The Baloon Fiesta's night spectacular

We had complimentary tickets from MIX FM. Given that it was supposed to be a kids event, you’d think they provide some entertainment while they delayed and delayed.

Pity the poor parachute guys circling overhead for an hour until they eventually had to land in darkness (even their target flare extinguished before the last jumper landed).

Anyway – next year – have more gates and allow more time for people to get in. Provide some entertainment for the kids while everyone gets seated.

I was one of the people (with wife and two friends) who queued for approximately 45 mins to get a ticket into Manuka on Saturday night and we don’t have a single problem with that at all.

I could have booked tickets online before the event and saved us the queue time but we chose not to do so.

Ticket sales were advertsied as opening at 6:00pm, so we arrived at 6:00pm to find an already long queue.

I noticed that two additional sales windows were opened about 20 mins after sales commenced, so obviously there was some hectic behind the scenes action to contact off-duty staff to get them to work ASAP.

Given the 100% increase in numbers, I think the organisers did a damned fine job to get things happening as quickly as they did. And I do feel somewhat guilty for those people who had pre-booked and were kept waiting for the disorganised rabble like me.

Mind you once the gig got under way I’m sure all aggro quickly subsided as it was indeed a great spectacle.

Suffice to say we’ll be pre-booking tickets next year as I expect the organisers will have learnt a lot from this first time event and will be planning a better one next year.