Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

As you know, this is a blog for my students and parents… and if your “bucket list” includes attending the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade then read on, but if not, you can stop now because this particular post is all about my family’s trip to NYC.  I am writing this post because when my family decided that we were going to go to NYC for the parade we started desperately searching for tips and information from people who had gone to the parade in the past.  We knew that this would be a once in a lifetime trip and we wanted to make the most out of it and hoped to be able to learn from other people’s experiences.  So, in an effort to pay it forward, below is information about our trip, what we did and why.  If this is on your bucket list – Go!  It is totally worth it!

Some background information – we were traveling with 5 adults and 3 kids.  The kids were 3, 9 and 12 years old so we had to keep them in mind with our activities and planning.  We arrived in NYC the Monday before Thanksgiving and left on Saturday.  Our initial plan was Tuesday to Sunday, but the flights were much cheaper for Monday to Saturday and we actually all felt it ended up being the ideal situation because it allowed us the chance to do some things on Monday evening and Tuesday before it started to get even more crowded.  And getting home earlier was good too because we were all exhausted after packing everything possible into the trip.  We were also really worried about the weather and I don’t know how we ended up being so lucky but we had unbelievably awesome weather.  It was cool some days, but layering up a bit made it perfect.  I hope you will be as fortunate.

Hotel: We stayed at the Hampton Inn Times Square North and it was great.  Located close to Times Square (but also far enough away that it wasn’t noisy), we picked this particular hotel because unlike most hotels in NYC, they have queen size beds (and not double beds).  Additionally, they provide complimentary continental breakfasts which we thought was ideal for minimizing costs spent on eating out.  The hotel did a lot of little extras that we loved – for example, they had complimentary waters, cookies, apples, coffee, hot chocolate, and tea.  The best was that on Thanksgiving day as we returned from the parade the staff greeted us with slices of pumpkin pie!  Such a sweet touch!

Parade:  In case this is all you want to know about – I’ll skip straight to the parade.  We had read a lot about how crowded it gets and how as the parade starts the people in the back tend to push forward meaning that everyone needs to stand.  We were not opposed to standing for the parade, but wanted to make sure that the kids could see and so we knew that meant we needed to be at the front.  We also read that there was no way anyone could ever maneuver a stroller with the Thanksgiving Day crowds, but we worried that the 3 year old would need to be sitting in the stroller to keep track of him.  Our decision was to take the stroller and then we just planned to carry it back to the hotel after the parade.  (For the record, it actually didn’t end up being a problem pushing it back to the hotel – we just took our time with the crowds.)  My sister and I walked about half of the parade route scouting out what we wanted to have as our “ideal” location.  We came up with 5 or 6 different options that all seemed great.  We knew that we needed to be on the side of the street that our hotel was near because after a certain time the police barricade the roads and don’t allow people to cross.  Our plan was to have the girls go early and save the spots and the boys come later so we needed to make sure that our whole group could meet up even if barricades were in place.  We also wanted to pick a spot that was close to a restaurant or port-a-potty so that if we got desperate and needed to use a restroom we could have it as an option.  (For the record – we limited our liquid intake so that we wouldn’t have to use a restroom and that is definitely our highest recommendation!  My sister needed to use the restroom part way through the parade, but obviously wasn’t going to leave.  So definitely limit your liquids!)  We decided that we wanted to find a spot that ideally had some type of barrier behind us so that we wouldn’t get squished at the front.  We had read that there are a few bus stations with benches and enclosures and thought those might be great options (especially if the weather had been bad – snowing or raining), but they were on the opposite side of the street so they weren’t an option for us.  We found that there were quite a few options – subway entrances/ exits, fencing, and scaffolding that you could sit in front of and not need to worry about people pushing forward.  We ended up at our first choice place which was along Central Park South and had scaffolding behind us and a tree to the left side giving us “protection” from 2 of the 3 sides.  We ended up sitting through the entire parade which meant that the people standing directly behind us had no problems seeing either – a win/ win.  I can’t say that it was a necessity to have the scaffolding behind us because I didn’t notice if people beyond the scaffolding were pushed forward or not, but I would recommend it if you have it as an option.  The key question you are probably wondering is – how early do you have to arrive… and we didn’t have any idea.  My sister and I decided that we would head out at 4am and get set up.  My mom and niece joined us a few hours later and the boys followed around 7am.  We were all together at the parade location around 7:15 or 7:30.  Yes, we really did head out at 4am.  We were not the only ones out and about that early, but there were definitely not a lot of people out that early either.  I wish I had paid more attention to what time people started taking the other locations that we thought had been good options, but sadly I didn’t.  I suspect that had we left at 4:30 or maybe even 4:45am we could have found a spot in one of our choices, but maybe not our top choice spot.  There are things that we didn’t know would be issues – for example, at Columbus Circle the parade evidently has a performance area and so they have reserved sections from a bus-stop sign back towards the circle… and that wasn’t marked as early as we were out there and we saw them making some people move.  They also had the Central Park side of the street completely barricaded off.  Near the start of the parade family members of the New York City Police Department were escorted into that area.  It was great that they were able to have a perk since their family members were working to help keep the rest of us safe, but it was definitely pretty empty on that side of the road since not that many of their family members attended.  As someone coming to town, just know that along Central Park South, you won’t be able to stand on the Central Park side of the road.  That is all of the logistics I can think of related to the parade.  And, if you are seriously contemplating attending the parade I suspect you will find this out on your own, but the parade far exceeded our expectations.  There was a lot that you don’t see when you watch the parade on TV – elaborate “clowns” that are between the floats and bands.  And, unlike what you see on TV, you don’t get to see all of the Broadway performers.  (It made sense, but we hadn’t really thought about it much that they wouldn’t be on floats along the way.)

