Kicking off the 99th annual Thanksgiving, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade winds through the streets of Manhattan with a combination of floats, bands, Santa Claus and larger-than-life character balloons.
Designed and constructed in-house by Macy’s Studio artists and engineers, our annual balloon lineup captures a mix of classic and new characters from pop culture and entertainment. Balloons vary in size, but can be more than the length of two school buses.
The 2025 parade will feature five new characters among 34 balloons. Classic video game icons Pac-Man and Mario join an onion carriage carrying Buzz Lightyear from Pixar’s “Toy Story” series, Derpy Tiger from Netflix’s “KPop Demon Hunters” and eight characters from DreamWorks’ “Shrek” movie.
In past parades, balloons have featured Mickey Mouse, Uncle Sam, Underdog, Dora the Explorer, Kermit the Frog, and more. Decisions about which characters get the giant balloon treatment are a combination of internal conversations and partnerships with the studios and agencies that own the characters.
How are Macy’s parade balloons made?
From the initial character design to the final flight test on Balloon Day, character balloons take six to eight months to create and involve up to 30 people. Floats that appear in parades follow roughly the same manufacturing time.
For the Spider-Man Balloon (a version debuting in 2024 and based on the style of cartoonist John Romita Sr.), the design phase began in late January 2024 and lasted until early May of the following year, when production and assembly began. The balloon made its first test flight in September 2024.
During the balloon design stage, the artist considers the balloon’s aerodynamics and maneuverability by the handler to suggest a number of possible poses and styles for the character.
Once the sketch is complete, the studio’s balloon and engineering department reviews the pose to see if the character can move as a balloon.
After design changes are approved, the studio creates a 3D “white model” of the 24- to 30-inch balloon, which is used to create the pattern that makes up the full-size balloon. Once your pattern is complete, roll it out flat and digitally print it. Like a giant quilt, the durable fabric sections are hand-sewn together, including the public-facing exterior and the interior chamber walls that hold the helium pockets. These sections are then assembled into a whole balloon.
Once the balloon is assembled, the artist does some final work on it, adding character features, shading, and other details. The balloon will then be ready for a series of indoor and outdoor test flights, as well as inflation and deflation tests.
When fully deflated, the average character balloon weighs between 500 and 700 pounds. This is about the same weight as a baby grand piano. When deflated, the Spider-Man balloon weighs approximately 640 pounds.
But the principle that allows you to lift this kind of weight works exactly the same way as a small helium birthday balloon on a string. However, more helium is required (large balloons can require more than 10,000 cubic feet of helium). Helium is lighter than air, so a filled balloon displaces heavier air and creates lift. A handler on the ground uses a tether to guide the balloon.
How big are the Macy’s parade balloons?
Balloons vary in size and shape depending on the character and the pose you create. The Pac-Man balloon that debuts this year is over 37 feet tall, almost as tall as a three-story building, and nearly 39 feet wide, the width of six taxi cabs.
Spider-Man is even longer, measuring 77 1/2 feet from front to back, or about the length of two standard New York City transit buses.
What is the parade route?
On Wednesday, the day before the parade, crews will begin inflating and placing balloons between 81st and 77th Streets around the American Museum of Natural History. At 8:30 a.m. Thursday, after the ribbon cutting, the parade will begin its 2.5-mile route south along Central Park and east on 59th Street to 6th Avenue. From there, the parade heads south to 34th Street, where it turns west for its final performance on NBC nationally in front of the historic Macy’s entrance.
This year marks the 99th parade. The event was canceled from 1942 to 1944 during World War II. At this time, there was a need to collect rubber and other materials used to make balloons to help pay for the war.
source of information macy’s studio; Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade Wiki
