Physics Dictate Macy’s New Parade Route November 25, 2009
In this file photo of Nov. 27, 2008, balloons float down Broadway during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in New York. For the first time in its more than 80-year history, the parade route is bypassing Broadway as it heads south from the Upper West Side to Macy's flagship store in Herald Square. Photo by: Jeff Christensen | It won't be just the balloons, marching bands and floats on display in the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The laws of physics will also be on parade.
For the first time in its more than 80-year history, the parade route is bypassing Broadway, which cuts a diagonal slice through Manhattan, as it makes its way south from the Upper West Side to the finish at Macy's flagship store in Herald Square.
Instead, participants will use a new route—one that traverses the grid of the city's streets and avenues, includes turns around five corners, and is slightly longer than in previous years.
The demands of the new route will challenge the marching bands and handlers of the parade's signature balloons, for whom precision is key, says Brian Schwartz, physics professor at the Graduate Center of the City Univ. of New York.
"There really is a lot of science" to it, he says.
"If they're taking a new route, they're going to have to be really careful in turning corners," he says.
The new 2.65-mile route came about because parts of Broadway have been closed to vehicular traffic, making it off limits to floats this year.
Macy's giant balloons, featuring Buzz Lightyear, Spider-Man, and Ronald McDonald this year, among others, measure several stories tall and wide and are filled with thousands of cubic feet of helium. Each balloon is tethered to several human handlers—the number depends on the size and shape of the balloon—who are responsible for guiding it down the route on foot.
The physics involved with moving a balloon down a straight path are different from what's needed for a corner, Schwartz says.
"If you're doing a turn, then the people on the inside of the turn have to walk slower than the people on the outside of the turn," he says. "It has to be very well-coordinated."
The handlers also have to know when to start their turning motion and how wide a turn to take, he says, likening it to trying to turn a car into a narrow parking space. If the driver turns too sharply or too widely, the car won't fit into the space properly.
Wind could also be an issue, Schwartz says, with changes in the direction of the route meaning changes in how the wind hits the balloons and what handlers have to do to compensate.
"The tension on the ropes will be changing, and people have to adjust for that in real time," he says.
The effect of the wind on the balloons is something that Macy's is mindful of, and city guidelines are in place to ground the balloons if the winds are too high.
The protocols were established after 45-mph winds drove a Cat in the Hat balloon into a metal pole during the 1997 parade and left a woman in a coma for almost a month before she recovered. The balloons were lowered to a maximum of 17 ft. on a stormy Thanksgiving Day 2006.
A route with corners in it is not for the faint of heart, says Judith Matt, president of a Massachusetts nonprofit called Spirit of Springfield, which holds a big balloon parade the weekend after Thanksgiving.
The Springfield parade changed its route more than a decade ago to one that is almost perfectly straight to avoid issues like hills, turns or trees.
It's not just the balloons. The Macy's marching bands, 10 from around the country, will have to make the turns while maintaining the precision of their marching lines.
"When you're in an event, you kind of live for it, you want to execute those turns so they are precise and crisp," says Robert Jacobs, executive director of the Jersey Surf, a drum and bugle corps based in Mount Holly, N.J.
Marchers will have to closely follow the path of the person in front of them to avoid having their band lines disrupted, and will have to time their steps carefully, since the person on the inside of the turn is taking smaller steps than the person on the outside.
"If you have to run to keep up, you're doing something wrong," says Jacobs, whose group has marched in its share of parades but is not taking part in the Macy's event.
"Corners can be the enemy of a marching band but also a source of inspiration," he says.
Orlando Veras, a spokesman for the Macy's parade, says organizers are confident the additional corners will not pose problems. Parade officials walk the route every year to assess potential problems.
Veras also pointed out that previous routes included one turn at the end, and that marchers and balloon handlers had to make a turn at the beginning to get from staging areas on side streets onto the main parade route.
If anything, the concern is timing, he says. The nationally televised event has a three-hour window, which now has to cover a longer parade route.
"The parade is such a perfectly timed machine; we like to know at 9:07 you should be at this block," he says. "It's really not about the turns, it's about the length of the route."
Observers were confident that Macy's would make it work.
"They're the epitome of what a parade does," says Toni McKay, CEO of Starbound Entertainment, which produces giant balloon parades. "They're going to be able to handle that quite well."
Source: Associated Press
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