NJ students get behind-the-scenes tour of Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade studio

MOONACHIE ─ The building “where the magic begins” looks nondescript from the outside.

But inside the 71,000-square-foot brown warehouse where Macy’s builds the floats, creates the costumes and tests the balloons for the Thanksgiving Day Parade, magic is everywhere.

A green dragon hangs from the ceiling. Giant chocolate chip cookies, French toast and pieces of cake lean against a wall. A pair of giant sneakers sits behind a plastic curtain.

But the main attractions on Tuesday, the one day Macy’s opens up its Parade Studio to the media and local schoolchildren, were the floats: Tom Turkey, the oldest and most famous float of them all; a chocolate factory by Kinder; St. Bernard dogs from The Elf on the Shelf; the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and a safari adventure by Kalahari Resorts.

“It’s our time to show off the floats that you’re going to see on Thanksgiving up close and personal,” said Susan Tercero, executive producer of the parade. “It gives people a chance to really see the artistry and craftsmanship behind them and get excited about Thanksgiving.”

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The floats are all built in-house by a team of about 50 full-time designers, sculptors, technicians and painters working year-round out of Moonachie, the parade’s newest home. For 40 years, until 2011, the magic began in a converted Tootsie Roll factory in Hoboken.

The new space allows Macy’s to inflate balloons — some weighing as much as 800 pounds — indoors, transport 4,000 costumes in one elevator and, ideally, allow the parade to grow for at least 70 years.

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Both balloons and floats start out as simple, and sometimes hand-drawn, sketches, said Laura Duphiney, a studio designer.

The balloon sketches are turned into clay models and then plastic models and, finally, pieces of balloon that are glued together. The float sketches were once made into 1-inch scale models, but beginning with the Tom Turkey float this year, they will be converted into 3D models and then carved out of foam or other materials.

Tom Turkey will debut revamped plumage on Nov. 22 after nearly 50 years of leading the Thanksgiving Day Parade, Duphiney said. He will also be the parade’s first self-propelled float.

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Every float will be broken into pieces to fit inside the Lincoln Tunnel and reassembled the night before on Central Park West, Tercero said.

For the past several years, dozens of children from local elementary schools in New Jersey have been able to get a preview of the newest floats before anyone else.

“They start asking in kindergarten when they’re going to go,” said Lee Ten Hoeve, an art teacher at Robert L. Craig Elementary School in Moonachie. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience for them.”

Third-graders and special education students from the school marveled at the size of Tom Turkey on Tuesday, and one 8-year-old, Romeo Canovera, said he was inspired to work at the studio one day.

“I want to see if I can make my own float,” he said.

Romeo already has an idea for one: Sonic the Hedgehog. He has sketches of the video game character ready to go.

Ten Hoeve said she jumped at the opportunity to take her students to the Macy’s studio for children like him.

“It’s a great thing for the kids to see that there are real careers in the arts that are in their own town and that they could potentially do something like this when they get older,” she said.

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