AMA: I Marched in the 2024 NYC Macy's T-Day Parade !1! Woot!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Hi folks - Courtesy of a certain well-connected Doper who shall remain anonymous I had the rare privilege yesterday of marching in the famous parade.

His role is that of a balloon “pilot”; the guy in charge of getting one balloon put together, inflated, crewed, walked down the parade route, and deflated, all without mishap. He’s assisted by about 7 other experts traveling the route with him, and about 90 mostly unskilled drones holding the lines that control the path and altitude of the balloon. I was one of those 90 unskilled drones. So I was mostly ballast and a voice-activated reel of 1/4" nylon rope.

His / our balloon was the Sinclair Oil company big green dinosaur. Our lead element is 3 motorized mini-floats depicting dinos hatching from eggs, then two banner-carriers, then a handful of free-form marchers / greeters waving to the crowd. Then the big balloon. In this amateur YouTube our lead element first appears on-screen at about 1h56m into the vid, we appear at about 1h57m, and we’re visible until about 1h59m.

Our pilot and my benefactor is the dude in white coveralls, green cap, and orange gloves walking backwards 50+ feet ahead of the balloon. I’m the faceless droid holding the line on the baby dino’s right rear foot. I’m identifiable for about 5 milliseconds seen between other line-handlers in the foreground. If you already know my shape and who else to look for around me. It’s a very fleeting sort of (non-) fame. :wink:

I’m told the genuine NBC telecast will be available on their Peacock streaming service and nowhere else. I haven’t seen it yet.


Some 6000 folks march in the parade in one role or another and the total logistics package to do all this is amazing. For at least a few more days there’s lots of parade-related info here:

From my time in emergency management I also marveled at the amount of government logistics to close all those dozens of streets, manage the multi-million person crowd, provide sanitation & EMS, etc. Easily 1000 cops or auxiliaries were standing along the parade route, plus another thousand more farther back managing the road closures, etc.

It was a truly neat experience, something very few people get to do even once, much less those for whom this is a T-day tradition. I’d like to offer a very public THANK YOU to a very private Doper for his generosity in including me in this event and in his circle of friends who do this regularly. We had an amazing couple of days together.


I am not the first Doper to be so honored; here’s a thread from six years ago about someone else’s similar experience.


So go ahead … Ask me anything. I probably don’t know very many answers except about my direct experience, but I’ll share what I do know.

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Woo Hoo!
Congratulations!
I’m happy you were able to have this experience.

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As it happens, I saw that part of the parade, with the two dinosaur floats.

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So cool! I’m glad you got to have this experience.

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I was able to catch your balloon. When it went by the nbc hosts they had quite a bit to say about it and did get good shots of the handlers.

Voice activated? Really? How?

I know the weather was quite horrid, did the poncho thing work? What were the start and stop times? Did you wave the entire time?

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I was wondering about some of the dancers, who appeared to be wearing skimpy costumes. I assume they were outside only briefly, while performing and otherwise stayed warm.

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We tried watching it, but the NBC announcers were acting like they were snorting coke between on-camera bits. That sort of frenetic activity puts me on edge, so I shut it off.

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My wife had it on. I watched it only briefly. Was yours the green dino with the smaller “baby” dino on it’s back? If so, I saw that one (and possibly glimpsed you.)

Was the weather as horrible as it looked on TV?

From what I heard from the other room they seemed to lean heavy towards country music. Not sure why that is.

Looks like quite a logistical achievement, tho I suppose in large part it is the same thing year after year. From your experience were there a lot fo stops and starts, and gaps between units?

Saw “The Temptations.” Wondered how many (if any) were “original” members. Looks line 1 Otis Williams, who owns the name.

Yeah - pretty clear demonstration of how curious of an occupation those sort of people have.

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Voice activated in that the pilot shouts instructions accompanied by whistles and hand signals, and we reel in or out our lines as we’re told. Or turn left or right or stop or start walking. He’s the brains; we’re the muscle.

The lines themselves are wrapped around an X-shaped piece of hard plastic about 1’ x 2’ x 1/4" called a “dog bone” that you grip with both hands on diagonally opposite arms. A lot like what kite-flyers use, but larger. Each half-turn of the bone takes in or feeds out ~8" of line.


The weather on Tue, Wed, and Fri was beautiful. The weather on Thu was … poor.

