The Unique Aviation Past and Present of Parade Balloons

Download Transcript

AirSpace theme in then under

Matt: Happy Thanksgiving, and welcome to Airspace from the Smithsonian's National
Air and Space Museum. I'm Matt.

Emily: And I'm Emily. Since this episode is dropping on Thanksgiving day, we got to
thinking that we should talk about something holiday related. So we thought, what about
parade balloons?

Matt: The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons have been a holiday staple since
being introduced for the fourth annual parade in 1927. Today, computer drafting and
other modern techniques make it possible to have true to screen characters turned into
balloons.

Emily: We decided to call up Macy's and get the 411 on these iconic airborne
masterpieces. That's today on Airspace. Presented by Olay.

AirSpace theme up and out

Emily: Okay. Matt, tell me about your magical Macy's Parade memories.

Matt: So I think, you know, like a lot of people my age, even if you didn't grow up in
New York, right? You have these memories of watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day
Parade on television every year. It was just sort of, you know, part of Thanksgiving Day,
and it was something you enjoyed as a kid, of course, because all of your favorite cartoon
characters were there in the parade.

And, you know, even today, right, you can find the parade Streaming online or, you know,
on your television, if you still watch television. Um, but, uh, yeah, I mean, it's one of
those things that's just, I think a cultural touchstone, no matter where you live in this
country.

Emily: Do you remember growing up watching it and feeling very strongly about a very
particular balloon? Like, was there a character that you were just super happy they made
into a balloon?

Matt: Well, I mean, I think, you know, as a kid, of course, I watched a lot of cartoons. I
loved Snoopy. I loved the Smurfs, you know, stuff like that, and only later did I get into
superheroes and start to appreciate the superhero balloons, which, of course, have gotten
a lot more popular and a lot more complicated as time has gone on.
But I think, you know, when I was a kid, it was like those classic cartoon characters.
Snoopy, and Mickey Mouse, and, and, you know, those kind of kids cartoon characters.
What about you?

Emily: It will, well, I think it would be a surprise to literally no one that I did not grow
up watching the Macy's Day Parade. Nor do I have particularly fond memories of it
because I don't have any memories of it. Um, but what I can tell you is when I think of
Macy's Day, Macy's Day Parade balloons. I have very core memories around the Friends
Thanksgiving episodes and their very first Thanksgiving episode in season one is "The
One Where Underdog Got Away," where one of the Macy's Parade balloons gets loose
and floats across Manhattan.

So that's gonna be my core memory, Matt, because I don't, I don't know why we didn't
watch it. I don't know if my parents weren't that interested in it. I don't, if I had to guess,
we didn't get that channel because we only ever got like one or two channels on the
antenna.

Matt: Well, and, and little did you know then that you would one day be working for the
Air and Space Museum and that we would be doing an episode where we're, you know,
kind of loosely interpreting what, uh, flight is for this episode and, and bringing in these
hot air balloons and you'd learn all about them, right?

Emily: I mean, little did I know, I mean, you're right. It's a loose interpretation, um,
because there are, we've talked about hot air balloons, right? And so, and, and they're.
piloted. They float in the air. So you can see sort of how we got here, um, despite the fact
that the FAA has nothing to do with parade balloons. It has everything to do with the
Department of Transportation, but bear with us. It's going to be awesome.

Emily: So just to get ahead of things here, Matt and I want to be super clear, Macy's
Thanksgiving Day Parade is not the only parade that has balloons. Detroit, hey what's
up? But, since Macy's is the longest running and probably the most well known, those are
the folks we reached out to.

Kathleen: I am Kathleen Wright. I am the Director of Production Operations for Macy's
Studios, and I have the pleasure of overseeing a lot of the operations and logistics of the
Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Emily: So the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade has been around for a really long time
and the balloons are almost as old as the parade.

Kathleen: Back in 19245, the Macy's Christmas Parade as it had started, um, looked very,
very different. Um, there were a lot of live animals in the parade. There were a lot of
marchers in the parade, and there's still a lot of, um, marching positions in our parade.
But in 19276 was when we first introduced balloons to our line of march and over the
years, they've looked very different. Um, and technology has been on our side in that
sense. If you look back at a lot of our earlier characters in the parade, um, the image and
likeness to those characters is not nearly as precise as we're able to get it now.
So when you see our giant characters flying, uh, in the parade this year, they're
immediately recognizable and exactly as, um, the original creators of those characters,
um, would like to see them in our line of march. So we've really changed those balloons,
um, and how they're produced over the years. Um, and it's really been, um, to see and to
really look back and look at, you know, look forward at this point to how much more we
can really do to get those balloons as exact to their characters as possible.

