Bill de Blasio: Fear not and come to NYC for Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

New York City expects record-breaking crowds to attend Thursday's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, officials said, along with a record force of police officers to calm fears that terrorists would stage a Paris-like attack on the festivities.

Standing under giant balloons being inflated for the 89th annual parade, Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner William Bratton Wednesday said that anti-terror cops -- some with assault rifles and bomb-sniffing dogs -- would guard the route.

"We have to stand our ground," de Blasio said. "And for God's sake, don't let the terrorists dictate the terms to us."

Bratton said, "I think we'll have the largest number of officers we've ever had for this event -- over 2,500" -- along with thousands of officers patrolling the city at large.

Both uniformed and plainclothes cops will protect the predicted 3.5 million onlookers as the Pillsbury Doughboy, SpongeBob SquarePants, Angry Birds and more than a dozen other balloons float downtown.

"This begins a season of joy. This begins a season of appreciation, a season to focus on family and all our loved ones," de Blasio said.

More than 500 police officers were added this year to its anti-terror efforts from the recently formed Critical Response Command, a heavily armed unit that can rapidly respond to an attack.

Bratton also said that regular police officers, armed with standard-issue 9-mm handguns, are trained to "neutralize any threat that they would encounter."

The officials spoke as families streamed into the Upper West Side to watch Macy's workers inflate parade balloons along Central Park West.

"Look around. Open your eyes. Do they look they're living in abject fear?" said Bratton, who said he plans to watch the parade with his family.

The parade draws crowds from West 77th Street, where it begins about 9 a.m., downtown to the parade's end point at West 34th Street and Herald Square, around noon.

Originally started in 1924 as the Macy's Christmas Parade, the spectacle has become an annual New York tradition, except for several years during World War II.

As children watching the parade preparations squealed nearby, the mayor said he's not worried that prospective paradegoers would stay home over terror worries. Earlier this week, Bratton criticized the Connetquot school district in Suffolk County, which canceled field trips to Manhattan over fears of an attack.

"I found that very regrettable, that a school district would give in to fear and cancel a trip," de Blasio said. "That's a choice they get to make, but look, again -- we cannot let the terrorists succeed at psychological warfare. That's what it is."