The Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade has been a staple every year since 1924. Although it started as a way to get people excited about the store and the first parade was actually at Christmas instead of Thanksgiving, everything What they did worked, as today more than 3.5 million attend annually and another 50 million watch from the comfort of their living rooms.

Over the years, some things about the parade have changed; the route, the participants and of course the balloons. In 1927, Felix the Cat became the first balloon to be a part of the fun. The following year, they decided to fill it with helium, but they had no way to deflate it, so they just let it go. burst. In the following years they also released balloons, still having no way to deflate them. They addressed all of them and if you find one you can take it back to Macy’s for a prize, however not many people did.

The parade has always been very crowded. The first had 250,000 people on the six-mile route that took store employees from Herald Square to Harlem. It has been something that Americans look forward to every year, and of course, over the years it has grown. There were only a few years that there wasn’t a Macy’s Thanksgiving parade and that was while World War II was being fought and the rubber used to make the balloons was donated to the war effort. Yet in 1945, there were two million people on the route, grateful that the war was over and things could go back to normal.

Today some eight thousand people walk the route and another four thousand volunteers are needed to organize the route, the floats and the balloons.

If you’ve never been to the Macy’s Thanksgiving festivities, why not go but do it in style by chartering a plane? You won’t have to fight the crowds at a commercial airport or endure the long lines at security checks. You’ll have plenty of leg, head and shoulder room, and best of all, you’ll be able to choose when and at what time you fly. Your schedule, not theirs!

If you choose to charter, you can land at an airport closer to the action and get to your destination much faster than a commercial flight, and you can even watch the balloons inflate, which happens overnight. before the big day.