Matt: So, and, and here's an interesting thing. I mean, today it is kind of, you know, a big
fiasco if a balloon runs away from the parade, but back in the early days, those early
balloons were actually just released at the end of the parade. And if you found the
deflated balloon somewhere and brought it back to Macy's, you could actually claim store
credit. Yeah.

Emily: I think my initial reaction to that was, Well, that's a terrible idea. Those things are
just gonna like...clog up something and just, that's just bad littering, right? I guess all
littering is bad. That's just littering. But I didn't think about the safety factor. I mean,
they're just letting these things go. Although I suppose, um, they were smaller back then,

Matt: They were smaller. And then also if you think we're talking about like the 1920s,
um, it's not like there was a lot of traffic for them to disrupt, right? There weren't these big major freeways with high speed automobiles, you know, maybe it was a little less of a
hazard than it would be today.

Emily: but we're just not accustomed to letting those kinds of things just go off into the
ether and assume that they will be taken care of. Um, but I think it's also really
interesting that Macy's was outsourcing the manufacturing and the design of these
balloons for a long time before they brought it in house to the Macy's Parade Studios. And why I think that's really interesting is usually these things go in the opposite
direction, right?

Matt: Yeah, that's absolutely, you know, right, right? Like, we think about the way things
go is that eventually you end up hiring contractors who specialize in something and
they're working for a bunch of different people, right? Contracting, making the thing and
getting it to multiple clients. But in this case, it's just all in house. It's all Macy's.
Emily: and they've gotten really, really good at it. Right? Gone are the days. or the early
days where the balloons maybe were representations of famous characters or well known
characters at the time compared to these days where it's like that balloon looks exactly
like a giant version of the three dimensional cartoon character, right?

Matt: And, you know, if you think about how animation styles have changed since the
1920s to now, you know, animated characters have also gotten a lot more complicated
than those early, uh, cartoons where you were basically using very basic line drawings to
represent animated characters, and now you've got all of these incredibly realistic 3D
rendered characters and a lot more merchandising around them as well, so everyone is
very familiar with what they're supposed to look like.

Emily: Right, and I think what's interesting is it's not just the way in which they're
constructed I think contributes an awful lot to the representation of these characters in
more detailed ways, right? And they're not just doing this by, um, sewing together a
bunch of fabric and like inflating it. It's a lot more complicated than that.
And if you remember listening to our episode on hot air balloons from a few seasons ago
called "99 Luftballoons," we talked mostly about how you make that sort of classic
teardrop shape hot air balloon. And We also mentioned that there's some novelty balloons
that folks will put people in the little basket and fly around. But those novelty shapes are
actually created in a different way than that sort of classic teardrop hot air balloon And
so those novelty balloons... are constructed really similarly to the Macy's Day balloons by
sort of creating these shapes that look like cartoon characters made up of, I don't know, airbags? How would you describe it, Matt? Like lots of little, specifically shaped balloons
kind of, stuck together?

Matt: it's kind of, yeah, like smaller chambers, right? Rather than it all being one big
balloon, you have the shape and then inside of that shape are all of these individual
chambers that get filled. And what's interesting too is that, you know, as Kathleen told us,
they're able to use those chambers and fill them in different ways to help control the
balloon's flight.

Kathleen: Yes, absolutely. So there's a lot of things, um, that we do on our side in order
to make sure that our balloons are looking as exact as possible. Um, and one of the ways
that we do that is by creating the balloon in different chambers. So when you see a
Macy's balloon flying down, uh, Central Park West or Sixth Avenue, um, it's not just one
giant balloon.

It's actually a series of balloons that are all attached to one another. Um, so a balloon
could have, you know, six, eight, nine chambers inside of that one balloon. Um, and that
is so we can create very exact, uh, dimensions. styles and shapes of those balloons. Um,
and it's also so that we can, um, really monitor the lift of the balloons, some of those
chambers may be filled slightly with, um, cold air, some with more helium so that we can
really manage the lift of the balloons so that they fly at the right pitch down the parade
march.

Emily: Yeah, this is where physics gets cool, right? I mean, we already know physics is
cool. Um, the parade balloons are helium balloons, right? And so that's really different
than a hot air balloon. Because we're not using heat. But in both instances, we're trying to
get air to be lighter than the air on the ground.

