Angeles City - Air Balloon Festival 2011

[Rhoody]

Jung, one of the founders of this site made a brilliant report about the Angeles City - Air Balloon Festival 2011. It is posted on another board but of course we want to share it here with you also. so here we go:

The annual balloon festival is held in February of every year for the last 16 years. While 5 plus years ago this event was pretty much over after the balloons took off at 0-dark:30, the events surrounding the event make this a fun activity all day. From exhibitions to more and more good food being served to sights and sounds with added events past the balloons, the festival is jam packed with stuff to do.

[Rhoody]

Of course with the increase in size and activities comes a large increase in numbers of people attending the event. This year saw a huge influx of people coming to Angeles and traffic in and around Clark spilling over onto MacArthur and Fields plus surrounding roads became almost unbearable. So if you are planning to attend this fun event, make sure you a lot time for transportation.

[Rhoody]

I learned this the hard way last year when trying to get on Clark for the balloon take off and missed the event stuck in traffic. Keep in mind that this part takes place around 5:30 to 6:00 am or so, so I thought traffic wouldn’t be so horrendous. Boy, was I wrong! So I had to get up even earlier the next day and this year to make it to the parade grounds to capture the balloons blowing up and floating away.

The problem once they take off, it is like 7:30am in the morning. There are a ton of people around and the only thing I feel like doing is taking a nap! So plan your event watching accordingly. I make it a two or three part event and actually do the balloon take off on one day, events another day, and the balloon returning on yet another day or make the event day a late afternoon trip and stay for the balloon landing, which is quite lovely and a great site.

Although it was hard to get pictures this year of the landing as there were even more people and I didn’t have the big camera on me and only was using my small hand held digital camera. The lighting was weird as the bright flames made focusing very hard. I will include some of these pictures with this report but you need to see this live as it is pretty spectacular.

[Rhoody]

By far, if you only want to choose one thing to visit, I would pick the balloon take off. I always like this part of the festival and this year was no exception. I really liked the Darth Vader balloon this year. I know I am flagging myself as a total geek, but I would love to take a ride up in that bad boy.

[Rhoody]

Speaking of riding in the balloons, there is always a huge list of people wanting to do this. I’m not even sure how much this would cost, but I’m sure it’s pretty expensive. I had a friend do it last year but he got in with some friends and got a discount which bad karma turned into a disaster as the balloon he was traveling in had problems and the flight was canceled. That would seriously suck!

[Rhoody]

One new event this year was the Velcro wall. That was a ton of fun to watch and a great thing for the girlfriend to try and have fun doing. I thought, for all of about 10 nano-seconds, to give it a shot myself figuring if David Letterman can do it, I certainly can, but quickly changed my mind as I thought I would pop the damn wall and end up injuring myself needing a team of about 15 firemen, and a whole slew of medical personnel to remove my Velcro suit and cart me off to the hospital.

Another advantage of attending the festival, although this is more for Expats and tourists aren’t probably interested, is there is always a Burger King cart serving food. I wish they would get a clue (along with Taco Bell!) and realize there is a market here in AC for those places!

[Rhoody]

Anyway, if you find yourself in Angeles in February during the Balloon Festival, don’t miss the chance to attend the event. There is a ton of fun to be had and a lot of things to do plus many photographic opportunities. Bring a date as they will love it as well.

Hope you enjoyed this report! Until the next off-topic post,

Jung signing off...