Balloons over Waikato

Balloons over Waikato is an annual hot air balloon festival held in Hamilton, New Zealand. It is held over five days during autumn and attracts both local and overseas balloonists. The Festival is held primarily at Innes Common, at Hamilton Lake, which gets an estimated 130,000 visitors during the festival. The highlight of the festival, the "Night glow"[1] is held at the University of Waikato where an estimated 80,000+ people attend to watch the lighting of balloons putting on a spectacular glow to music.

The distinctive shape of "Sunny Boy" inflating ready to fly at the Balloons Over Waikato festival
Various Balloons lifting off from Innes Common 2010
Night glow at the festival

Events

Events in the festival include sunrise and sunset launches, a balloon basket glow in the city's Garden Place, the "Night Glow", a morning "Key Grab" competition where balloonists must attempt to secure a key placed on a pole in Innes Common and a Dawn Patrol where a select number of balloons inflate and lift off at dawn creating a magical glow in the sky.

Day 1: The Mass Ascension, Afternoon Flight
Day 2: Dawn Patrol, Breakfast as Dawn, Afternoon Flight
Day 3: Morning Flight, School Hop, City Burn
Day 4: Cash Grab, Nightglow
Day 5: Final Morning

History

In 2014, free bus services were offered for the night glow event.[1] In 2015, Balloons Over Waikato was named Best Established Community Event at the New Zealand Association of Event Professionals awards ceremony.[2] In 2017, a hot air balloon landed in the middle of a Hamilton intersection.[3] In 2019, the event celebrated its 20th birthday.[4] That same year, the City Burn event as part of Balloons Over Waikato was recorded as a summer month highlight.[5]

gollark: Or write-a-monad-tutorial days.
gollark: Lars: the existing two GPU miners do best on AMD cards, possibly because AMD does compute better.
gollark: Not that the gain is substantial though.
gollark: You can probably sometimes find nonempty cheap places. I just buy directly from gold sellers in bulk occasionally.
gollark: They aren't *always*.

See also

References
  1. "Free buses for the Night Glow". 21 March 2014. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  2. Lewis, Geoff (3 August 2015). "Balloons Over Waikato takes out top event award". Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  3. Moorby, Caitlin (24 March 2017). "Hot air balloon lands in the middle of a Hamilton intersection". Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  4. "Balloons over Waikato festival starts in Hamilton next week". The New Zealand Herald.
  5. "Reports paint positive picture for Hamilton". Scoop. Retrieved 8 October 2019.


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