Balloon Fiesta Park — Attraction in Albuquerque

If you go before dawn, bring a flashlight, layers and a chair if you don't want to walk. We attended the 2023 international balloon fiesta on the first Saturday. After reading reviews, people REALLY hype this parking situation up to be more dramatic and problematic than it really is. Look, if you're gonna show up late, and late at this event means after 0530, yeah you're probably going to be in some sort of traffic so don't complain. If this a one time event for you get up early and get there. We woke up at 0415. Hotel was about 20 mins away. So, arrived at the "traffic" around 0450. What we quickly figured out was that everyone in line was sleeping through MULTIPLE signs leading into parking said TWO LANES so, we moved to the empty lane and blew by about 200 cars pulled right up, paid to park, parked got out and started walking before 0500. There's multiple parking lots I guess. The one we parked in, it was a solid 10 minute walk and they sort of herd you like cattle into areas to walk through so it might have taken 15 mins since people want or only can walk slowly but walk side by side with their company. Security was a joke I must say. That's another thing that was hyped up. You can't bring this you can't bring that, ect. They didn't check anything. I think we walked through a "metal" detector that did not go off for anyone so not sure it was even on. Once inside, around 0510, I could not believe the amount of people including children already there. Never seen a crowd like that at an event this early. There were people and shops and food for as far as you could see. I will say that the bathroom situation was sort of ridiculous. We wasted a lot of time looking for the portable bathrooms that seemed to be hidden. The balloons were cool to see, we brought disassembled compact chairs but found ourselves wandering around until 0830 taking pics and watching the balloons and never used the chairs. It was a tad chaotic in the dark as people were in frenzies once the balloons started getting filled. People are slamming their strollers into you in the dark and bumping into you. They allow, which I don't agree with, you to get up within feet of the balloons and staff. No real security in sight. I did see law enforcement not really doing anything but standing around in groups. I personally probably would not go multiple days but glad I went once, it was quite...

We went here for an evening session of the 2023 balloon festival and it was kind of a mixed bag. First, the show itself was spectacular. They had a light show with inflated baloons, skydivers shooting off fireworks, and a drone presentation creating images in the sky. Very impressive and we were blown away by it.

Now for the not so good part. The organization of the festival itself could use some work. First, when entering the field area, there is no signage indicating where the audience should sit and what is reserved for balloon teams. We were asked to move multiple times because we were apparently sitting in a reserved spot for a balloon team. But there was no way to know that, as far as I could tell. Would have been really helpful to have some signs pointing you to where you could sit.

The space, although big, still feels like it isn't enough for the massive crowds that show up each day. Prepare to be elbow to elbow with others for the duration of the performance. Restroom facilities for general ticket holders are limited to port a potties only. I can't speak to their condition, as I avoided using due to the crowds and lines, but can't imagine it would have been a pleasant experience.

Lastly, if you're using ride share to travel back to your hotel from the festival, good luck. There were absolutely no signs pointing you to where the pick up point was, so we had to ask multiple people before we got decent directions on where it was, which is by gate 20.

In arriving in the pick up area there was a very small tent with a ride share sign. That was it. Once we found the location, it was nearly impossible to get a driver to pick us up. One after another cancelled on us. Finally, after waiting for at least an hour we got someone to pick us up. We saw many people in the same situation. In talking to our driver, apparently there was a new traffic pattern established that day that drivers were not aware of that was making it extremely difficult for them to get to the pick up area. Horribly mismaged by the festival.

If you can overlook these things, the festival itself is great. Just be prepared for the shortcomings...

Traffic - We came for the 50th anniversary balloon festival and we left our hotel which was maybe 20 or so minutes away at about 5:00 a.m. the Directions said it would be about 39 minutes. Let me tell you.... that last two and a half miles can take you like 2 and 1/2 hours. So my advice is definitely leave in the 4:00 a.m. hour for the sunrise balloon lift . No offense to the police but I feel like they could do a significantly better job directing traffic. It didn't feel like they were allowing traffic flow to go to rate that made sense. Or stopping the people who are cutting up in traffic and making it absolutely impossible to move forward.

Festival - The balloon festival itself was a riot. We got lucky that we were able to actually have the weather work where we were able to watch the balloons take off. hundreds of balloons.... It was an amazing bucket list type of experience. One of the things I found unique and funny was they had the help dressed up as the Star Wars soldiers. Very family friendly. My only advice here would be that the official merchandise tents are absolutely jammed and I only noticed two of them. they could do better to have more dispersed official merchandise than they do. Friendly and helpful Festival staff lots of...