Balloon Festival Disasters & Durango In Texas

In June, here in the Dallas/Fort Worth zone, there is going to be a balloon festival.

A couple days ago I got an email with information about this festival asking me to please list it on my website.

I don't think I'm going to do that.

Why?

Well. Way back in the year 2000 I was involved with something called, if I remember right, the Mansfield Balloon Fest. The 2000 Balloon Fest opened with a huge crowd. Then, that night, 12 inches of rain wreaked havoc, turning the Balloon Fest grounds into a muddy mess.

The next year the Balloons were launched once more in Mansfield. That year's event did not get destroyed by rain.

The year following that, 2002, the Balloon Fest was moved from Mansfield to the Midway Regional Airport, near Midlothian, expanded to include Mansfield, Midlothian and Waxahachie, and renamed the North Texas Balloon Classic.

The first 2 days of the 2002 North Texas Balloon Classic went off without a problem. And then early Sunday morning, Father's Day of 2002, the Midway Regional Airport was hit with hurricane force winds, blowing apart the huge tent under which many of the vendors were located and ripping apart the booths outside the tent. It was a huge mess.

One would think with 2 out of 3 of the Balloon Festivals having such serious problems that this would put an end to it. Nope. That did not happen.

The 2003 North Texas Balloon Classic ballooned bigger than the 2002 version. More sponsors were onboard. More music. More food. More vendors. An entry fee of $10 per car was charged. During the 3 days a lot of cars showed up. So many that there were traffic jams.

And yet, somehow, the 2003 North Texas Balloon Classic ended not with a weather disaster, but with a financial disaster that was the final death blow.

For the 2003 North Texas Balloon Classic I agreed to re-do their existing really bad website. Part of that agreement was that I would be paid after the festival had generated its revenue. I, along with many others, were not paid.

I do not know how it came to be that 3 years ago the Balloon Festival rose from the dead at Midway Regional Airport, but it did. Ironically, the current iteration has an even worse website than the one I re-did 7 years ago.

Anyway, now you know why I won't be listing the 3rd Annual DFW Balloon Classic & AirFest.