And in the case of the parade, right, in the case of a hot air balloon, you heat up the air, it
expands, it gets lighter, it rises. In the case of the parade balloons, we're talking about
helium. Which, if you've seen a helium balloon recently, right, it's lighter than air, so it
floats, and it goes up into the ceiling. And if you don't tie it around your wrist like a good
little kid, you're gonna lose it.

Matt: Yeah, and when we say lighter than air what we really mean right is less dense
And then that less dense gas is trying to reach a level of the atmosphere of equal density,
right? So that's why it rises and then adding the cold air which is more dense Sort of
brings it back down and allows it to find equilibrium at a lower height.

Emily: Well, and this is where I had, this was, I thought, very interesting, because this is
where I think the physics gets even cooler, is the designs of these balloons, because
they're made up of all these different chambers, you can fill the different chambers with
different amounts of helium, which help you sort of create the right floating pose, the
right balloon posture, if you will, so that as these balloons get walked down the parade
route, you can get them to look the way you need them to look from the ground, and also
take into consideration what the weather is doing that particular day, and you do that by
sort of changing what you put into each individual chamber in that balloon.
So it's not just chambers designed to create the shapes you want. It's also engineered to
make sure that when you fill that balloon, you can do it in such a way to control the
attitude.

Matt: Yeah, or basically like the the posture of the character, right?

Emily: Right.

Matt: So all of this is actually part of the design phase of making these balloons. So
before any fabric is even cut, all of these decisions have to be kind of made on the
computer to figure out how the design is going to work with the chambers and the hot, or
hot air, with the chambers and the helium and the cold air.

Kathleen: So, um, our first sketch may be a, um, a beautiful sketch of, uh, let's use
Snoopy as example. So this year we have the Beagle Scout Snoopy balloon by Peanuts in
our parade. And so, um, when we have the first sketch of that Snoopy balloon, it might
not be in the most ideal flight position for that balloon to fly down the line of March.
So we'll do several edits. to, um, the position, the tilts, the lean, um, in that kind of 3d
rendering phase of this balloon. Um, and then once all of the design is reviewed,
approved, um, it's almost similar to, um, making a piece of clothing. So it's pieces of
fabric that are stretched out over, um, tables and tables and tables.
And then they are heat sealed together, um, to make those different chambers for, um,
each of the balloons. And then, uh, gallons upon gallons of paint on top of those, um,
pieces of fabric to make sure, uh, that everything is color correct to the creative of the
balloon. And once we have a fully, fully finished balloon.
Uh, we will test fly it indoors. We will test fly it outdoors and make sure that is parade
ready for Thanksgiving morning.

Emily: So we mentioned, you know, I mentioned before, usually after a company's been
doing something like this in house for a while, they end up outsourcing it. But in this
case, Macy's started creating the balloons themselves, and they still do that today. And
the question I have for you, Matt, is when you talk to Kathleen, where do you do, where
do you have a balloon studio that can handle this many parade balloons in Manhattan?

Matt: Right, and you know, the balloons aren't small, and not only do you have to have
them all in one space, you have to test fly them indoors. And so, you know, that's where I
ask Kathleen, like, how do you even have enough space? Like, where do you do this
work before the parade?

Kathleen: Our studio in New Jersey is about 72,000 square feet and that is where all of
our floats in the parade and all of our balloons are built and refurbished. In that space we
are able to fully inflate a balloon inside, uh, so that we can be doing the paint and doing,
um, all of the fabrication, uh, indoors.

Matt: And even though the parade happens just once a year, it's not like they're only
using that facility. Once a year or just in a few months leading up to the parade. It's
actually, you know, a lot of work Getting these balloons ready to be tested, bringing in
handlers, training handlers, getting the balloons inspected and getting them essentially,
um, you know inspected and licensed by the New York Department of Transportation So
a lot of work is getting done there just leading up to the parade

Emily: And it kind of culminates in Balloon Fest, which happens in November. No, it's
not a public event. I asked. Um, but it's an event that if you're a special press person, you
get to get a press pass and you can go to this event where you get to watch them inflate
these balloons and make sure that they will be functioning and ready for the
Thanksgiving Day parade.
Um, and this is where we sort of go back to sort of bridging that gap between, you know,
aircraft and hot air balloons and sort of Macy's Day balloons is just sort of one. slight
small step below hot air balloons because they're really constructed similarly, um, and
they do need to be inspected by, you know, authority figures.
No. They do need to be inspected by official

Matt: Um, so then, you know, finally, we do get to Thanksgiving Eve, uh, the night
before all of the action happens. Well, actually, it's the night when the action's already
happening, because that's when all the balloons have arrived in New York City and have
to be inflated.