Broadway Shows:  One of our family’s non-negotiable things that we knew we wanted to do was attend the Rockette’s Christmas Spectacular Show.  When we left for NYC that was the only show we had planned, but once we were there and walking around seeing all of the theaters we decided we wanted to try to go to another show.  We ended up also going to see Finding Neverland (which starred Matthew Morrison from Glee).  It was the only kid-friendly show playing on Thanksgiving evening which was the only time we could squeeze in another show and I have to say – it far exceeded our expectations!  We loved both of the shows!!!

Holiday Specific:  There are a lot of holiday specific activities to do while in NYC and we tried to do several of them.  On Wednesday evening before the parade, you can go to the Museum of Natural History and walk around to see the balloons being blown up.  Only part of our group went because my sister and the oldest and youngest kids needed a break, but it was fun to get a sneak-peak of the balloons up close.  The police and organizers have it down to a science – you walk up the street in mass and gradually get into narrowing barriers and the line moves along and you get to walk past all of the balloons.  We arrived a bit later in the evening so the balloons were all completely blown up so we could see all of them.  There were definitely a lot of people there, but it didn’t seem bad as you were walking past the actual balloons.  For what it is worth, I heard from one of the people sitting next to us at the parade that she had also gone to see the balloons being blown up the previous night, but that on Instagram she had seen lots of people posting pictures of being able to watch the Broadway groups practice their routines in front of Macy’s at Herald Square.  I don’t have details on that, but that would have been a fun thing to see so perhaps explore to see if that is an option that anyone can attend.  The windows of the major department stores are all decked out for the holidays and that was fun to see.  The windows at Sak’s were more impressive at night (in my opinion) and our favorite was Bloomingdale’s and their “senses” theme for this year – such fun.  Santaland – The Macy’s Santa who flies in at the end of the parade is the “real” Santa and so going to Santaland was on our definite list of things to do.  The challenge was trying to figure out when we were going to squeeze this in since Santa doesn’t arrive until Thursday and so that only left Friday or Saturday as visit options.  With Friday being Black Friday we didn’t think that would be the best choice so we opted for Saturday.  We had read that arriving first thing in the morning when they open is the best bet for not having long lines so we got there at 8am and it worked great.  I will also say that we had signed up for the free express-pass (we had read about this and struggled to figure out how to get the express pass – I ended up finding info about it and a link on their blog) and when we got there we asked about the line – it was less than 5 minutes difference between the full Santaland experience and using the express pass so we elected to see all of Santaland  (if you use the express pass you don’t get to see all of Santaland).We have quite a group of train lovers in our family and so the New York Botanical Gardens Holiday Train Show out in the Bronx seemed like a great option.  It is a bit of a train ride to get there and it sounds like it was nice (I didn’t go – just the boys went), but I also heard that it was very crowded – they went on Friday – and so it was hard to see the trains much of the time.  It sounded like it might have been a better experience if it wasn’t as crowded. On the last day prior to leaving we went to the Children’s Central Park Marionette Holiday Show and the 3 year old loved it… I just thought it was OK, but by then I was exhausted and we had already seen 2 Broadway productions so Marionette’s simply couldn’t compare in my mind. 

