With the big event (Macy’s 86th Annual Thanksgiving Day Parade…and Thanksgiving) a mere two days away, I began searching for the television schedule to plan the beginning of the holiday season. I visited Macy’s official website for the parade and discovered that there was an app for iPhone to make the experience more interactive.
Right from opening this app, you can tell the app is designed with children in mind. Its main menu is four brightly colored balloons and one of the main features is an ‘Elf-o-Matic,’ which takes your face and puts it on a balloon. From there, you can take a picture of your balloon in any location using the camera of the iPhone.
Track the Parade allows users to keep track of their favorite acts in the parade. I am quite partial to marching bands so I selected a couple that I don’t want to miss. The app will send a push notification to me when the act is closing in on the main stage area of the parade. This comes in handy for those who are spending most of the morning in the kitchen.
Parade Info has my favorite two favorite features: Traffic Cams and Marching Order. Traffic Cams has a map with the locations of the traffic cams along the parade route. From this map, you can select a camera and see the feed from the app. These feeds are not currently live as the cameras are under maintenance. Marching Order is rather cryptic. The screen states that, “This is the ONLY place to find the Parade’s official order of events.” The information is not live until the day of the event, but I like the concept of allowing the app users access to the parade order information. Line Up connects back to the website to show the floats, balloons, bands and musical acts are involved in the parade that day.
The app includes social networking options for Facebook and Twitter and also has a news feed specifically for parade news. If you happen to be lucky enough to snag a spot along the parade route in NYC, select ‘Live in NYC’ when you start-up the app and get a different set of menu options including Hot Spots, which shows you special parade related events.
Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is powered by MyCityWay, which focuses its app development on ways to guide people through their daily life. It seems like a great combination to me.
The app is solid and the features are unique. Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was released for the first time in 2011. I just recently discovered it and am excited about using version 2.0. If you are planning on watching the parade, consider downloading the app. It might make the show more interesting.
