9. There is a whole team behind every balloon at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade
Each full-sized balloon has a team of at least 90 people making sure it navigates the parade route safely. According to Buzzfeed, each balloon has a flight management team that consists of a pilot, two co-pilots, one captain, two assistant captains, and a team in charge of steering the vehicle to the balloon is attached to. Each team also wears outfits that color coordinate with their balloons.
According to Macy’s, a parade float takes approximately four months to construct, not including ideation and design. If the Parade Studio team started from scratch and built all 28 floats in the 2021 parade, it would take eight years.