What's Different About This Year's MACY'S THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE?

This year's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade will be anything but average. Taking place only digitally, we know that staples like Broadway performances, balloons, floats, and an appearance from Santa Claus will stay put as part of the broadcast. But what will change?

Susan Tercero, the parade's executive producer, told Variety: "Every year we have two parades: There's the one for New Yorkers who line the parade along the streets, and we knew that couldn't happen, we couldn't march from uptown to downtown. The other parade is the one that happens on television for 50 million people. We knew that was going to be our safest way of moving forward."

Tercero said that the parade has found a way to balance live and pre-taped performances, shuffling through them seamlessly - there is magic in the power of live entertainment, she thinks, and it's something we're all sorely missing.

Performers include Lauren Alaina, Sofia Carson, Tori Kelly, Patti LaBelle, Matthew Morrison, Leslie Odom Jr., Keke Palmer, Dolly Parton, Pentatonix, Bebe Rexha and Jordin Sparks, along with the casts of "Ain't Too Proud - The Life and Times of The Temptations," "Hamilton," "Jagged Little Pill" and "Mean Girls".

Another major difference for this year - there will be no performances from high school marching bands.

"We realized that schools weren't sure where they were going to be [in fall]," Tercero said. Most schools were closed. They did not know if they were even going to have a marching band program in the fall. We had to make that decision quickly for them because there was a lot of unknown in their world."

In lieu of the high school performers, participants from the Puerto Rican Day, St. Patrick's Day, NYC Pride, West Indian Day and Coney Island USA Mermaid parades - who didn't get to march in their own parades this year - will appear on the broadcast.

Tecero said that they invited these groups to participate to celebrate the city of New York, to commemorate what we've lost, and to introduce an audience of 50 million viewers to the kinds of organizations who missed their marches this year.

Find out more at Variety.