The first day of Fiesta started the way every first day of Fiesta starts, with lots of traffic. I made the mistake of not following the directions on my parking pass exactly and sat in a combination of pilot, crew and general public traffic on 2nd St. when I should have been on 4th St. which was for W lot passes only. The rest of the week was spent going in the correct way and with virtually no traffic.
I learned last year that the breakfast at the media tent is better and less crowded than what the Sid Cutter building offers. I never even ventured into the volunteer also known as navigator’s tent this year after never finding it open when I checked last year.
Super secret aerial show
Having spent so long in traffic I skipped breakfast to be in place for the super secret aerial show. This new super secret, pre-dawn show was not much of a secret. We all knew it was going to be a drone show. Not having seen a drone show in-person it was impressive, at least the first few times. It was a 7 minute long show with 300 drones that proved to be challenging to photograph. You can watch it here from the AIBF YouTube channel if you weren’t there to see one of the 9 showings.
Saturday’s weather was good enough for all the usual events. Dawn patrol, Krispy Kreme glow, balloon of the day and the mass ascension.
Mass ascension was the usual ordered chaos that it always is. Huge crowds, zebra’s doing their thing and spectators oblivious to the movement of trucks and crew.
The wind picked up as the morning went on and some 2nd wave balloons pulled out while crowds cheered as the few remaining balloons took off. So a typical Fiesta morning with faster upper winds coming down and a bit of a lopsided box.
That was the first and only cloud free morning. While some clouds are good for photographing balloons what we had the rest of the week was not great for photographing balloons.
Evening events
America’s Challenge talked about weather and postponed till the next evening.
The Twilight Twinkle glow was met with wind and increasing clouds. When the shiny Elevated crew can’t glow they dance. Well they dance regardless. Security wasn’t sure what to do and decided to tell the guys that they needed to keep their feet on the ground. Those directions seemed a little problematic at a balloon rally but somewhat foreshadowing for the coming week.
The clouds turned to virga and the virga became rain. Having already eaten a catered dinner at the media tent it was a chance to get to bed early.
