­lic, be pre­pared to get up very ear­ly, bring your own food (you leave your spot you lost it) and dress in lay­ers as the New York Autumn can be chilly.

It’s also advised to be on the guard for pick­pock­ets and thieves in New York and not bring any­thing unless it’s essen­tial.

One oth­er option for view­ing the bal­loons, which is far less crowd­ed and will offer you bet­ter pho­tog­ra­phy shots, is to be at the Amer­i­can Nat­ur­al his­to­ry muse­um between 1pm-8pm the day before the parade, where you can get to watch the bal­loons being inflat­ed for free.

More Infor­ma­tion:  For infor­ma­tion on the parade route, the bal­loons in the parade, and advice on how to best enjoy the parade see the offi­cial site of the thanks­giv­ing parade at: [https://www.macys.com/social/parade/]