The Real Magic of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade: Making It Disappear
From Amira McKee, writing for The Wall Street Journal…
Volunteers train at ‘flight schools’ to learn how to deflate the colossal balloons in 15 minutes. One rule: Don’t inhale.
For the millions of Americans tuning in from their living rooms, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade ends with a familiar crescendo: the roar of the crowds, a blizzard of confetti, and a final wave from Santa Claus.
But for Kathy Kramer, who has handled the parade’s colossal balloons for decades, work’s not over.
In a ritual unseen by the cameras, volunteers heave the floating icons toward the asphalt. They yank open industrial-grade zippers, unleashing a gust of helium, and dive chest-first onto the collapsing character. The goal is to undo 90 minutes of inflation in just 15.
The urgency is real. Kramer warns that if the team doesn’t deflate fast enough, the next balloon in the lineup “will just walk right over the top of us.”
“The parade keeps coming,” said Kramer, a Macy’s employee who will pilot this year’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid balloon. “When you get to the bottom of an escalator, if you stop there and stand and look around, everybody’s coming down behind you. So you got to keep moving.”
Call it the parade’s final magic trick: making hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of helium, dozens of floats, and throngs of fans vanish. While the broadcast captures the leisurely stroll down a 2.5-mile stretch of Midtown Manhattan, the breakdown is a race against New York’s impatient grid. It’s a meticulously choreographed exercise designed to quickly scrub the streets clean of holiday cheer.
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