The rain started at 4am, and fell steadily albeit lightly non-stop. It finally ended at about 1130am as the parade was finishing up. Temps were 40-45F. I and everyone else was outdoors standing or walking in the rain non-stop from about 0600 to 1100. Plus the 15 minute walk from my hotel to the meet-up & costuming facility at 0515.

The poncho kept everyone’s torso pretty dry. The torso part of my costume was completely dry. But our costumes were all totally soaked / saturated / dripping wet from the middle of the upper arm down to the wrist and from just above the knee down to the feet. I wore the poncho hood under my hat, which trick kept the poncho’s drawstring-less hood on my head. But also meant the hat itself got utterly soaked and by the end water was dripping out of the sopping hat front and down my face. The issue gloves are a stretchy spongy sort of nylon cloth with a neoprene grippy surface on the palm side of the glove body and fingers. They were utterly sopping and by clenching your fist a 1/4cup of water would squeeze out of each of them. Did that every few minutes for hours.

I had been forewarned by my benefactor on how to best dress for the rain. I’m damned glad to have had his wise counsel. Remember I’m from Miami and consider 65F to be cold weather and 60F to be severely cold weather. Although during my career I certainly experienced all the seasons North America can provide. I’m just out of practice for all that.

So I had 2 layers of thermal long underwear, thermal socks then waterproof socks, then a full two-piece oversized rainsuit. My sneakers had stretch galoshes over them. I had nitrile exam gloves on my hands. The only recommended step I skipped for lack of equipment was to duct-tape the bottom of my rain suit pants to the top of the galoshes.

Then we add the costume on top of that: oversized plain cotton / nylon coveralls in the color scheme of your balloon, the bib with the balloon-appropriate decorations on front and slogan on back, a white cotton neck gaiter, white vinyl spats to mostly hide your individual shoes, then the watch cap and gloves. And finally the disposable clear poncho.

Due to my galoshes, exam gloves, and rain suit I was dry everywhere except for wrists and a smidgen of water that snuck in around my ankle and dampened one sock. Others were not nearly so well prepared and were soaked to the skin nearly everywhere as the water wicked all over their costume then inner clothes.

Standing around outdoors doing exactly nothing from ~615am when we got to the balloon until ~0830 when we started walking the balloon up to the starting line got cold and boring. Once we started moving for real at about 0855 that was all forgotten.


Some folks waved a lot, and especially those on the perimeter of the pack of line-handlers. I waved a bunch, but far short of continuous, from my spot a little more into the pack. The expectation is the line-holders will keep a good two-handed grip on their dog bones most of the time.

We also did a lot of random cheering, as did the crowd. At various points along the way the crowd started organized chanting of “Dino! Dino!” and we kept that going as far down the route as we could. Then there’d be a block of relative silence then the crowd would pick it up again. etc. Saw a LOT of faces and lots of excited kids.

The weather forecast had been for much harder rain and much more of it, and for brisk winds. So everyone was girded for a difficult parade. By the wee hours the forecast had moderated a lot and we experienced only light rain and light winds.

But parade management had made a decision to fly the balloons very close to the ground to retain better control over them in the expected winds. So the good news is the handlers got a lot more on-camera time as we were still sorta in-frame while the media focused their cameras on the balloon itself. And we didn’t spend the whole parade hauling hard on the lines while the wind tried to steal our balloon. The pilots were disappointed as the whole spectacle is better when the balloons are up higher. And they get to show off their skill in controlling a mob of unskilled helpers :wink:

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Sorry I missed you. I had the parade on as background noise as is tradition but I was busy helping my wife prepare.

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Anyone you saw performing for the cameras while standing on the street walked the whole thing outdoors. 2-1/2 miles, 3+ hours in the rain including the prep time. Likewise anyone standing or performing on a float was outside the whole time.

I think maybe some of the bigger name celebs had a place to hide on the float or were performing on a covered fixed stage near the end of the parade. Or even in a studio elsewhere, and maybe not in real time either. Which the magic of TV made it seem they were in the parade, not just near it.

I know there was a troupe of about 40 dancers dressed in sorta I Dream of Jeannie outfits in the unit immediately in front of ours. They were 200-500 feet ahead of us most of the time so I could not be sure, but I think those had little to no provisions for warmth. I certainly saw a variety of skin tones on the seemingly bare arms, midriffs, and ankles; more than you’d expect for costumes. They had the clear ponchos and that’s about it.

