Last Updated on January 18, 2026 by Adrienne
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade is an annual tradition for many families, including mine. It happens every year on Thanksgiving morning and features celebrity performers, high school and college marching bands, dancers and cheerleaders, multi-story balloons and so many fun themed floats, including Santa who closes the parade and officially gets the holiday season underway. The parade follows a 2.5 mile route from the Upper West Side to the flagship Macy’s store on 34th Street, and every year more than 3 million people gather to watch in person. This year, I was one of them! Read on for everything you need to know about watching this special event in person.
How to Watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade
There are four main ways to watch the parade (well, five if you count TV 😏): 1) have an apartment building or office that overlooks the parade route, or a friend who does, 2) pay for a hotel along the parade route with viewing from rooms or public areas, 3) get tickets to a public event (many restaurants with parade views host brunches, check out paradebrunch.com) or 4) line up with the masses on the street. We didn’t have the first one, and as you can imagine hotels and restaurants with parade views are obscenely expensive, so we opted for the fourth one.
What it’s Like to Watch the Parade from the Public Street Areas
For the 2025 parade, there was public viewing along most of Central Park West, 59th Street/Central Park South and 6th Avenue north of 38th Street. It’s important to note that the area around Macy’s in Herald Square (where the TV broadcast is televised from) is reserved for Macy’s employees and their guests, and there is also an area around Columbus Circle that’s blocked off from public access. I found lots of conflicting advice about the “best” place to watch – some swear by Central Park West so the parade is over earlier, others vouch for various spots along 6th Avenue. Ultimately, I think the best place to go is wherever you can walk to easily – Ubers and taxis are a no-go due to all the street closures, and the subways are mobbed after the parade ends. We were staying on 48th street, so we just walked directly to 6th Avenue and ended up watching the parade from 48th & 6th. Anecdotally, it seemed like the east side of 6th Avenue was less crowded than the west side, perhaps because so many people are coming from the Times Square area. Being back in our hotel room 10 minutes after the parade ended was pretty amazing.
People start camping out well before dawn, and a lot of advice I read online said you have to be at the parade route by 6 a.m. to be assured of a good view. Although the parade starts at 8:30 we knew it wouldn’t get to our Midtown location until after 9 and the idea of waking so early and then waiting outside for 3+ hours before the parade even started wasn’t very appealing to my family. But I also didn’t want to just stroll over at the last minute and have no hope of seeing anything except the balloons, since the marching bands and floats are a big part of the parade experience too. So we decided to kind of split the difference – we woke up at 7 am and got to the parade route just before 7:45, and it worked out pretty much perfectly. We weren’t right at the barricades but were only a couple of rows back and the adults had a clear sightline to the street and could easily see the bands and dancers. It was harder for our 7 year old since she’s shorter, but when the parade got underway, the very nice people in front of us encouraged her and other little kids to join them right at the barricades for a better view.
Watching the parade in person was SO much fun! All the performers and people walking and riding on the floats had such great energy and it was infectious. The floats are so elaborate and detailed. Some of my favorites were Brach’s gorgeous gingerbread house, Disney Cruise Line’s ship (brought back fond memories of our recent Disney cruise!), the Bronx Zoo’s animal-themed float and of course Santa, Mrs. Claus and their elves.
Hotels Along the Parade Route with Viewing
A number of hotels offer rooms that look directly down on the parade route. Not only are these hotel rooms very expensive, with modest rooms costing in excess of $1,000 per night, they often come with 3-4 night minimum stay requirements, and they typically require full pre-payment and don’t offer refunds in the event of a cancellation (highly recommend travel insurance if you go this route). The process for booking is also often non-standard. Many hotels will take names to put on a waitlist and contact you to book, rather than letting you book online. With 2026 being the 100th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, there may be higher demand than normal, and to be honest I’m not sure the rates are justified for the the typical traveler who can see at least the balloons pretty easily from street level. But if you have special needs or seeing the parade from a cozy hotel room is a bucket list item for you, here are some hotels to check out:
- For a (relatively) more budget option, Residence Inn by Marriott, Manhattan/Times Square on 6th Avenue between 38th & 39th
- In the mid-range price point, New York Hilton Midtown, 6th Avenue between 53rd and 54th
- If you want to go all out, the Mandarin Oriental in Columbus Circle has prime views of the parade switching from Central Park West to 59th Street
This isn’t a complete list, just a starting point. You can look up the parade route and find additional hotels along the route that offer parade view rooms.
Pre-Parade Balloon Inflation
The afternoon and evening before the parade, you can watch the giant balloons being inflated near the American Museum of Natural History (enter at Columbus Avenue and 72nd Street). This used to be kind of a low key neighborhood thing, but has grown in popularity and is now nearly as crowded as the parade itself. Still, if you have very young children or the weather forecast is terrible for parade day, it can be a good alternative to the actual parade.
Tips for Making the Most of Your Thanksgiving Day Parade Experience
- There’s no one right way to view the parade — with younger kids I tend to think the best bet is to roll up closer to when the parade starts and focus mainly on seeing the giant balloons, which you don’t need to be anywhere near the front of the crowd to see well. With older kids you may want to try to get up early and stake out a front row space. Or you may decide it’s worth the money to be warm indoors. It really depends on your budget and what you’re hoping to get out of the experience.
- Know that the biggest name performers often don’t ride on floats and are only at Macy’s for the TV broadcast – so for example, at the 2025 parade we didn’t see Cynthia Erivo, the K-Pop Demon Hunters singers, or the Rockettes – and it can be helpful to set kids’ expectations in advance for who they might see (underpromise and overdeliver 😉)
- Many people had blankets and chairs and even though we didn’t end up waiting that long, we brought a blanket, which I think was a good call – the parade is over 2 hours long and that’s a lot of standing for little ones so anything you can do to minimize the standing time before the parade begins is good. Until shortly before the parade came by our spot, the crowd was thin enough that we could get out and back for bathrooms and food.
- Dress for the weather – although late November in NYC is often fairly mild, there can be snow, rain, or freezing temperatures, and the buildings didn’t block the wind as much as I expected. We loved these adorable and practical penguin handwarmers for keeping our hands toasty.
- If you want some thematic reading or watching to get you in the parade mood, my family loves the original Miracle on 34th Street movie and novelization.
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