Thanksgiving Day Parade Tips
Last year was the first year we thought of attending the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, our kids were old enough (6 and 3) and we tried to plan ahead but failed. Here is how we tried planning: looking for paid places where could have a standing spot, trying to send one of the family members with chairs to get a spot at 5am (no one wanted to volunteer for this stellar idea), hotel bookings were gone and WAY too expensive if any were available.
Here is what actually happened:
Day of Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade we woke up, checked the weather, packed the kids wagon with snacks, hot coco and blankets and started walking to the crosstown 86th street bus stop. We didn't know what would happen-just doing our best to see how far we could get!
The bus took us to west 86th where it was detoured and we were told to cross the street and walk around the parade floats. We could already see Santa's Sleigh, all the foats!! That was amazing in itself for us and I would have been a happy camper if that's as far as we would have gone.
But that's not where we stopped our journey! We asked the police officers if we could walk through central park instead of crossig more over to the West side. They let us through and we started our journey though the very empty Central Park! So beautiful!
We finally saw on opening and we took it! West 72nd and 5th ave had an opening, public restrooms available and so very open for many people to fit. Time stamp on my phone tells me 7:37am is when we arrived there, we left the house around 7:00am, after the kids were up and had breakfast-no rush, no crazy 5:00am, but really just no real planning there-just going with the flow!
We saw the whole parade, the kids could sit if they were tired, we had hot coco, waved to Santa, had the best time and then walked home!
Here is our adventure in a reel, hope this helps your family make it, if that's on your NYC bucket list :)