The big TV stage is just at the end of the parade. Each unit stops for a bit, performs for the cameras, then moves off stage a couple more blocks then disbands on various streets closed to the public.

Just before the TV stage we caught up to the ladies. I watched them all drop off their ponchos and change from flats into shiny cute shoes with heels. Then they danced with great enthusiasm for the cameras. While I could barely feel my hands and feet. It’s tough duty being a woman and a dancer.

The good news is by then it was barely drizzling so they didn’t get further soaked (much) once poncho-less. The same could not be said for the dance acts that were earlier in the parade.


The YouTube I cited in my OP has no narration. All you hear is the sound of the nearby crowd. And a special shout-out to @BippityBoppityBoo for finding that vid. I’m sure there are others out there too. But that vid seems well-made and is the entire parade stem-to-stern. Sans the hyperactive narration.

Yep. My line held onto the baby’s right rear foot. Which ankle & foot is about as large as I am. Momma’s right front foot which was hovering ominously above and behind me the whole time is about 6 feet in diameter and the leg is about 15 feet long.

Despite Jurassic Park, a real brontosaurus would be a truly terrifying sight. A human wouldn’t even leave a large grease spot on the bottom of one of those feet. They’d stomp a cow the way you’d stomp a mouse.


Yes. It’s real obvious they’ve got this down to a well-honed playbook. Details differ year to year, but the basic structure is the same every time. Stuff still goes wrong, but they have a plan for everything.

e.g. The Dora the Explorer balloon just ahead of us ended up short-handed. All the handlers are volunteers and by luck a bunch of them decided to no-show, probably over the weather. So they borrowed a few of ours. In the vid I cited in teh OP at around time 1h50m you can see a few folks in the wrong green Dino uniforms carrying Dora along with all the Dora-costumed folks.

Another balloon split a seam overnight Wed-Thu and never made the parade at all. The show goes on.


From when we stepped off the starting line for real we kept moving much better than I expected to. We stopped a few times (5?) over the 2-1/2 miles, but never for more than a minute. I also noted out pilot kept us hanging back from the unit ahead more than I might have expected. So perhaps he was playing smart so we’d absorb most of the stops just by slow-walking into the gap ahead.

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Yeah - one young woman singer was wearing a somewhat skimpy red outfit. Pretty sure when they stopped for the performance, I saw her come out from the back of the float as someone undrape a black cape or something off of them, and the handler then shuttled off the back of the float.

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I was fully prepared to watch the parade but when I turned it on – streaming through Peacock – it was about 60% ads, 20% talking heads pitching some random product, and 20% actual parade and… yeah. I don’t have the patience for that. So I bailed. Now I wish I’d have just dealt with the commercials.

What kind of pace did you have to maintain? How long did it take to go the ~2½ miles?

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When we were walking it was well below my normal admittedly fast pace. Slower also than a US military march which I always found slow back when I did such things. More like a casual walk in the park with hundreds of friends than a march.

And as noted above, we stopped for a minute or two from time to time. I did not hack my clock exactly, but for round numbers we hit the start line at 0845, maaaybe 0900 and finished at ~1100 so 2h00m to 2h15m to cover 2.5 miles. So ~1.25mph average. We were probably at ~30th percentile position within the total parade.

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Who makes sure that Santa Claus is not intoxicated? After all, it’s cold out there!

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Here is another vid taken from the right side of the parade. The dino becomes visible approaching in the distance at about 0h28m into the vid. It’s the unit closest to the camera from about 0h31m to 0h32m.

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That’s awesome @LSLGuy. Congratulations on being in the parade.

I made a point to watch this year because our local high school band was in the parade. The Lake Hamilton High School Marching Power Band of Arkansas. I’m so happy the students got that experience. NBC aired them towards the end of the parade coverage.

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Wow, small world. I used to go to Lakeside High, down the road.

Grats @LSLGuy!

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Historically I wasn’t much of a parade watcher and certainly not an expert on them in general or Macy’s in particular.

I was surprised to learn HS bands were in the parade. I’d assumed they’d all be college bands; this being the biggest of the big leagues after all.

I have a nephew who attends one of the other high schools whose band was in this parade with me. He’s not a band member, but still an interesting coincidence.

The US has ~4K counties and probably ~10K high schools. 4 of which marched in this parade. What’re the odds?