After months and months of practice, performances and fundraising, the Blue & Gold Marching Machine will finally make the 562-mile trek to New York City for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

“It’s been a lot of hard work but in the end it will pay off,” head drum major Do’trell Allen said.

Thursday morning, Allen and his fellow drum majors will lead more than 200 band members down a 2.3 mile route to perform in front of a live audience of 3.5 million spectators and 65 million television viewers worldwide.

This will be the largest group Allen has ever led and certainly the largest audience for which he and the band have ever performed.

“I’m not nervous because I’ve worked with everyone who is marching and we’re ready,”

The parade comes during one of the busiest marching seasons on record for the Blue & Gold Marching Machine. The band has performed a different show for all seven home football games, traveled to away games and performed at a few marching band exhibitions. To add to the business of the season, the band had to learn the routine for the one minute, 15 second-performance on the Macy’s parade logo and will soon prepare for the Honda Battle of the Bands competition in Atlanta in January.

“Luckily we did a lot of recycling,” Allen said. “Like, there is a certain part of our show where we form the interlocking A&T, that’s always the same so we only had to learn that once.”

The hardest thing for the band this season has been learning the music because it has changed a lot. Now that the season is winding down, Allen said he is looking forward to the trip to The Big Apple, not only for himself but for the other band members.

“It will be half the band’s first time in New York and they’re going to have the time of their lives,” he said.

The trip’s itinerary includes visits to Rockefeller Center, the Museum of Natural History and Harlem. The band will watch the Rockettes perform on the largest stage in the world in Radio City Music Hall and see a Broadway production of “The Lion King.”

A trip of this magnitude comes with the hefty price tag of more than $400,000. The band partnered with local Quizno’s and McDonald’s restaurants and used good old-fashioned sweat equity through carwashes and other activities throughout the city of Greensboro.

The band also received help from private donors including 11 A&T Alumni chapters, three alumni band chapters, 23 corporations and foundations and the Division of Student Affairs.

Allen likens the trip to one the band took to Daytona to perform at the Bethune Cookman College game earlier this season.

“It was humbling because a lot of people don’t get to travel and it was a lot of people’s first time being at a beach,” he said.

“It was great to get to see some of the freshmen experience that for the first time. It will be great to have these new experiences in New York.”