Eating:  We love eating and so we searched high and low and listed out every restaurant that people were mentioning trying to identify which ones we would go to while in town.  And I think at one point our list was over 15 pages long single spaced!  (Seriously!)  You aren’t going to go wrong when finding a place to eat… the challenge is that you have to choose and eliminate others which also sound amazing.  We suggest seeing which tables accept reservations through Open Table and making reservations for at least Wednesday night, Thursday (Thanksgiving) and Friday very early!  (When we started trying to make our Friday reservations we had a hard time finding one that worked with our schedules.)

The favorite restaurant of everyone was definitely Ellen’s Stardust Diner because of the food and the atmosphere.  They don’t take reservations so we went there on Monday night when we first got to town.  We were worried that it would still be a really long wait (we were a party of 8) and the line was down the street a bit, but they got us in really fast so it didn’t end up being a problem at all.  The waiters and waitresses all sing and perform while moving throughout the restaurant doing their jobs of serving and taking orders – it was impressive and they talked about the fact that many of them end up on Broadway. 

Other restaurants that we went to included:

•           Max Brenner’s (hello chocolate!)
•           Carmine’s (family style Italian)
•           Parm
•           Pizza by slice take-out
•           Street vendor hot-dog cart
•           Serendipity (the girls went there while they boys were on their train trip and the desserts were awesome, but know that they have a policy that everyone has to order something so while we had planned to share two desserts between the 4 of us we had to order 4 things so we ended up doing nachos and 3 desserts.)
•           Virgil’s (BBQ – in the whole scheme of things this was probably the least favorite, but more because the others were so impressive.) 

For Thanksgiving Day most restaurants have a special Thanksgiving Day meal that will be featured on their website/ Open Table.  As we searched, what we found was that a lot of the menu options weren’t going to be great for our group of turkey traditionalists, picky eaters and kids who wouldn’t eat much anyway.  (Some restaurants don’t have kids menu options or reduced prices for kids, gourmet/ unique foods and overall very expensive options.)  As we searched we ended up deciding that we would go to Buca di Beppo for Thanksgiving even though it was a chain restaurant.  They had a traditional turkey meal – Turkey, Mashed Potatoes, Stuffing, Green Beans, and Pumpkin Pie at a reasonable price so it worked for our family.  The Thanksgiving meal at Buca di Beppo exceeded our expectations – we did also get some Italian along with it – and we also took advantage of the fact that you can buy gift cards for Buca di Beppo at Sam’s Club (spend $80 to get $100 in gift cards) so that made it even more cost effective.

And while this isn’t a restaurant – one of our top suggestions is to go to Levain’s Bakery!  We all LOVED their cookies.  The line at the bakery was down the road, but totally worth it.  (I’d go back to NYC in a heartbeat just for some Levain’s cookies!!!) 

Don’t Miss:  We packed as much into our trip as we possibly could so if you are trying to decide what else to do, here are a few suggestions that I’d say you won’t want to miss.  One of our other non-negotiable items was visiting the 9/11 memorial and museum.  We decided to do this on Tuesday morning so that there wouldn’t be as many people there.  We took the tour so that the older kids would have a better understanding of what had happened on the day.  We were there for quite a few hours and the kids got antsy faster than the adults did.  It was emotional and moving.  I was definitely thankful that we took the time to do that.  Explore Times Square – we went to Toys R Us and Disney store multiple times, plus the Hershey’s and M & M’s stores.  We hear that the Toys R Us store will be closing and that is definitely disappointing because for the kids that was a fun part of the trip and there were so many different areas plus the ferris wheel.  Visit Rockefeller Center area and go to the Top of the Rock – we had read that Top of the Rock views were some of the best.  When going to Top of the Rock be sure to order your tickets in advance because the first time we got there we hadn’t done that since we weren’t sure what time we’d arrive and they were booked for several hours so we went back a different day.  We tried to time it so that we were there as the sun was setting so that we could see it in daylight and in the dark which was a definite plus.  There was a full moon that was huge while we were there and that was cool to see.  The Rockefeller Center tree isn’t lit yet at Thanksgiving, but it was there and neat to see.  The Lego store is right there at Rockefeller Center too.  And the last suggestion I have that you definitely shouldn’t miss is taking a carriage ride in central park.  We had this on our list of things we wanted to do, but almost didn’t do it and it ended up being a favorite for the whole family.  (Should I mention Levain’s bakery to you all again as a don't miss… really, go there… Yum!)