Emily: And this is where you can go if you actually want to catch a glimpse and start
your parade festivities early, right. Matt?

Matt: That's right. And in fact our own Sophia Soto Sugar, who is often credited at the
end of these episodes, uh, got an invitation to go to the inflation event. And if you

Emily: is that what it's called, Matt? It's called The Inflation

Matt: I know the inflation

Emily: capital letters. The Inflation Event.

Matt: Well, yeah, Sophia got to go to the inflation event and if you wanna see photos and
videos of that, then check out our social media.

Kathleen: So the day before the parade, we have a massive inflation event uptown. So,
uh, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade steps off on Central Park West and 77th Street.
And uptown around, uh, at 77th Street and on 81st Street is where all of the balloons in
the lineup are inflated. And so that typically takes Depending on, um, you know, other
factors of loaded and the entire parade converging on, uh, uptown will typically start
inflating our balloons at around 9 a. m. and finish at around 4 p. m. Um, and then all of
the balloons are inflated, uh, and they'll take a quick nap before Thanksgiving morning
when they will fly down the route.

Emily: And then this is where it gets good, right? I mean, there's a huge number of folks
who are involved, not just in the parade planning, but in the balloons, right? So not only
do you have to design the balloons, Construct the balloons. Test the balloons. You have to
get them ready for parade day. And if you've ever either seen pictures of a balloon on
parade day, or you've watched the parade, you know that there's a huge team on the
ground keeping those balloons tethered so that they don't do an Underdog and float away.

Matt: Yeah. And depending on the weather conditions, particularly the wind, those
balloons might be flying higher or lower in order to maintain control of them. Because as
you can imagine, right, these balloons, um, because they're not aerodynamic shapes, they
can really, you know, become a sail, uh, and get blown around by strong winds.

Emily: Right, and so there's a whole management team who's monitoring the weather,
monitoring the inflation of these balloons, and instructing and handling the large team of
people holding on to those tethers,

Kathleen: So we have on each giant character balloon, about 90 balloon handlers12, uh,
that will march with that balloon down the parade route. And in addition to those balloon
handlers, we have what we call our flight management team. So we have a team of what
we call pilots who really manage... the flight profile of the balloon and they are focused
on making sure that the balloon is flying to the right height given the wind conditions that
day.
And then we also have a team of captains in our, uh, flight management team who are
more responsible for that balloon handlers. So they're making sure that the handlers have
tension on their balloon handling line and that they're staying in the right lines. Um, so
it's really, uh, a coordinated leadership team that marches with every single balloon down
the parade route.
Um, and they're constantly in communication with one another. Our flight management
team is on radio and constantly giving updates to each other on, Hey, I'm seeing this on
the back of the balloon. Let's make some adjustments. So, um, while it may seem to some
that these, uh, these balloons just fly by the magic of Macy's down the parade, it's a lot of
coordination in the lead up to the parade just to make sure that everyone knows how to do
it on Thanksgiving morning.

Matt: And, you know, this gets to where, you know, maybe you or I could eventually
potentially fit in here, because I don't see myself wearing the earpiece and telling people
what to do, but I could definitely dress up in a costume, um, you know, a costume like the

Emily: coordinating costume Matt,

Matt: Yeah. And I could be a balloon handler, which in fact, you know, a lot of the
balloon handlers on the ground are volunteers.
They're Macy's friends and family who are there for the day to help, you know, walk that
balloon down the street.

Emily: but you have to be a friend or family or a Macy's employee, Matt. I don't think you can just use your, like, cred and

Matt: I mean, how, how hard can it be to become friends with a Macy's employee?
They're all very friendly people, right?

Emily: They are very friendly people, but you're going to have to

Matt: I'm going to have to, work

Emily: going to have to work, you're going to have to work at

Matt: Yeah. You have to put in the work, you know?

Emily: But if any of you out there are Macy's employees and you have an in, you call

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

Emily: hook us up for next year. We'll be there.

AirSpace theme up then under

Emily: AirSpace is from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
It's produced by Jennifer Weingart and mixed by Tarek Fouda production help by Sofia
Soto Sugar. Our social media manager is Amy Stamm, and our intern is Jenna Bertschi.
For additional content, photos, and more follow AirSpacePod on Instagram and Twitter,
sign up for our monthly newsletter using the link in the show notes.
AirSpace is presented by Olay and distributed by PRX.

AirSpace theme up and out

PRX Audio Logo