As the 98th iteration of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade makes its way down Central Park West and to the heart of Herald Square, there will be all the old familiars.
Snoopy overhead, Tom Turkey kicking things off and, of course, the Taylor Swift of Thanksgiving, Santa Claus, bringing up the rear.
But there will be some differences this year because, after three decades, a new company has taken over production of the annual event.
Changes introduced by the new company, Silent House, will include more cameras trained on the spectators lining the parade route, according to a spokeswoman.
There will also be cameras from the parade itself, circulating among the 700 clowns, 11 marching bands and the thousands of volunteer balloon handlers, who will keep icons like the new Minnie Mouse balloon from flying away.
The spokeswoman for Silent House — which produced the halftime performance of this year’s Super Bowl — said its aim was to make the expected 30 million people watching on screens feel as if they’re standing and cheering alongside the 3.5 million or so people watching in person.
The spectacle will take place at a moment when Macy’s may be happy to have a diversion.
Days before the parade, the company announced that an employee, who was responsible for tracking how much the company spent on small-package delivery, had “intentionally” misstated and hidden up to $154 million in expenses.
And far from the festivities around the flagship store in Herald Square, the company has been painfully slimming down. Macy’s plans to close 150 stores over the next three years, leaving it with just 350 brick and mortar outlets — a little more than half of what the company had before the pandemic.
But on Thursday, Macy’s will be in high spirits, tossing 300 pounds of glitter and 200 pounds of confetti over the 2.5-mile parade route. Though the holiday’s forecast calls for rain, acts of nature — be it gales or extreme cold or infectious disease — have hardly thwarted the parade before.
Even Spider-Man can’t be stopped.
Past iterations of the balloon suffered disaster. His leg was punctured by ice in 1989, his inflated head was gashed by trees in 1993, and the superhero was so mortally wounded just before the kickoff of the parade in 1998 that he never made it down Central Park West.
Today he will be back for the first time in a decade, all 44 feet of him, a brand-new version of himself.
On the downtown platform of the No. 1 train at the 86th Street Station, the Steinberg-Luo family was headed to the kickoff just before the parade’s 8:30 a.m. start time.
They had gotten a sneak peek already: The night before, they had seen the balloons being inflated on 77th Street. And the floats.
“ I saw the turkey!” Jupiter Steinberg-Luo, 4, said of Tom Turkey, the parade’s animatronic grand marshall, adding, “He’s not actually afloat, he’s a big fat robot.”
His sister, Leonie, 8, said she was bursting with excitement. And gratitude: “It reminds me how grateful I am to live in New York City.”
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