What else did we do:  I don’t know how to leave these out of the “don’t miss category” because our trip wouldn’t have been the same without doing them, but here are other things we did and loved… We went to Dylan’s Candy Bar and that was a fun place to explore – think Willy Wonka and Chocolate Factory type everything candy store.  St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Grand Central Station, Tiffany’s, Bakeries, and riding the Staten Island Ferry were all stops we made along the way.  If you have any history buffs in your group, my nephew and brother-in-law went to the USS Intrepid and spent quite a chunk of time there and LOVED it.  This was a late addition to the itinerary and it ended up being one of their favorite parts of the trip.   

Transportation:  We were worried about getting around in New York City with three kids.  We knew that there would be a lot of walking, but again, with the kids we didn’t know how feasible that would actually be.  We took the stroller when we knew we would be walking a lot and sometimes that was the perfect solution and sometimes it was an added headache because the 3 year old didn’t always want to ride in his stroller.  Unfortunately that meant that his dad ended up carrying him on his shoulders for a lot of our walking around the city.  Walking is a great way to see the city and take in the holiday atmosphere.  One lesson we learned - take the subway!  We weren’t sure how that would work with the kids, but it really is the best way to move around NYC.  For getting between the hotel and airport both ways we used Dial 7 cars.  We were worried about not having a car-seat for the 3 year old, but evidently it isn’t required and we just hoped for the best.  The way it worked out we were going to the airport at two separate times so when 6 of the 8 of us were going to the airport at the same time we got 2 cars and split up 3/3.  The other 2 people traveled in an additional car at their appointed time meaning that we used 3 cars for the 8 of us each way.  Dial 7 cars ran an online special which made it even more cost effective.  We thought we might take taxis or use uber, but didn’t end up needing to do that at all.  We also took a bus tour…

Caution:  Grayline Bus Tour… oh goodness… this was the only negative from our whole trip and it is a comical story now.  We had decided that we wanted to be able to take a hop-on/ hop-off bus tour to see some of the tourist parts of NYC that we wanted to be able to at least drive past.  For example this included the United Nations Building (for the record, the flags only fly when they are there working so when we drove past after 5pm you just saw the building and a bunch of empty flag poles so that was a bit disappointing from what I had pictured), New York University, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, Wall Street, the Bull, Flatiron Building, and all of the different parts of NYC (Chinatown, Little Italy, SoHo, Tribeca, etc.)  We did get to do all of these things through the bus tour so in that regard it was worth it, but be forewarned that the extra holiday traffic on top of the already crazy NYC traffic meant that it went VERY slow – and we went early in the trip (Tuesday/ Wednesday morning) – we saw buses just SITTING not moving at all later in the week.  The biggest problem we experienced with Grayline came from the fact that we ordered our tickets online and then went to where they told us to go to get the actual tickets to be able to get on the bus and that was where our nightmare began.  We talked to customer service more times than I can count and they kept sending us on a wild goose chase.  It was terrible!  Poor customer service and very frustrating to not be able to find the people at the location they were instructing us to meet.  There were a bunch of other bus tours all in the same areas and had we not ordered our tickets online we could have done one of the other tours instead.  We also saw lots of Grayline Bus Tour salespeople in other days and at other locations – just not where they were telling us to go on that day so we lost several hours trying to find them.  The tour guides on the bus tours also weren’t that impressive so if you are going to do one of the tours for the chance to see lots of the sites that you can’t seen when travelling by subway and can’t walk to, go for it, but if that isn’t important to you this would be the one thing I’d cut off the to-do list… and at the very least – don’t order tickets online – find a person and buy tickets directly from them – it will ultimately save you time.

If Only:  We had really hoped that 4 of us could go to see Jimmy Fallon.  We follow The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on Twitter and so we knew when the tickets for the month of November would become available.  We tried desperately to get tickets for a taping.  The way it works is that you get put on a wait-list and then later will hear if you actually get tickets.  We were thrilled to be on two wait-lists.  (There happened to be 2 tapings on Tuesday and that was the day we felt it worked best in our schedule.)  Unfortunately, we were not selected to get tickets for either show.  It was a definite disappointment, but we still had a great time with the things we were able to do on our list. 

It’s been almost 6 weeks since our trip to New York City and the memories are still fresh in my mind.  This was the best trip I have ever taken and I loved all of the memories my family made together – it really was the trip of a lifetime!  I hope that you and your family enjoy the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and all that New York City has to offer as the greatest kick-off to the holidays.